The See-Through-Lucite Age

As I am in quite a few houses each week appraising contents and collections, in almost every home there’s a “knock off” Phillippe Starck Lucite see-through “Louis Ghost” chair. Made of Lucite or acrylic resin, the faux-starck has that round or oval back rest, arms, and tapered legs, and today they cost as little as $49. 

Glamorized Lucite furniture was a fad that began in the 1950s. In the ‘60s, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Tennessee Williams commissioned Charles Hollis Jones to create Lucite furniture for their estates, for example. Jones was one of the top paid designers, an American artist and furniture designer recognized by the Smithsonian for his pioneering use of acrylic and Lucite in interior design. Jones’ moniker is “Mr. Lucite.” Still working in L.A., Jones’ more recent design clients include Stallone and the Kardashians.

What began as a material used only in industry, Lucite in the 1950s became chic, highbrow art in the hands of Charles Hollis Jones. He took polymethyl methacrylate and made it hot – and dare I say sexy.

His beginnings were not “hot”… brought up a carpenter’s son in Bloomington, IN, Jones began in 1960-70s to experiment with unconventional shapes in Lucite. We can thank him for the elegant brass, glass, and Lucite dining tables that were prestigious in the 1970s. By the time my father created his bachelor pad (after he divorced my mother), he ordered an inexpensive knock-off of a Hollis Jones design. Here’s where Lucite took on a single swinger energy; the newly-eligible bachelor turned away from his ex-wife’s Colonial Revival-style rooms and went brass, glass, and Lucite –  never mind slathering sofas with vinyl upholstery fabric in HOT colors, remember? My dad had that white shag rug and bright vinyl recliner chairs, not a great fit for a humid Illinois farm town summer.

I’ll bet my father wished he could have afforded what was the sexiest of all Hollis Jones’ designs, a four-poster canopy bed in Lucite and brass (1971), handcrafted, accented with vanity tables and lamps. Bob Hope (not a sexy example – he upholstered his Lucite bed in blue floral fabric) commissioned a bed from Hollis Jones, and Jones created a wraparound Lucite bed for Elvis, totally hot with mirrors all around the circumference.

Yes, mom’s house in Deerfield, Illinois, was Colonial Revival, with maple Ethan Allen furniture. But in my mother’s home in Deerfield in the 1980s we had Lucite too; Lucite serving trays, Lucite nut bowls and ice buckets for cocktail hour, and some cheap Lucite jewelry. Highbrow had trickled down to mid-western lowbrow! But by the late 1980s, the fashion for space-age “disappearing ghost furniture” made of Lucite waned as the material became tacky and overused. My dad was on the leading edge of the “tacky” downswing.

In the 2020s, Lucite – in all its over the top “invisibility” – is not only hard to find; vintage Lucite is expensive. That Hollis Jones brass and Lucite “Metric” king-sized poster bed from 1971 is now offered for $50,000. You will pay more, however, for the Sylvester Stallone four-poster designed and manufactured by Hollis Jones in 1976 (which in fact is for sale today). Though Stallone requested the ceiling of the bed have a mirror, that feature is now missing. It’s hard not to wonder what that mirror reflected.

Some decades before the 1970s, the Lucite in Stallone’s bed was conceived of by 1930s–era scientists who designed an early form of acrylic resin that could be molded when heated into a flexible, crystal-clear plastic. DuPont coined their formula “Lucite” in 1937 and began to produce industrial sheeting. By the 1950s the clear stuff was deemed “Space Age.” Pierre Cardin in 1960 developed “lenticular” furniture, working with mild embedded optical illusions, and surfaces that changed color when viewed from different angles. 

So very “Palm Beach” – Sidney Mobell created Lucite etched with seashells, tropical palms, and dolphins. His creations are the ultimate 1970-80s Palm Beach (kitch) experience, yet a dolphin side table will set you back $5,000.

JE has sent me a find from Oxnard’s Habitat for Humanity ReStore; a Lucite “back of sofa” table, which I date from the late 1980s, given the geometric legs which give it away. The look of the late eighties was chunky and massive, as opposed to the earlier, more refined elegant line. This piece’s provenance speaks to the downward slide of Lucite furniture into “low brow.” The value is $1,000 for such a table in good conditions: yes, Lucite can scratch.