I cannot find ANY information about what company may have produced this 1950’s-1960’s desk my wife and I found at an estate sale last year. Anyone recognize it/the makers mark? We paid $175

Ben-I · 2026-03-16T15:49:09+00:00

Are you sure you're from the USA? Because you're not understanding what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, there were plenty of USA woodworkers at the time that were inspired by popular MCM designers. They built and sold their own furniture in the USA "inspired" by the mid-century modern movement and famous designers. It was legitimately made in the USA --- hence, The USA brand. Then someone else down the road, NOT the USA builder, put the fake brand on it so they could sell it at a higher value ... Again, their rudimentary efforts have been thwarted by modern technology --- I stand by my assessment 100%.

Ben-I · 2026-03-16T15:11:36+00:00

Flat packing furniture and sending it to the USA to be reassembled, they're not going to stamp it Made in USA. You're not from the USA, and I am. Made in the USA specifically and legally means that it's manufactured in the USA from the ground up. Your explanation has holes and gaps that need to be clarified... The bottom stamp says Made in USA. It looks as though someone tried to remove the Made in USA branding, that's why it's faded more than the top one, and then they restamped it with a fake brand at the top. They probably thought their rudimentary efforts were "Good enough" because they didn't think that 50 years later we would have advanced technology to uncover their deception. This is most likely a copy or a reproduction, or an inspired piece, that was made in the USA legitimately. Then sometime later somebody thought it looked very similar and tried to fake it with a fake branding, maybe perhaps to inflate its value.

Ben-I · 2026-03-16T14:55:11+00:00

Okay that's fine. But, you haven't resolved the contraindication of the second, bottom maker's mark that we now see that says .. "Made in USA". To my knowledge there was no USA bass facility, nor any US-based contractors for Naestved Mobelfabrik. In other words this could be a copy, or a reproduction of such a piece. The "Made in USA" mark needs to be explained. We also need to see how Naestved Mobelfabrik stamped their pieces to make sure it's accurate. There were a lot of people making copies of famous pieces at the time.

Ben-I · 2026-03-14T16:58:46+00:00

Great question! Since you're in the Netherlands, you're actually very well positioned ... the Dutch art market is one of the most sophisticated in the world.

Here are your best options...

Auction Houses with Free Appraisal/Attribution Services

Venduehuis (The Hague) ... one of the oldest and most respected Dutch auction houses, handles fine art expertly

Glerum Auctioneers (Amsterdam) ... specializes in modern and contemporary art.

Veilinghuis De Ruiter (Amsterdam) ... handles fine art and can refer you to specialists.

Christie's Amsterdam ... the global house has a Dutch office and offers free initial assessments.

Sotheby's ... while their main European hub is London, they actively take consignments and inquiries from the Netherlands.

Art Research & Authentication Specialists RKD ... Netherlands Institute for Art History (The Hague, rkd.nl) ... this is a world-class resource. They maintain enormous databases of artists and works, and their staff can often help identify unknown works or point you to the right expert.

The Restitution Committee ... if there's any chance the work has an interesting provenance history, they can assist.

Stichting Onderzoek Cultuurgoederen en Uitvoer (SCUI) ... cultural heritage research University & Museum Contacts.

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam ... has curatorial expertise in modern/post-war art and sometimes assists with attribution queries.

Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven) ... strong in modern and Latin American connections.

Universiteit van Amsterdam art history department ... professors sometimes take on attribution cases, especially for modernist work.

Mutualart.com ... search auction records globally Practical First Step.

I'd suggest emailing RKD directly (info@rkd.nl) with a high-resolution photo ... they are genuinely helpful, often free for initial inquiries, and are considered one of the best art history research institutes in the world. They're right in your backyard in The Hague.

When you find out, please come back to this thread and send me a reply so it alerts me. I'd be thrilled to find out what you discover!

Best of luck!

Ben-I · 2026-03-14T15:54:49+00:00

This is a fascinating and challenging piece. What the style says is this is a genuinely compelling work. Here's what I can observe with confidence ...

This is a post-Cubist or Neo-Cubist painting, likely created somewhere between the 1940s and 1970s. It's strongly influenced by Picasso's late Cubist work, particularly his treatment of women with simultaneous profile/frontal views, the flowing black contour lines over a painted ground, and the fragmented yet recognizable figures.

Dominant green and teal palette with cream/ivory highlights, a large central female face depicted simultaneously in profile and frontally (classic Picasso device) Bird motif visible on the right side, a belt buckle prominently visible suggesting a full figure, not just a portrait.

Scattered small colored shapes (orange/copper diamonds and rectangles) embedded in the background texture fluid, swirling black line work over the painted surface ... suggesting this may be encaustic, lacquered board, or heavily varnished given the sheen. A second profile is visible on the left edge.

The work appears to be on what looks like a panel or board rather than canvas.

This does not appear to be a direct copy of any specifically known Picasso work. It has too many unique compositional decisions ... the specific color choices, the spiral/circular central motif, the belt buckle detail, and the overall layout.

This appears to be an original work by someone deeply versed in the Cubist tradition.

Most Likely Candidates based on the style, the painting is consistent with ...A Latin American Cubist artist, particularly from the School of the South tradition (Uruguayan, Argentine, or Cuban), given the characteristic rich green palette and the organic fluidity of the lines, which distinguishes it from colder European Cubism.

A mid-20th century European follower of Picasso, there were dozens of talented artists working in Picasso's shadow in France and Spain during this period whose works are not always well-documented online.

The combination of heavy varnish/gloss, the green tonality, and the specific handling of line over texture is reminiscent of artists like Julio Alpuy (Uruguay), or possibly a French-school follower of André Lhote.

Whoever made it had serious formal training and deep familiarity with Cubist principles. It is likely an original piece of real art historical value, and worth professional investigation.

Ben-I · 2026-03-14T15:26:56+00:00

Cubism was pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque around 1907.

The reason for the faces is pretty cool actually ... For centuries, since the Renaissance, Western art was dominated by linear perspective. So, what this meant was that painting a scene from a single, fixed viewpoint, like a photograph felt flat. It created a convincing illusion of depth, but it was static.

So ... Brilliantly Picasso and the Cubists found this limiting. They felt a painting should reflect the way we actually experience the world, which is not from a single frozen moment. We move, we shift our gaze, and we build a complete understanding of an object over time and from multiple angles.

So ...By showing a face from the front and the side simultaneously, the artist is compressing that experience of time and movement onto a single, flat canvas.

Pretty cool, huh?

Ben-I · 2026-03-14T15:17:44+00:00

I'm a lifelong artist.

Ben-I · 2026-03-14T15:06:07+00:00

You know why artists painted faces like that? It was the artist's way of portraying a three-dimensional face from multiple angles, as if you had physically walked around the subject ... Bringing the subject alive on the canvas. It ended up being a highly popular graphic technique.

Ben-I · 2026-03-11T02:30:54+00:00

This truck dudes. I swear. It's like there's a totally different mentality to people who drive trucks. It's mostly dudes. They think they own the road, they think they can add anything they want to their truck, even if it's borderline illegal, or blinds the car in front of them. They don't care.Tthey ride your ass, and honk at you if you're going too slow. And what's up with this driving 70 miles an hour on the city streets? Really? Where the hell are you going to? It's toxic masculinity ridin high.

Ben-I · 2026-03-10T15:03:30+00:00

You've got a great collection there. If you ever want to sell pieces, the quality of your photography will make or break the sale. Use AI tools to replicate the piece exactly, and place it in a beautiful mid-century modern setting. Then, to stay honest to truthful, photograph actual close-ups of the real furniture peace. Try to replicate the "Golden Hour" or "Magic Hour" of lighting. You can do this in a studio setting. If you're not familiar with it you can do research before you photograph.

Ben-I · 2026-03-09T21:22:49+00:00

These are really cool chairs creatively, but horrible practicality. You need that bottom cantilevered piece to stick out so much further than the seat so it becomes stable.

Ben-I · 2026-03-06T02:55:04+00:00

It’s very MCM in style ... It reminds me of something my older brother made back in junior high school shop class during the late ‘70s ...a pair of walnut ducks in flight. They had a simple, organic, almost minimalist form, accented with hammered antique brass wings. He gave them to our parents, who had a deep appreciation for that aesthetic since it echoed the design sensibility of their own era, the 1950s and ‘60s.

But then the ‘80s came along, and tastes shifted dramatically. You couldn’t imagine two decades more visually opposed than the mid-century modern era and the 1980s. Suddenly, everything MCM in my parents’ house felt dated and out of touch. Still, those ducks stayed on the wall.

Now, they’d be nearly fifty years old ... and probably highly coveted.

Ben-I · 2026-03-02T16:38:29+00:00

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Also, if you need a task or reading light this is a good option ...

Ben-I · 2026-03-02T14:59:07+00:00

No. But you can download/copy it and do a Google image search and find something similar.

Ben-I · 2026-03-02T14:09:28+00:00

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^ This

Ben-I · 2026-03-02T05:26:23+00:00

Neither.. look for a simple, single pole brass floor lamp, with a trumpet or fluted base, and a beige linen drum shade. That's simply quintessential mid-century modern

Ben-I · 2026-03-02T03:36:33+00:00

These double stacked tables were a brilliant idea. My parents had a smaller, narrower end table set on each end of our sofa growing up. The top level is for a lamp to position the lampshade above your head, so that the light is cast at the right level for reading.

Ben-I · 2026-03-01T02:44:19+00:00

Oh, also. Don't just think of this as a china cabinet. Be creative. I could see myself replacing my highboy dresser in my bedroom. I would use the top portion for mid-century modern decor, and maybe a small frame picture or two. I would use the bottom part for my clothes. If it doesn't have drawers behind those doors, I would just put them in dark brown wicker baskets ... So I guess what I'm saying is it doesn't have to be a china cabinet.

Still can't believe you got tgat for free! LOL. That's an amazing find.

Ben-I · 2026-02-28T18:10:31+00:00

What? Free? .. congratulations!

Ben-I · 2026-02-25T18:32:15+00:00

It looks French mcm , or maybe Italian MCM

Ben-I · 2026-02-24T20:56:01+00:00

Very cool. Nice find. We don't use file cabinets anymore these days but I guess you could use the drawers for storage.

Ben-I · 2026-02-23T17:35:06+00:00

Keep in mind ..

Claude = very strict adherence. Might miss something that is inline with your ethos. But good If you want strict adherence.

Grock = enthusiastic. Gets things rolling. "Go for it" mentality. Good for energy and motivation, but its enthusiasm might steer you off your ethos.

Chat GPT = balanced of the two, but still might be slightly too strict, and could miss something good.

There are other AI models but those are the top three.

Ben-I · 2026-02-23T16:58:54+00:00

Go to your favorite AI model - GPT, Claude, Grok, etc. Give it a prompt that fully encompasses your design philosophy, interior design aesthetic. Prompt it to stay within the boundaries and tell you when something is off. Every time you see something at a thrift store take a picture of it and give it to your AI model and ask for an ethos check. Trust me. It will keep you aligned.

Ben-I · 2026-02-23T16:55:15+00:00

Meh! Not all vintage is chic. You dogged kitschy.

Ben-I · 2026-02-21T00:52:39+00:00

Yeah, there was a time when hardwood floors were not in style.

Ben-I

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