Our mid-century Vandamm chair takes its name from Alfred Hitchcock’s stylish antagonist in ‘North by Northwest’, which established modernism as the preferred architectural style of Hollywood villains for decades. An aesthete and auteur rolled into one, Hitchcock had a keen eye for design and was heavily involved in all decisions relating to the look of his films, from makeup and wardrobe to production design. For his 1959 spy thriller opus ‘North by Northwest’, Hitchcock instructed his production designers to model villain Phillip Vandamm’s (James Mason) Mount Rushmore lair after Frank Lloyd Wright’s mid-century icon Fallingwater. MGM set designer Robert Boyle and his team did a fascinating job emulating Fallingwater’s famous cantilevered design, albeit the fact that the Vandamm house wasn’t actually a real structure but a set built in the MGM stages in Culver City. While Hitchcock utilised matte painting by Matthew Yuricich for most of the exteriors, the interiors were built full-scale, featuring gorgeous mid-century furniture complementing the limestone walls. Our mid-century chair, available in caramel brown leather and cream bouclé, would have fit right in.
