What excites private collectors and museum curators are vintage examples of iconic designs, projects by pioneering designers that didn't make it into mass production, and singular commissions. The Boyd Collection includes a stool that Eileen Gray designed for Tempe à Pailla, her legendary house in the south of France that she then brought back with her to her rue Bonaparte apartment to live with (lot 10); a hand-made and hand-painted desk by the De Stijl master Bart van der Leck (with architect Piet Elling) custom-made for Mrs. L.H. van Groningen (lot 30); a unique Pierre Chareau blackened iron desk and parchment-clad stool (lots 14  and 15); and rarified red-lacquered chairs, custom-ordered in 1930 by a poet in Amsterdam, designed by Mies van der Rohe, Lilly Reich and Eric Dieckmann (lots 22, 23 and 24). Among many other rarities are original Eames LCMs upholstered in blue leather (Life of Design,lot 368), and the biomorphic steel and string chair by Jean Burkhalter (Life of Design, lot 135). 

Forty years ago Michael Boyd began collecting in this field with the purchase of a vintage modern chair from a flea market. He and Gabrielle Boyd, his wife of twenty-eight years, have a passion for locating these treasures in auction rooms, flea markets, workshops, and other collector' homes. They've lived with these finds in a succession of classic modern houses they've restored, and have exhibited them in major museums including a solo show in 1998, “Sitting on the Edge: Modernist Design from the Collection of Michael and Gabrielle Boyd” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. They've augmented the furniture with books and artworks, decorative objects and vintage graphics to create a narrative of Modernism from 1900 to 1970, from the craft-inspired work of Christopher Dresser to the coda of Joe Colombo's sinuous plastic chairs. William Morris was the godfather of a design philosophy that grew out of the Arts and Crafts movement to flourish, first in the hothouse of Vienna, then in the austerity of the Bauhaus and De Stijl, in France and Scandinavia, before its final flowering in post-war Italy and America—these are the points of primary interest on the map of the Boyd Collection.

The Boyd Collection contains the finest examples of vintage modernist design in the most original condition.Over the better part of the past four decades, the Boyds have sharpened the focus of their collection to create a narrative of functionalism infused with poetry. Even as their selections have become more rigorous they've continued to enjoy a parallel collection of African and ethnographic art and vintage guitars, plus a few flights of fancy including a hand-built wooden spoke stool by Gabetti and Isola (lot 12). It's a collection that any museum curator would love to display, as a celebration of creativity and invention and as a crucial chapter in the history of design. The Boyd Collection contains the finest examples of vintage modernist design in the most original condition. These pieces were lovingly selected by the Boyds, not just for their place in history but for their place in their home and their interiors projects. They have always looked for the most provocative works that have the most sublime ideas behind the designs.

Michael Boyd is a man of many parts: a composer turned collector, who has won acclaim for his design of furniture and landscapes, for his artworks and the restoration (and even design and construction) of mid-century modern houses. Boyd's landscapes are inspired by the tropical exuberance of Roberto Burle-Marx, which translates well to Southern California. Successive editions of his PLANEfurniture pay homage to the pantheon of the masters of modern design without copying them, and each piece is meticulously crafted to bring out the beauty of material and line. And Boyd’s own designs are now part of the permanent collections of several institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Palm Springs Art Museum and the David Gebhard Archive at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The selections from the Boyd Collection represented here contain all the spark, fire, and magic that the original masters of Modernism created in the twentieth century and beyond.The couple rehabilitated their first houses in the San Francisco Bay Area, restored the townhouse and triplex that Paul Rudolph created for himself on Beekman Place in mid-town Manhattan (1975), and then, after a brief stay in Santa Barbara, the Oscar Niemeyer Strick House in Santa Monica (1964). The challenge of saving this house—the Brazilian master's only building in North America—on the eve of demolition, creating a new garden and making it a showcase of their collection is chronicled in my book, Modernist Paradise: Niemeyer House | Boyd Collection (Rizzoli, 2007), which was also translated into French as Le Style Moderniste (Chêne, 2008). In this and other publications I have explored the notion that the pioneers of Modernism had a deep faith in the transformative power of good design. They believed that spare, luminous, free-flowing spaces, rationally equipped with sturdy, portable furniture, would enrich the quality of their owners' lives. Faith in progress and the promise of the future has faltered in recent decades. But it is possible to recapture something of the optimism and joie de vivre of that vanished era on visits to classic modern houses, and—more intimately—by living with furnishings that will never go out of fashion. The timeless beauty of a great design, enriched by the soft patina of age and use, brings lasting delight. Still more when that piece has a direct link to Charlotte Perriand or Le Corbusier, Eileen Gray or Jean Prouvé. It's a privilege to own a work that they built with own hands, personally used, or gave to a friend.

"My quest could be called the search for the roots of radical design," wrote Boyd in an essay he contributed to Modernist Paradise. In it, he explained the principles that informed his collecting. "I am enthralled by the development of the technologies that defined the forefront of modern design: bentwood, tubular steel vacuum-formed plastics, to name a few," he continued. "I have also been fascinated by the way an architect's or designer's universe is present in works of all scales—as Gio Ponti refers to the spectrum of design, ‘from the spoon to the city’.”

"Questions recur as I go on my gathering adventures. What is pioneering modernism with its high ideals and utopian agendas? What is derivative or kitch, and falls below the radar? What do I save? What should I reject? Is this important design? Does it contribute to the greater dialog? But mostly I have no specific idea of what I'm looking for until I see it. Then I know. I don't know why I know, but I do. Once I track down a piece, there are practical questions. Is it original? Does it need restoration? How do I get it home? There are lofty and transcendent aspects to the chase and real-world problems to be solved."

The selections from the Boyd Collection represented here contain all the spark, fire, and magic that the original masters of Modernism created in the twentieth century and beyond. For these collectors it really has been a Life of Design, a life in and around and on design. The real pleasure is in seeking out and living with these modernist treasures. Both high and low figure into the fabric of the overarching narrative—from a flea market in Paris or Los Angeles, to the most exclusive auction houses and galleries around the world, and everything in between, these pieces have been meticulously sourced and judged for their essence, deep soul and atmosphere. Like the African and ethnographic pieces, the high and low modernist works presented here are both eternal, and at the same time, emblematic symbols of their origins and era. For all of the wide variety of pieces in the Boyd Collection, the commonality is that each design object is a meaningful symbol of the art of living.