The curving organic shape of this coffee table helped inspire the rage for 1950s “boomerang” furniture. Within a decade, however, critics panned such overtly sculptural forms as garish examples of post-war consumer excess. Richard Hamilton, a British painter and design critic, decried England’s fascination with short-lived American fashion trends. He criticized designers like Paul Frankl, who made this coffee table, for disregarding the sensible axiom of “form follows function” and instead shifting their styles to match the whims of fashion. Frankl first found fame in the 1920s for his tall, stepped “Skyscraper” furniture. After World War II, he moved from New York to Los Angeles and began to create softer more “biomorphic” forms. Hamilton hoped that in the 1960s designers in both England and America would stop trying to create products to please consumers. Instead, he suggested that they hire scientific researchers to help them “design” shoppers who liked their furniture.