The Star Trek franchise has produced one of the most comprehensive universes ever seen in pop culture, with a dedicated fan base ready to swoop in on any inconsistencies. But there is one thing many Trekkies can agree upon: they would like to own and drink out of Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s tea cup (hot Earl Grey tea optional). And they can: His preferred drinking vessel, used not only throughout The Next Generation (1987-1994), but also by Captain Kathryn Janeway on Voyager (1995-2001) and of course the modern iteration of Picard (2020-present), is not a manufactured prop, but Carsten Jorgensen’s Bistro Cup designed for Bodum in 1974. Though out of production, the cup is available from second-hand sellers like Etsy, where it is often conveniently labeled the Picard cup.
The Bodum cup is far from the only mass-produced, commercially available piece of decor used in Star Trek’s imagined version of the future. Many set designs of The Original Series (1966-1969) incorporated the most forward-looking mid-century modern pieces to convey the year 2266, like Vladimir Kagan’s Sculpta Chair designed for Chromcraft, or The Ribbon Chair by Pierre Paulin for Artifort. “Despite its popularity in a certain subset of people, mid-century modernism was not widely accepted [in the 1960s],” says Brian McGuire, co-author of Star Trek: Designing the Final Frontier: How Midcentury Modernism Shaped Our View of the Future, published this August. “Because it was not traditional, it was considered foreign looking, cold. And so for most people it looked alien.”
Star Trek altered the sci-fi genre and television forever with its racially inclusive, utopian view of the future. But it was also ahead of its time in creating a coherent visual language with set design. And since the show’s production designers relied on commercially available items, aesthetically-minded fans have another entry point to obsessively catalog and collect a piece of the Star Trek universe.
“I, like a lot of other people, thought that a lot of the furniture pieces were created by set designers, or production designers, and I was surprised to find out that they weren't,” says Eno Farley, who in March 2020 launched his Star Trek + Design Instagram account and webpage, which identifies the designers and origins of the many chairs, lamps, glasses and more used on The Original Series and beyond. “[The Bodum cups are] usually people's first purchase when they think they want to get the teacup that Picard drinks out of.”
Farley began his descent into Star Trek as a child, watching TOS and TNG with his family. Only in high school and college did he begin to pick up on the design aspect of the franchise after more dedicated rewatches. Living through the early days of the coronavirus lockdown in New York made him consider more closely the items he had in his home. “I had a couple of objects that had been used in Star Trek already. But then I wanted to know about more of them. I've noticed that really popular designers, like Joe Columbo, Pierre Paulin, people already know about,” he says. “At this point it's become this rabbit hole, where I've got hundreds of files saved to my computer of different pieces I’ve identified from Star Trek.”
Sourcing the names of pieces can require some detective work, but Farley emphasizes that his project is very much a community effort. Other online design catalogs include Quark’s Qantina, which documents Star Trek tableware and barware, and Ex Astris Scientia, home to a centralized list of all commercially available chairs seen in the franchise.
McGuire’s co-author Dan Chavkin took a similar approach. He began watching the series only when it became available for streaming on Hulu, and as a photographer of modernist architecture and design, he immediately picked up on the use of mid-century modern items, starting with a terracotta candle lantern from Los Angeles brand Architectural Pottery used in the episode “The Corbomite Maneuver.”
“Since I'm familiar with the company and the products, it was pretty glaring when I saw it. It had been repurposed on the show as the command module of the ship,” Chavkin says. Because the show was filmed in Southern California, its designers had firsthand access to the burgeoning California Modernism of the time. “You can imagine that a lot of Star Trek episodes, due to their storyline, would have nothing to do with high-end design,” says McGuire, who grew up an avid fan of Star Trek. “But there was a core of about 13, 14 episodes [that did]. And so to me, the interesting thing was, why did they use mid-century modernism in those particular storylines and how do these items articulate the plot?”
Season one’s “A Taste of Armageddon” showcases a city that looks like it could have been conceived by Mies van der Rohe. The Bauhaus-influenced aesthetic is not merely stylish, but fits the story. “These people are in the middle of a 500-year computer war. And so you have this contrast of this computer-generated war and then this beautiful city that appears untouched. And the mystery was, how was his war conducted, why is there no damage, why is there no evidence of warfare? And it's because it was all computer driven,” McGuire says.
Production designers have continued to evolve the Star Trek aesthetic. “Each show was subject to the design trends that were popular at the time they were made,” Farley says. He cites TNG as the nexus of Star Trek’s foray into postmodernism, with frequent use of softer, more luxurious pieces by designers like Pierre Paulin that reflect the USS Enterprise as a demilitarized living space. Enterprise (2001-2005), meanwhile, is set in an earlier century than prior series and offers a more austere style, with designer pieces reserved for alien encounters.
“And then Deep Space Nine is totally wacky. Which makes sense because it doesn't take place on a Federation ship, it takes place on what used to be a Cardassian space station,” he says. “So they had a lot of IKEA and really wacky postmodern pieces. They do use designer pieces but a lot of them are just, I think, probably the weirdest stuff they could find at a department store in the ’90s.”
Some pieces have been mainstays throughout; the Tulip Chairs that most casual fans might immediately identify as “the Star Trek chair” have been used all the way from TOS to Discovery. But the Maurice Burke-designed models used throughout the series are, well, knockoffs. “[Eero] Saarinen was the original innovator,” says McGuire. “And so Burke was more of a manufacturer than a designer, and they probably went with the cheaper version, because they were on such a tight budget.”
The Captain’s Chair that ensconces James T. Kirk in TOS is more Frankenstein-ish: its base is a Danish Modern-style lounge chair designed by Arthur Umanoff, but production designers added a few consoles to take it from living room armchair to space age commander’s seat. Star Trek: Discovery (2017-present), set a decade before the events of TOS, uses the same style of chair for continuity, but today’s producers have the resources to build it from scratch, says Discovery art director Jody Clement. “We don't look at it as trying to improve upon [the style], because we have to appreciate each series for what was available in that time period,” she says. “We definitely like to take it and either update it or give it a new spin and make it our own.”
“The architectural language they had in the ’60s had a lot of factors involved. It was a new series, it was taking a chance. It wasn't a big budget series,” she says. “They did the best that they could using found materials to put together a futuristic aesthetic. And of course, the time period with traveling to the moon and the introduction of industrial abilities, like forming plastic and things like that, that was something that they had access to that seemed very futuristic to them at the time.” Today’s production designers and art directors can use technologies like Vacuform machines to create a futuristic set, but they are constantly referencing older series for how they styled everything from crew quarters to command centers.
Discovery does source contemporary pieces sometimes, Clement says, like the Gakko Slide Chairs designed by Tayfur Ozkaynak for Soho Concept that are used throughout USS Discovery’s Mess Hall. But today’s fans will notice any small detail that looks “off” or ripped straight from a catalog and placed in the universe. “I believe there are 74 screens on the Discovery bridge, and every one of those screens has a different graphic on it, very specific to what the control panel would be doing,” Clement says. “So that if the camera happens to be looking at something and you pick up the graphic that's on the screen on the monitor or on the tablet, you're not going to see that same thing on the wall, it's going to be a different graphic.”
The bar for this level of detail was set by TOS’ set designer and art director, Matt Jefferies. Chavkin and McGuirde say a breakthrough in their book research was the acquisition of Jeffries’ original sketches, which had been purchased by collector Gerald Gurian in a Paramount auction years prior. “Through those we were able to see the origin of the looks of each of these episodes,” McGuire says. “And then we could compare that with the frame that it corresponds to to see what the set decorators came up with. So it's very clear that the mid-century modern look came from Walter Matt Jeffries.”
That dedication to a vision gives Star Trek a timeless quality, believe Chavkin and McGuire, even while the show was undoubtedly influenced by the period and place in which it was produced. But today’s designers and art directors have been able to update that vision of the future for every new entry into the series. “Mid-century modernism is so popular now that it perhaps wouldn't work as an alien-looking set piece, because almost everyone has it. And so, paradoxically, I think these designs of the ’60s are much more used now than they were in the ’60s,” says McGuire. Including perhaps in the homes of many a devoted Trekkie.
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The 'Star Trek' Extended Design Universe - GQ
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