[msandford]

I'm a huge minimalist, and there's basically nothing else that embraces the minimal aesthetic. I paid a lot of money (as a college kid) for a pair of dressers that were made by Komfort and are very similar to this dresser: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Danish-Modern-Teak-Bedroom-Dresser-b...

As a programmer and a reductionist it's very appealing to me. It's about as simple as it can be with no extraneous ornamentation. The drawer pulls don't stick out, and the glides are hidden too.

For some reason this really, really resonates with me in the same way that Maxwell's equations are incredibly elegant or a Fourier transform explains so much of the world in such a compact way.

At risk of sounding like a hipster, I liked "midcentury modern" before Mad Men was cool. I think that my brain has worked the way it does for quite a while. I'm predisposed to liking midcentury stuff because I'm always trying to find the most compact, minimal form. In my mind the whole mapper/packer article that made the rounds a while ago helps explain it; I'm always looking for a more compact truth and that's bled over into the way I look at the physical world too.

http://the-programmers-stone.com/the-original-talks/day-1-th...

[prawn]

That dresser might be somewhat minimalist (curved bevel on the drawer faces, going by the photo), but a lot of MCM isn't to my eye. It's angled legs and curved tables and spindly frames that complicate the look IMO. There's a lot of contemporary furniture that I consider far closer to a minimal aesthetic.

[slantedview]

Some of the more revered MCM is not exactly minimalist - like maybe the Brasilia line, but I'd say that most of it is, at least more than average furniture. Consider this generic MCM styled dresser which I randomly found on Google:

http://scene7.targetimg1.com/is/image/Target/17214249_Alt01?...

It's basically a box frame on a pedestal. That's a pretty classically styled MCM dresser design, and it doesn't get much more minimalist than that: a box set on legs. But outside of the MCM era, that pure of a design was nowhere to be seen for the prior decades. In a typical house right now you're much more likely to find something like this (random from Google):

http://homesteadfurnitureonline.com/images/Dressers/master-d...

A mishmash of design elements from various periods. To me, the average MCM piece is more minimalist.

[prawn]

I think my minimalist is probably too simple - my reaction to your first example is that if the legs weren't tapered or there wasn't that inset lower base, or the legs were removed or it had inset rather than jutting handles - then that would be minimal.

But Google images suggests minimal is pretty loose! I guess it's relative.