For many of us, a glance at everyday appliances elicits a wince or a groan: they're dull looking, break easily and frequently, and never work quite as well as we'd like. Our lives are full of minor annoyances that we try, often unsuccessfully, to ignore. But when James Dyson is annoyed by an appliance, he doesn't ignore it; he embraces it, seeing in a product’s shortcomings the opportunity to create something better, that will work (well), look cool, and surpass all similar devices.

At once a designer and a product, Dyson strives for perfection. The design for his first vacuum cleaner, the DC-01, which entered the UK market in 1993, came after creating more than five thousand prototypes. He meticulously changed one aspect at a time. The new design, meant to resemble NASA aircraft, with yellow added for "fun," was more than mere surface design: it was a re-imagined, re-engineered dirt sucker-upper.

At the time Dyson began experimenting with vacuum cleaners, in the 1980s, the technology had remained largely the same since 1901. Although appearances changed, the cleaners still used bags with filters that began clogging after one use, housed bacteria and allergens, were clunky, and most collected only two-thirds of the dust. Dyson's vacuum applied and adapted the centrifugal technology used in large industrial cyclone towers, to remove harmful particles from the air on a domestic scale; this technology allowed him to create a vacuum that extracted more dirt and dust from carpets and did not use a bag.

In 2002, after continued experimentation and improvement, and having sold nearly ten million vacuums already, Dyson entered the US market with the DC-07. Dyson declared in his autobiography, the DC-07 is "the best Dyson, and by definition the best vacuum cleaner, ever made." He had divided the single cyclone into seven cyclones, increasing the machine's power by 50 percent; he added a trigger-release bin to efficiently empty collected dust; lightened the vacuum to a mere four pounds; and added washable filters, among other changes to improve the vacuum's efficiency and quality and to increase its lifespan.

Dyson moved into a market that perhaps was not appealing to many designers but had huge possibilities. He made an everyday, burdensome object sexy. But if his sheer popularity didn't convince you, others were ready to tout his cause. During New York Fashion Week’s Spring 2003 show, designer Tara Subkoff asked Dyson for twenty-five DC-07s to accompany her topless models down the catwalk. Oh, and the queen—Elizabeth II herself—told Dyson, as she presented him with a C.B.E. (Commander of the British Empire) medal, "We've got dozens of them about the place." The place, of course, being Buckingham Palace. The yellow-and-silver Dyson was officially cool enough for New York Fashion Week and classy enough for the queen.

Dyson sees the world in a way that is at once obvious and brilliant, and his method is simple: he encounters an everyday problem, and he resolves it.

Today is Sir James Dyson’s birthday

When I started working at Cooper-Hewitt, I really had no idea what the collection was all about. At the time we had a very limited online collection, which included less than 1000 objects. As I started to investigate that museum website I thought it would be interesting to go through the process of searching for and actually viewing an object "IRL" (In Real Life).

Poster: John Lennon, 1967. Designed by Richard Avedon.Gift of Various Donors. 1981-29-511.

http://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18618175/

So, I searched the term "poster" which gave me a single result--this great poster of John Lennon by Richard Avedon. I thought it would be a fine thing to pull and view in our Drawings, Prints & Graphic Design department. To do this, I simply took note of the object's accession number and sent it in an email to one of my colleagues, with a note that said something along the lines of "Can I have a look at this poster?" My colleague quickly replied and told me that it would take a few days, but she scheduled me for a time to go up and check it out.

A few days went by, and she called me again to let me know it was ready. I ran up the stairs and entered the Drawings, Prints & Graphic Design Department, where the poster lay on a table for viewing in the Drue Heinz Study Center. She asked me to wash my hands and allowed me to have an up close and personal viewing of the poster. I looked it over for a few minutes and then said "thanks!"

She then turned to me and said "is that all?" to which I replied "yes, thanks so much, I just wanted to have a look at an actual object in our collection. So far all I've seen is stuff on our website." She looked at me a little funny, and replied "well, that's fine, its just that in all the years I've worked here, you're the first person who has ever done that!"

I was a little surprised by this. Maybe its because the collection online was sort of small, and probably primarily used by a few causal browsers to the site, I'm not really sure. But it got me thinking about things a little.

These days things are a bit different. We now have over 100,000 objects in our online collection. With this in mind, I thought it would be interesting to do some a new search for "poster" now that more things are online, and I've been amazed with what I've found.

We have some really incredible posters from a really wide variety of genres. I created a Pinterest board to collect a few of my favorites which you are free to follow.

This view of Frederic Edwin Church’s home Olana outside Hudson, New York is one of 2,035 oil sketches and graphite drawings by Church in Cooper-Hewitt’s collections.   The Church archive represents the largest collection of the artist’s works on paper in the world!  Church was one of the most prominent figures in the Hudson River School, the only student of the movement’s founder Thomas Cole.   Church’s breathtaking and luminous depictions of landscapes both in America and abroad have earned him the status as one of the most beloved artists in American history.

The Museum is often asked how this treasure of Church objects came to Cooper-Hewitt.  While we are still to this day searching for some of the details, we do have much of the information.  The acquisition of this remarkable gift was the work of two key players.  The first, Charles Worthington Gould (1849-1931), was a prominent New York attorney and a member of both the Cooper Union Board and of the Museum’s Advisory Council.  In addition to supporting the Museum financially and through donations of objects, books, and drawings to the collections, Gould was himself a painter, and he took lessons from a painter named Eliot Clark. Clark came from a comfortable, socially connected New York family.  A precocious talent, he followed his father Walter Clark into the field of landscape painting.  Working together, Clark and Gould secured some key donations of American works for the Cooper Union Museum between 1916 and 1920. 

In the spring of 1916, Clark found out from a painter friend of his that an archive of Church paintings and drawings remained at Olana with Church’s younger son, Louis Palmer Church.  Clark then got in touch with Louis Church, who invited him to meet at Olana.  Church devoted much of his later life to the design of his stunning home and gardens, looking out over the Hudson River, which he lovingly rendered in oil in the sketch depicted above.  It would have been an inspired spot for Clark to sit and review the drawings and oil sketches.  Over a two day period in November 1916, Clark made his preliminary selections of works for Cooper Union Museum, and a few weeks later he returned with Charles Gould.  In total, they selected 514 oil sketches and 1521 graphite drawings (in forty-seven sketchbooks and 492 loose sheets).

The majority of drawings and oil sketches that Clark and Gould selected date from the 1850s and 1860s, when Church’s technical proficiency was most dazzling.  Their choices included dramatic representations of Ecuador and Columbia (1853 and 1857); Niagara Falls (1856 and 1858); Newfoundland and Labrador (1859); Jamaica (1865); the Holy Land, Europe, and Greece (1868-1869); and Mount Katahdin (1870s and early 1880s).  After the gift arrived in New York City, some of the material was exhibited in the Hewitt Lexington Avenue home at the April 1917 reception of the Museum Council.  Frederic Delano Weekes, secretary to the Council reported that sketches and studies were “of such beauty that they compelled the admiration of all.”  That sentiment remains today; works from the Church archive are among the most popular objects in Cooper-Hewitt’s collections.

Today is Frederic Edwin Church’s birthday.

You can find Cooper-Hewitt's catalogue Frederic Church, Winslow Homer, and Thomas Moran: Tourism and the American Landscape at shop.cooperhewitt.org

There are hundreds of embroidered samplers in the Textiles Department – they are a collection strength spanning several centuries and many countries. My favorite samplers are those from Mexico for they often show the convergence of European and indigenous cultures in their motifs and designs. While there are a number of beautiful samplers from Mexico, only one has an intriguing figure known as the Obsidian Serpent. Embroidered in 1870 by Micaela Garsia, her sampler shows in the upper right hand corner the figure of Itzcoatl, the fourth Mexica ruler, who led the Aztecs from 1427–1440. Known as the Obsidian Serpent of Knives, he is seated on a basket-work throne wearing a blue cape or xiuhtilmatli. He is identified by his name glyph – an obsidian serpent that rises from behind his head. The Aztec ruler succession was illustrated in a similar fashion in many of the codices – books created by the Aztecs in the pre-Columbian and early colonial period that pictorially describe Aztec life and history.

Detail of Itzcoatl from sampler 1981-28-376.

After gaining independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico sought to define itself in a period that saw not only the struggle between liberal reformers and conservatives, but a French invasion as well. In the chaotic decades that followed independence, many writers, artists and intellectuals looked to the Aztec past as a source of national pride. Celebrating the period before the Spanish conquest allowed Mexico to shape its national history and to create public symbols that could unify the country. I suspect that the inclusion of Itzcoatl in Micaela’s sampler is directly related to the desire to create a new national narrative that included noble and heroic figures from the ancient past. The act of promoting and teaching pre-Columbian history allowed Mexicans of this period to begin to shape a vision of their country as a modern nation free from Spanish imperial influence.

During the last quarter of the 19th century, feather decoration for hats, fans, and boas was at its peak; in 1886, 77% of women’s hats were decorated with feathers and a milliner’s window had a display of colorful ostrich tips and plumes. They were used not only on hats, but were also used in trimming dresses, wraps, and to a large extent used in making exotic fans.

Ostrich farming and ostrich feathers was a lucrative business; the authors of this treatise tell how you could start a business in your own kitchen; the equipment needed, instructions for the dyeing process and formulas for producing different colors. The author states “the greatest disadvantage manufacturers have had to contend with was a lack of knowledge of coloring… “ Another important feature of this manual is that it contains actual dyed feathers, mounted on plates, as color samples.

Dyed feathers from the Practical ostrich feather dyer, hats trimmed with ostrich feathers from Peterson’s Magazine,Vol.27, 1880.

A straightforward, down to earth approach was all that was necessary to succeed. The author’s preface states: “In the preparation of this work it has been my aim to present Recipes, simple, yet complete in every detail, for dyeing every color and shade of color known.…. I would ask that it be judged not from a literary standpoint, but as a thorough and practical instructor in the art of Ostrich Feather Dyeing, as simplified and perfected by me…Technicalities and high-sounding phrases for the names of colors and terms of the dye-house have no place in this work. It is not necessary for a man to be a chemist to be a practical feather dyer…Good practical common sense and  judgement and a knowledge of the nature of the goods you are handling, and throw theory to the winds. Alex Paul.

Publications such as Peterson’s Magazine and Godey’s Lady’s Book reported to its readers the latest fashion trends at home and abroad. These magazines advised that “the more carelessly the ostrich feathers are posed, the more stylish they are”, and that “white ostrich feathers are reserved exclusively for brides”. Fashions changed after WWI and the industry collapsed.

Dyed feathers from the Practical ostrich feather dyer; hats trimmed with ostrich feathers from Peterson’s Magazine,Vol.27,1880 and Vol. 28, 1881

Zodiac by Marion Dorn (American, 1899-1964) is an early screen-printed wallpaper produced by the American firm Bassett & Vollum. Containing the 12 signs of the zodiac with six printed in brilliant colors and six overprinted in white outline, Zodiac is a large-scale design printed on a deep green, almost black ground. The bold coloring and strong lines are characteristic of Dorn’s work. Each zodiac sign is rendered in a simplistic manner and printed in a solid block of color, with only the most essential elements delineated. While many of her designs were abstract and geometric, she continued to be inspired by nature, frequently employing shells, birds and foliage in her designs.

Marion Dorn was born and educated in the United States but traveled to Britain in the early 1920s to pursue her textile career. She started out designing printed textiles and batiks and later began designing rugs. She founded her own studio in London called Marion Dorn Ltd. in 1934 and by this time had begun screen-printing some of her textiles. Her first screen-printed wallpaper called Constellation was produced for Coles in 1938. Returning to the States in 1940 due to the impending war she set up a studio in New York and began receiving commissions for wallpaper designs, initially from Bassett & Vollum and later Katzenbach & Warren.

The earliest wallpapers screen-printed for commercial production were introduced in 1938 and a number of these papers were included in a 1939 wallpaper exhibition at the Cooper Union Museum. However, the majority of screen-printed wallpapers were introduced after the war, as there was a moratorium on new wallpaper designs from about mid-1942 until November 1, 1945. While individual patterns were released at the end of 1945 it took 14 months for the studios to produce and deliver their new collections to the public. After the war, screen-printing quickly established itself as a viable part of the industry.
 

Each of the objects depicted in this drawing was designed specifically for the Pavilion de Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne, in Paris, a royal pleasure palace. Though the andirons bear Queen Marie Antoinette’s initials these objects were not made for her, but rather for her brother-in-law, the Comte d’Artois. In 1777, in a one hundred thousand francs bet, the Queen challenged Artois to build a bagattella, meaning trifle or folly, in two months, just in time to receive the court returning to Paris from their summer sojourn at Fontainbleau. François-Joseph Belanger was commissioned to work on the project, whereupon he quickly enlisted Dugourc to assist him. Although to the detriment of the construction of the building, as it was plagued with leaks for years to come, d’Artois won the bet, the project being finished in an impressive sixty-four days. The reception in the honor of the Queen at the Bagatelle, was an impressive event, owed greatly to the work of Belanger and Dugourc.

Though they have faded from popularity with the advent of gas and electric heating, andirons, also known as firedogs and chenets, were once commonly used decorative objects. Their function was to hold burning logs in a fireplace and prevent them from rolling onto the floor. The earliest designs were more concerned with functionality, but under French King Louis XIV, andirons, became highly decorative and fanciful often including allegories or mythological figures. In this design the andiron on the left has an urn flanked by two sphinxes, while the andiron on the right has griffins on either side of a flame-topped altar. In the center of the design, is a sconce with six candles supported by fanciful branches, between them is a young girl with fire on her head. All three objects would have been executed in gilt bronze, which would shimmer when next to fire and candlelight. The inclusion of fire in the design of the objects may well have been a playful visual reference to their function.

On April 22 of this year, the Economic and Social Council Chamber (ECOSOC) at the United Nations Headquarters in New York was re-inaugurated after a renovation project. The original interior furnishings of the chamber were a gift from the nation of Sweden, and were designed by architect Sven Markelius. The focal point of the room is a 72 by 23 foot window facing the East River. Since the chamber’s opening in 1952, this window has been the site of three spectacular curtains by Swedish designers.

The original curtain was designed by Marianne Richter and produced at Studio Märta Måås-Fjetterström. Made in tapestry technique, it took ten weavers one year to produce. Markelius acknowledged that it was the curtain that gave the chamber its character; a Swedish newspaper of the period described its “calm dignity… stability and gravitas.” Richter’s was the ‘evening’ curtain, and was accompanied by a ‘day’ curtain designed by Astrid Sampe, but it was eventually decided that Richter’s curtain must remain closed at all times for security reasons.

The curtain returned to Sweden for cleaning and restoration in 1965, but its condition deteriorated, probably speeded by the chemical flame-retardant treatments required by New York State law. In 1988, Richter’s curtain was replaced by one made from Markelius’s design Pythagoras, printed by Ljungbergs; the complex design requires 18 screens, and was printed on velvet. Pythagoras was designed around the same time as the ECOSOC Chamber, but was originally created for the Royal Institute of Technology assembly hall in Stockholm. Considered an icon of Swedish design, Pythagoras is still in production today. This example from the Museum’s collection was distributed in the United States by Knoll Textiles.

The recent renovation of the ECOSOC chamber in in many ways restored the room: the walls were painted in the original colors, and the slatted-pine wall treatment was cleaned and restored. Re-creation of the Richter curtain was ruled out due to expense; also, other permanent changes to the chamber made a complete restoration impossible. Instead the government of Sweden decided to donate a contemporary work of art, to show its ongoing commitment to the United Nations in its constant and evolving mission. The new curtain, by painter Ann Edholm, is called Dialogos. The curtain’s monumental wedges of orange and white reflect on the definition of dialog—mutual exchange on equal terms—as the foundation of democratic discourse. It is also in dialog with Markelius’ original intent and vision, as well as with Pythagoras and Richter’s curtain, all three designs were based in the strength and balance of the triangle form.

United Nations Economic and Social Council Chamber, New York, with new curtain by Ann Edholm.

A limited yet dynamic color palette breathes life into the flat color motifs of this screen-printed woven linen textile by Ruth Hildegard Geyer-Raack. The pattern was possibly designed from her own studio (which she opened in 1924) but was produced in 1928 by Deutsche Werkstätten Textilgesselschaft mbH, also known as DEWE-TEX, which was founded in conjunction with the Gottlob Wunderlich factory at Waldkirchen-Zschopautal in 1923 to expand the Deutsche Werkstätten’s textile production.[1]

In this object we can see the traditional floral textile motif filtered through modernist themes of geometric abstraction, which so greatly influenced art and design in the 1920s and 30s. This large-scale, stylized floral pattern is comprised of bold graphic shapes. Geyer-Raack’s use of these whimsical simplified shapes, which float against a jarring black background, is not only an indicator of the modern movement from which she emerged, but it is also an artifact of the short time that she spent at the Bauhaus, as well as the influence of Josef Hillerbrand, who was a prominent designer for DEWE-TEX.[2]

Ruth Hildegard Geyer-Raack studied painting under Bruno Paul and took summer classes at the Bauhaus in 1920 and 1921, when the school was located in Weimar.[3] Set in this quaint artistic city, the school began as a kind of research laboratory for design theory and philosophy. It was there that Johannes Itten created the first 12-spoke color wheel while Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee taught their students to study fundamental design elements like circles, squares, and triangles. It was their belief that if these distilled forms of expression were mastered, a good designer could effectively apply them to all media. This revolutionary pedagogical approach was one of the Bauhaus’ greatest lasting legacies, but their aesthetic theories also significantly influenced the modern movement and were employed here by Ruth Hildegard Geyer-Raack.

Carly Lewis is currently earning an M.A. in the History of Decorative Arts and Design at Parsons. She has a B.S. in Textile Design from Philadelphia University and is focusing her studies on gender issues in regard to textile design practices in the 20th century. 

An embroidered waistcoat from the Greenleaf collection is a fine example of English aristocratic style from the late eighteenth century. Although France dictated the fashionable silhouette for a man’s suit, which consisted of a coat, waistcoat and knee breeches, the English made subtle changes that allowed for more ease and comfort. The lifestyles of French and English aristocrats can explain the differing attitudes toward courtly dress. For French aristocrats, social activities typically revolved around indoor settings of courts and palaces, while many English aristocrats had strong ties to their large country estates. For this reason, English gentlemen favored practicality in dress and selected more sturdy fabrics that were suitable for outdoor activities that included plenty of walking and horseback riding. An Englishman’s suit also might have a more generous cut that allowed the limbs to move freely, thereby rejecting the restricted range of motion caused by the severe cut of men’s suits in France.

This English waistcoat has the qualities of a transitional style in men’s fashion that occurred between the Rococo and the Neo-classical periods. Although in a pale color favored by the Rococo, the waistcoat now has a shorter skirt and opens in a V-shaped cutaway.  The bottom of the waistcoat touches the upper-mid thigh. The exuberant meandering floral garlands that were so popular in the Rococo period have now assumed a more symmetrical shape. The embroidered garlands are executed in such a way that three circles of flowers are made when the waistcoat is buttoned. The garland continues to meander gracefully around the neck and swoops down at the bottom to enclose both pockets. Carnations, morning glories, roses and violas, all humble flowers, are executed skillfully and naturalistically on a ribbed silk faille. The pocket flaps with three points are shaped to fit the cutaway opening. It is worked in satin and stem stitches with chain stitches made using a tambour hook. It is a simple yet elegant example of English fashion for men.

A fascinating confluence of design, technology, utility, and social influences is embodied in the Radio Nurse, part of a wireless microphone and speaker system introduced in 1938 by the Zenith Radio Corporation, conceived as a baby monitor and aid for home or hospital. The system consisted of a sculptural transmitter called the Radio Nurse, designed by artist Isamu Noguchi, and a simple, functional box-like receiver called the Guardian Ear.

The idea for the product grew out of the need of E.F. McDonald, Jr., president of Zenith, to monitor the nursery of his infant daughter, born just a few years after the infamous Linbergh baby kidnapping. McDonald, a World War I Navy veteran trained in the new technologies of sound recording and radio, was skilled at finding practical domestic applications for such innovations. Drawing on Zenith’s advances in wireless radio transmitting and receiving, McDonald and the company's engineers used his home as their laboratory to develop a new wireless intercom system. Adept at marketing, McDonald realized that such an intercom had great potential as a home product so he commissioned Japanese-American modernist sculptor Isamu Noguchi to create a stylish housing for the transmitter.

Noguchi designed the Radio Nurse as a simple ovoid shape with a speaker grill in front. The form resembled kendo masks that he would have seen during his childhood years in Japan; it also suggested the shape of a woman’s head framed by the scarf-like headdress worn by many nurses in the 1930s. The housing was made of the newly popular material Bakelite, a thermoset plastic invented by Dr. Leo Bakeland and introduced in 1909. Originally used in the electrical and automobile industries, Bakelite could be molded into any shape, resulting in a hard durable form that was nonconductive and heat resistant. Early Bakelite products were mostly dark in color with mixtures forming marbleized patterns. It used fillers such as sawdust, wood pulp, asbestos and dyes. The Radio Nurse is a classic Bakelite brown color, reminiscent of the tones of Japanese lacquer. The dark, slightly lustrous and softly curved form of the Nurse transmitter could pass as a fashionable accent in a contemporary living room, while the boxy Guardian Ear receiver could be placed discretely in the nursery or bedroom to be monitored.

The Radio Nurse intercom system debuted in March, 1938, at a time of concern about kidnapping, decreasing dependence on domestic help, and changing ideas about child rearing, that encouraged parents to leave babies unattended for periods of time. According to Zenith’s product brochure, “...Radio Nurse enables you to leave the nursery, yet guard your baby…. Be modern! Keep an “ear” on your children!”  As aesthetically appealing as it was functional, in November, 1938, Radio Nurse won first place in the Household Product category of Modern Plastics Magazine’s Modern Plastics Competition, and was shown in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s annual sculpture exhibition in 1939.

Today is Mother's Day

Mixing classical themes with whimsy, the Panel of Arabesques for the Hôtel de Salm is a vibrant example of Neo-classical taste. The design, colored a bright turquoise, decoratively illustrates motifs of satyrs and flower nymphs participating in a religious sacrifice. Bright color palettes were exceedingly popular during the period but were later covered up with more conservative hues. This work, along with the Hôtel de Salm, built from 1782-1786, were both created at the crux of a massive stylistic and political shift in France. 

The designer of this panel, Jean-Guillaume Moitte (1746- 1810) was a prolific draftsman and sculptor in Paris during the late 18^th century. Working under the royal goldsmith Henri Auguste, he created designs for important royal buildings such as the Louvre and Versailles. At the outbreak of the French Revolution, Moitte adapted his style to appease the new French Republic, which favored more sober motifs championing democratic ideals.     

The Hôtel de Salm, designed by architect Pierre Rousseau for Prince Frederick III of Salm-Kyrburg, is significant to both French and American architectural history. Prince Frederick III was an important military leader to the Dutch Republic and a member of the French court. His enjoyment of the building however was short-lived; in 1787, Prince Frederick fled during Frederick Wilhelm II of Prussia’s invasion of the Dutch Republic. He was then guillotined during the Revolution in 1794. The building passed to Madame de Staël, the revolutionary author, who held salons there in 1797. It then housed the Legion of Honor in 1804. The original Hôtel burned down in 1871, but the Palais de La Légion d’Honneur, now a museum, was built in its place.

The Hôtel de Salm inspired architecture both of its time and in the future. Thomas Jefferson, infatuated by the Hôtel, even tore down part of his partially constructed Monticello to incorporate new Neo-classical designs. Other buildings, such as the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, are replicas of the Hôtel de Salm. Whether either of these buildings have bright turquoise panels has yet to be determined.

Two dangerous looking brigands stand at attention, ready to spring into action; their brightly colored cloaks flap in the wind. The energetic tension of these figures, their exotic appeal and wildly patterned textiles are all signature traits of work by the great costume and stage set designer Léon Bakst. The Jewish Russian artist began designing for the legendary Ballets Russes in 1909, at the age of 43. The dance company amazed audiences with its radical choreography, inventive music and extraordinary sets and costumes. In order to achieve artistic harmony, Bakst designed costumes to help express the sentiments of each ballet’s story. He rejected the stifling tradition of dressing dancers in pink tights and satin ballet shoes or heavily ornamented costumes. Instead, his designs used flowing textiles that were intended to accentuate the movements of the performers and extending their gestures into space. Dancers reported that they enjoyed wearing his costumes, which became a functional and essential part of the dance. Bakst’s drawings nearly always depict the models in sensuous motion rather than in static poses; vigorous lines are rendered in rich, bold hues.

Regarded as a brilliant colorist, Bakst orchestrated the set and costume colors to suit the music. He astounded audiences with his lavish use of color, pattern and texture. Before long, Americans were bemoaning not being able to see a real ‘Bakst production’ in Russia or Paris. Drawings after his costumes circulated, and became tremendously influential on fashion and textile design. 

His design for two pirate costumes was made for the classical themed ballet Daphnis et Chloé, a love story between a shepherd and shepherdess. The Ballets Russes first performed Daphnis et Chloé at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris on June 8, 1912. One reviewer praised the show, saying, “Thanks to Daphnis et Chloé, the Russian season has ended in apotheosis.” Many reviewers commented on the brilliance of the costumes. Bakst had several of his designs for the ballet copyrighted in 1913. Extant examples of these costumes are in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia and the Victoria and Albert Museum.  

The simplistic styling of the poppies frieze shows the effect of the Mission Style on the American interior. Gone are the embossed surfaces, metallic pigments, scrolling medallions, and other excesses of the Victorian period. The floral motifs have been reduced to their most basic elements while still appearing to have some depth. Traditionally a block-printed design would use about 6 colors to shade each given element, while here the entire design is printed in 7. This is printed on a red ingrain paper meaning the paper is colored in the pulp stage and does not need the application of a ground color. The red background is the actual color of the paper. This paper also has small bits of wood or sawdust added to the pulp and is frequently referred to as an oatmeal paper. Wide friezes were normally hung at the top of the wall below the crown or picture molding. The wall surface below the frieze was usually covered with a coordinating sidewall paper, either a solid color or a tone-on-tone design. The ceiling color was usually dropped down to the top of the frieze. The use of ingrain wallpapers was quite popular in the early years of the 20th century. The slightly irregular or mottled surface of the paper created a much more pleasing wall surface than paint could afford, and was much desired. The major drawback to ingrain papers was that they were prone to fading and it was said that if you hung pictures or had furniture placed against the wall, after a while it was not possible to move them without leaving a silhouette in their place.

The turn of the twentieth century was an exciting time to be a graphic designer in Berlin.  The city, which had once been the sleepy capital of the Kingdom of Prussia, had rapidly transformed into a booming metropolis, bustling with the energy of industrial progress.  At a moment when everything seemed to be changing, the printed poster offered an exhilarating opportunity to explore the alliance of art and industry, particularly to one precocious young man.

Lucian Bernhard (nee Emil Kahn) was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1883.  He came of age at the height of Art Noveau and Jugendstil, and as a teenager he visited the major design exhibition held at the Glaspalast in Munich in 1898.  Bernhard later recalled that he walked through the exhibition “drunk with color.” Upon returning home and finding his parents out of the house, he felt compelled to paint both the walls and furniture in the vibrant, modern colors that had been revealed to him at the Glaspalast.  His parents, however, did not feel so inspired.  According to family lore, Bernhard’s father threw him out of the house, and he was not invited to return.

Bernhard appears to have taken this setback in stride, but a few years later he moved to Berlin.  It was customary in turn-of-the-century Berlin for companies to sponsor poster competitions, which offered a cash award for the winning designer.  Bernhard entered himself in one sponsored by the Priester Match Company.  Featuring only the image of some matches and the brand name in bold colors, the poster under whelmed the panel of judges, who tossed it into the trash.  But a final judge, Ernst Growald, arrived to the competition late.  Growald was both a prescient sales manager and a poster printer, and pulling the poster from the waste bin, he found a striking design that caught his attention.  Bernhard won the competition, and with the support of Growald, went on to pioneer a style of poster design that evoked the simplicity manifest in the Priester poster, pairing image and text, that is known as the Sachplakat (object poster).

In 1910, when Bernhard produced the poster that you see above, typewriters were a cutting edge technology, a means of revolutionizing communication.  Bernhard recognized that the image of the typewriter itself, with its potential for speed and efficiency, was an effective way to advertise the product.  This poster, the first of several that Bernhard designed for the Adler company, embodies the simplicity of the Sachplakat while maintaining certain elements of the same late nineteenth century graphic style that overpowered and inspired Bernhard as an adolescent, such as the bold, flat planes of color and the shadow line that emphasizes the curving forms of the letters. 

What is remarkable to me is that more than a century later, Bernhard’s poster still has the potency to seduce its viewers.  The typewriter is no longer the contemporary marvel of communication, but the more that I looked at the poster, the more I longed to feel the satisfying thump of a typewriter’s keys under my fingertips.  I went home and pulled my Olivetti typewriter out from the closet (a model not too dissimilar from Cooper-Hewitt’s own Lettura 32) and sat down to type this blog entry.  It was a wonderful feeling—until I was ready to change the structure of a sentence.  I switched over to my laptop, and was gratified to return to my world of copy and paste.

It could be argued that the 1930s was the golden era of the industrial designer in America.  During the Depression, American manufacturers had to compete for limited consumer dollars.  Industry leaders turned to a crop of former theater and graphic designers including Norman Bel Geddes, Walter Dorwin Teague, Henry Dreyfuss, and Raymond Loewy to restyle and re-engineer their industrial and consumer products to seduce clients and consumers.  These four industrial design pioneers applied the “streamline” style, based on the aerodynamics of boats and planes, to such disparate objects as cocktail shakers, refrigerators, and tractors. No example of industrial competition is better suited to examination than the railroad industry.  While Henry Dreyfuss served as design consultant to the New York Central Railroad and Walter Dorwin Teague designed for the New York, New Haven, and Hartford, Raymond Loewy worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad.  Loewy, like his major competitor Dreyfuss, designed everything from the engines and passenger car interiors to the napkins and plates in the dining cars.  The company logo on the engine was one feature in Loewy’s streamline redesign.

This rendering of Loewy’s K4s Class engine shows Loewy’s redesign of the K-4 class locomotive, the first streamline steam engine of the Pennsylvania Railroad where he clothed the former engine mechanics in a sleek aerodynamic casing.  The sketch cannot be considered a design drawing per se since the original 1936 Loewy-designed engine showed the PRR logo on the upper cowling of the locomotive. Loewy’s streamline logo with the PRR keystone and wings can be seen in an old photograph of the engine with Loewy proudly showing off his creation. 

The Cooper-Hewitt drawing represents a Loewy-office rendering after an earlier Loewy drawing with the revised positioning of the logo, flat with wings flamboyantly out-stretched above the headlight, emphasizing the smooth bullet-shaped nose and the train’s speed that Loewy and the railroad wanted to convey.  

The final Loewy logo can be seen in a color image of the train with the PRR keystone in red on a silver ground (rather than the traditional black, silver and red lettering/borders against a red ground) and silver wings.  Loewy’s streamline K4s Class engine as well as his streamline S-1 locomotive were exhibited at the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair.

Last summer, a dozen members of my family and I gathered in a Cooper-Hewitt study room to see this undated gouache of chrysanthemums and other botanical studies by Baltimore-born textile designer Sophia L. Crownfield (1862-1929).

The pieces, about five dozen in all, were gifted to the museum in 1937 by Starling W. Childs and Ward Cheney, whose family ran the largest silk-manufacturing company in America in the early 1900s. My cousins and I hadn’t seen these works before, yet they somehow felt familiar: Crownfield was my great-grandfather’s sister, and we’d grown up surrounded by her still lifes and landscapes.

There weren’t many family stories about “Aunt Sophie,” so it wasn’t until I began researching her for a book project two years ago that we learned much about her life. The oldest child of an attorney and a mother who was herself a gifted artist, Crownfield surfaces professionally as a “china decorator” in the 1888 Baltimore directory. A year later, she turns up in New York City, studying briefly at the Art Students League before launching a freelance career designing for Cheney Brothers, Birge Wallpaper Co. and others.

It must have been an exciting time to be a designer. The silk industry was expanding rapidly, thanks partly to mechanization of the looms that helped to make what once had been a luxury fabric affordable to many more people. At the same time, American designs – and designers – were gaining a level of respect previously accorded only to their European counterparts.  

Crownfield’s designs were inspired by nature.  The pieces in the collection of Cooper-Hewitt pieces are all botanicals, and most of her two dozen design patents incorporate flowers, leaves, birds or butterflies.  She probably did the chrysanthemum gouache above while working out a silk or wallpaper design.

Like all her Cooper-Hewitt pieces, it’s signed “S.L. Crownfield,” the name the never-married Crownfield used professionally. But the flowing script doesn’t match the block letters she used to sign pieces handed down through our family, and museum files indicate the drawing actually was signed by her sister, author Gertrude Crownfield, who arranged several exhibitions of the pieces after Sophie’s death.

This rare and beautifully painted fan dates from the early nineteenth century, a period when smaller fans became fashionable.  Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum’s collection includes other small fans of the early nineteenth century that are often made of spangled silk and net, such as this delicate fan from 1805-1810: 

Folding Pleated Fan. France, 1805-1810. Gift of Miss Elizabeth d’Hauteville Kean.1923-24-8.

These fans are only 7 inches (17.8 cm) tall and 13 ¼ inches (33.6 cm) wide in the open position.  In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, only 25 years before, typical fan sizes were in in the range of 11 inches tall and 19 inches wide in the open position. 

Social commentary of the time connected the use of smaller fans to bolder behavior in contemporary women who no longer needed to demure behind a larger fan.  Women’s clothing of the early 19^th century reflected a similar change in attitude and freedom for women.   After the French Revolution (1789-1799), fashion changed radically for women with an emphasis on simpler, lighter, less confining, and more natural styles that were less obscuring of the human figure.  The “Empire style”  (1800-1815) was based on the classical attire found in ancient Greek and Roman sculpture  and the way in which the fluid folds of the fabric reveal the body beneath.    Excavations in Pompeii and Herculaneum at this time further fueled neoclassical taste.   Period depictions of the Empire style can be found in fashion plates, such as this 1810 image from the influential British periodical, Ackermann’s Repository of Arts. 

A fascination with the classical past is further expressed in the subject matter of the Cooper-Hewitt fan, which is an allegorical homage to a hero returning from war.  The figure in the center of the leaf probably represents Athena, who protects heroes and stands for wisdom, charity, and victory in war.  She receives tributes from a kneeling virgin while a dancing maiden celebrates to the right.  An allegorical figure of Fame blows a horn and cupid sleeps on the implements of war.  The theme of honoring a returning hero is continued in the finely carved ivory stick design, which may represent the return of Odysseus.

The extraordinary craftsmanship and detail in this diminutive fan make it one of the treasures of the collection.

On May 20-21, 1927 Charles Lindbergh made his historic non-stop flight from New York to Paris covering a distance of 3,600 miles. Overnight Lindbergh’s status changed from U.S. Air Mail pilot to international hero. He was awarded the nation’s highest military honor, the Congressional Medal of Honor, as well as the Silver Buffalo Award from the Boy Scouts for his distinguished service to youth. Because of his perseverance, courage and bravery, Lindbergh was hailed as a great inspiration for boys, and became a role model for the Boy Scouts of America. At one reception following his flight, Lindbergh received an initiation into the Boy Scouts, was given a Boy Scout pocket knife and a Flying Eagle felt badge.

As Lindbergh quickly became a household name and was admired by folks everywhere, United Wallpaper acted quickly to introduce a wallpaper that same year honoring this American legend. Featuring the Spirit of St. Louis amidst a field of softly-colored clouds, the paper was a tribute to Lindbergh and his remarkable feat. The design is very understated and printed in subtle shades of red, yellow and blue with Lindbergh’s prize-winning plane placed front and center, the name Spirit of St. Louis clearly printed on the fuselage. A boy’s room would be one of the primary markets for this paper, and with its even patterning across the surface it would make a great background for displaying one’s hobbies and collectibles. The wallpaper was machine-printed with oil colors using engraved copper rollers, which produced a surface that was water resistant and could be wiped clean.

The progressive and innovative design and mechanics of the Marmon Sixteen – a custom-made, sixteen cylinder automobile manufactured in 1931 by the Indianapolis Marmon Motor Car Co. are promoted in this two volume publication.  The book details the theories and goals of the head designer, Walter Dorwin Teague (1883-1960), and the engineer, Howard C. Marmon (1876-1943), and how they collaborated to create what was billed as “The World’s Most Advanced Motor Car” of its time.  After receiving a degree in engineering, Marmon began working for The Marmon Manufacturing Company, a firm known for producing factory equipment, that was established by his father in the 19^th century.  From 1902 and continuing up the 1930s, Marmon developed a limited series of experimental air-cooled V twin, V6 and V8 engines for cars, which were known for their reliability and speed.

In the second volume of this set entitled The Marmon Sixteen from the notes of the engineer, Marmon lauds the remarkable qualities of the model featuring a light-weight aluminum alloy 200 horsepower engine, sixteen steel cylinders, large water cooling and filtration mechanisms, and reinforced chassis and suspension systems.  He contends that the Marmon 16 provides the highest level of performance, is speedy with quick acceleration, can be driven for more than 100,000 miles, and is the “easiest riding car in the world.”

Marmon collaborated with the father and son team of Walter Dorwin Teague and W.Dorwin Teague (1910-2004) on the design of this car.  Teague the elder was considered one of the great pioneers of American industrial design, known for package and product designs for such firms as Kodak and exhibition work at the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair.  In the first volume entitled: The Marmon Sixteen from the notes of the Designer, he reflects on the interrelationship of beauty and efficiency saying “No man-made thing ever gained efficiency at the expense of beauty.  For as anything becomes more efficient, it naturally becomes more beautiful.”  For Teague, beauty was equated with the modern streamline style which was employed in the Marmon Sixteen.  The streamline body curves,  V-shaped grill, slender fenders and elimination of  hood ornamentation contributed to the aerodynamic efficiency of the vehicle and conveyed the aesthetic of power, speed and modernity. 

Automobile Model: Marmon Sixteen. Designed by Walter Dorwin Teague and Walter Dorwin Teague, Jr. Fabricated by Boucher, 1930. Gift of Walter Dorwin Teague, Jr. 1977-71-1.

These two volumes provide an interesting and informative account of the collaboration between the designer and the engineer.    390 Marmon Sixteen automobiles in eight body styles were manufactured from 1931-1933.