Color was a central element in all of Verner Panton’s designs for interiors and furniture, and in particular, textiles, which became his most important vehicle for color in the futurist environments for which he is best known. Born in Denmark, Panton lived and worked most of his life in Basel, Switzerland, where by the mid-1950s he was an internationally acclaimed interior architect and designer. He studied at the Technical College from 1944-47 followed by architecture studies at the Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen from 1947-51. He was greatly influenced by his mentor, Poul Henningsen, a Danish designer known for his iconic lighting design of the mid-20th century. Equally influential was Danish architect and designer Arne Jacobsen, and between 1950 and 1952 Panton worked in his office. When he left Jacobsen’s office, he traveled throughout Europe introducing designs for chairs, lighting, and textiles to a number of companies and obtaining commissions mainly for Danish projects.

Cooper-Hewitt has in its collection seven textiles from 1983 produced by Mira-X, a Swiss textile manufacturer that collaborated with Panton. This group of textiles includes this piece, one of his more innovative and unusual fabrics produced during the early 1970s, Finesse: Circle, which is printed and has areas of burnout within the printed circles. This process created a semi-translucent textile that when held up to the light creates a very dappled light and feeling of three-dimensionality. Finesse designs also included Square and Curve.

Battista Franco was a gifted draftsman, engraver and painter, born in Venice who studied in Rome early in his career. Primary information on Franco comes from Vasari who dedicated a chapter on him in the Vite, which details his influences and major projects in Rome and in Venice. Franco's primary influence was Michelangelo and he is thought to be the first to copy the frescos in the Sistine Chapel. The artist's interest extended to classical antiquity and he endeavored to record all of the classical sculptures held in private collections in Rome. His extraordinary draftsmanship earned him commissions with Raffaelle de Montelupo on the Ponte Sant' Angelo project, grisaille scenes from Roman history at the Porta San Sebastiano, and he worked with Vasari on the decoration of the Palazzo Medici in June 1536. Franco was appointed personal painter to Cosimo de' Medici in 1537, and in 1545-46 he executed the vault of the choir of the Urbino Cathedral. In addition to numerous fresco commissions, Franco designed works on a smaller scale, notably those for maiolica produced at Castledurante. As an engraver, Franco is remembered for numerous plates of allegorical and mythological figures, scenes from the life of Christ and that of the Virgin, subjects drawn from antique cameos, saints, angels, and various scenes depicting Roman antiquity and history. In these works the influence of Michelangelo and other luminaries of early 15th-century Italian art is evident, a tendency that Vasari criticized. 

Franco, like many Italian artists of the time, incorporated classical figures into his compositions. This drawing, ostensibly a study for an Angel of the Annunciation due to the suggestion of a lily stem in the figure's right hand, is drawn from the antique. Executed in red chalk, this drawing stands out as unusual in the oeuvre of an artist who usually worked in pen and black or brown ink. The date of ca. 1553 suggests that it could be related to the fresco cycle of scenes of the Life of the Virgin in S. Maria Sopra Minerva from 1550. Although there are many engraved figures based on classical figures in Franco's oeuvre, none relate directly to this figure, the closest being the angel at the lower right of The Annunciation. The attention to the drapery suggests that Franco may have copied an existing sculpture for source material, and the Vatican Museum's Ariadne Sleeping has been suggested as a source.

Though the Victorians were the first to collect birdcages, the hobby of bird-keeping and the craft of cage-making date back to the ancient Greeks. In virtually every culture, the bird has been a metaphor for the human soul, and the birdcage the corporeal prison of the soul. The years 1750 to 1850 witnessed the most fanciful and lavish birdcage designs, and during this period, exotic breeds of birds were kept as symbols of refinement and status.

This extravagant birdcage illustrates the exuberance with which this craft was practiced. The celebrated Rialto Bridge in Venice, designed by Antonio da Ponte at the end of the sixteenth century, was the inspiration for this birdcage given by Sarah and Eleanor Hewitt to the collection. The architectural details and intricate wire scrollwork of this cage, which dates from the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, create the essence of its charm.

Wolf Bauer studied textile design under Leo Wollner at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart, and served as his assistant from 1963 to 1965. Both men were prominent textile designers in Europe, creating work for the top firms: Tanus Textildruck, Heal Fabrics, Weverij de Ploeg, and most importantly Pausa AG, a printer known for its technical skill and innovative approach.

When Barbara Rodes took over the textiles division of Knoll International, the company had introduced no new prints in several years. Rodes sought out Bauer, and they developed a series of textiles which were introduced in Europe in 1967/68. In 1969, Bauer’s printed collection, Delta, Stones, Fragment, and Collage, were introduced in the U.S. These large-scale designs in hot colors printed on velvet marked a departure for Knoll from the textural, hand-woven look with which it had become associated. The series was celebrated in the design press, and Industrial Design magazine included it in its Best Designs of 1969 issue.

The Oakleaf pattern caught my eye in that it is a contemporary rendering done in a very traditional manner. Its simplicity and monochromatic colorway all speak to the modern, while the vining, intertwining nature, and density of design all speak of master designers from long ago. I like seeing ideas of the past reflected in current designs. Even the handmade nature of the linoleum block-printing hark back to the Arts and Crafts period happening in the late-19th to early-20th centuries.

Oakleaf was designed and printed by Marthe Armitage in Chiswick, England and is from her 2004 production. This design was printed by linoleum block on a manual offset lithographic printing press. Marthe's papers are available through Hamilton-Weston on a very limited basis. The intertwining aspect of this design along with its fluid nature show a knowledge of William Morris, while its lack of depth seems to reference the teachings of A.W.N. Pugin, and the artistic nature of Edward Bawdin, another artist who preferred working with linoleum blocks. Marthe attended the Chelsea School of Art in the 1940s and was Master of the Art Workers' Guild in 1993. The Art Workers' Guild is a society of artists, craftsmen and designers founded in the 1890s, whose past Masters have included Walter Crane, William Morris and CFA Voysey.

As eighteenth-century English printers produced increasing numbers of books and members of the upper classes read more, the private study or library and its furnishings became an important part of the domestic interior. This chair is one of the earliest examples of specialized furniture with functions specific to reading. Designed so a male reader could sit astride facing the adjustable book ledge, the chair features a candle holder in one arm and a tray for writing implements in the other. Curiously, this form also became known as a “cockfight” chair, and was depicted in illustrations of cockfights. One possible reason is that the chair allowed managers to safely sit, bird in hand, with the padded back protecting the user’s chest.

Persuasive Percussion is an album cover from a set of seven that Josef Albers designed for Command Records. It presents regular columns of dots with the top-most released from the rigid grid below to hover randomly in space, conveying syncopation, rhythm and tone.

Albers, principally associated with the Dessau Bauhaus prior to teaching at Black Mountain College, was instrumental in developing the Department of Design at Yale University. His investigation of color theory is best known from his series of paintings and prints, Homage to the Square (begun in 1949), and his 1963 publication, Interaction of Color, which influenced color field painting and conceptual artists in the 1960s.

Command Records was founded in 1959 by Enoch Light, a classically trained violinist active as a band leader and recording entrepreneur after World War II. Bringing a high degree of sophistication to the marketing of stereo recordings, Light selected and arranged musical compositions, taking advantage of the right left channelization of the new stereo equipment. To match the avant-garde nature of the musical compositions, Light asked Albers to produce designs that would evoke the syncopated spirit of the music and suggest the avant-garde nature of the music scene. Each cover is a metaphorical equivalent of the tempos and rhythms of the instruments featured on the tracks, including marimbas, guitars, trap sets, and bongos. Familiar compositions by Sammy Fain, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, and others are adapted for a variety of percussion instruments recorded and edited specifically for high fidelity stereo equipment.

Additionally, this album showcases the innovative gate fold cover which was first introduced by Light for Command Records, allowing for expanded liner notes and technical commentary pertaining to the production of the stereo recordings.

The critic Martin Filler has commented on how Gestalt perception influenced Albers' designs for the Command Records album covers, produced between 1959 and 1961. By equating the sounds of the percussion instruments to abstract elements of varying size (dots, squares, lines), Albers is able to convey graphically the effect of listening to the percussion arrangements. Albers was known to have been interested in Gestalt theory as early as 1930-31 when he attended lectures on the subject delivered by Count Karlfried von Dürckheim at the University of Leipzig. Other colleagues of Albers at the Bauhaus, including Kandinsky and Klee, were keenly interested in the implications of Gestalt theory on modern painting.

The Vernaid bandage has links to the beginnings of organized first-aid delivery on the battlefield. Originally invented in Switzerland, the triangular bandage was popularized by Friederich von Esmarch (1823–1908), Surgeon General of the German Army during the Franco-Prussian war. Able to be folded in multiple configurations, the triangular form served to cover injuries on nearly any part of the body as well as an arm sling. By the early twentieth century, first-aid organizations in England, including the British Red Cross and the St. John Ambulance Association, produced their own versions of the instructional triangular bandage. This example includes an endorsement by Sir James Cantlie (1851–1926), an authority on the training of ambulance services and first aid for civilians. Portable and more likely than paper to survive the rigors of an emergency, the Vernaid offered clear illustrations and simple directions for stabilizing broken limbs and tying tourniquets.

This drawing, by American designer Ward Bennett, shows the designer's mind at work for objects in a variety of media during the initial stages of creation. Here, Bennett has conceived an ambitious range of objects including cookware, kitchen utensils, and glassware. (We know from other materials contained in Bennett's archive that he consulted glass instruments and hardware catalogues, presumably for inspiration to create a line of cookware and lighting.) Although many of the projects illustrated on this sheet were probably unrealized, the objects share Bennett's aesthetic of simple geometries noted in other examples of his work acquired by the Drawings, Prints & Graphic Design and Product Design & Decorative Arts Departments. This sheet allows us to more fully understand how Bennett approached the act of designing.

La Côte de Villefranche is a beautiful example of a 20th century scenic wallpaper. Designed in 1929, La Côte continues the theme of early 19th century scenic papers by showing villagers at work and at play in front of a majestic harbor. It contains fishing boats, tall ships and ancient ruins, elements much desired in the scenic wallpapers printed one hundred years earlier. This scenic was printed with a relatively small number of wood blocks and the height of the imagery is quite low to accommodate the lower ceiling heights of more modern structures.

This paper was produced by the French wallpaper company Zuber who has been in continual operation since 1797. Zuber has long been the leader in scenic wallpapers and still block prints many of these designs today using the original woodblocks. Scenic wallpapers were the epitome of block-printing. They varied in length from 20-32 panels, could be printed in hundreds of colors, and required thousands of wood blocks to print.

The Colonial Revival period in the early years of the 20th century sparked a resurgence in the use of scenic wallpapers. While most interior designers advocated the use of antique scenics, many people could not afford this luxury. Countless manufacturers saw the need for lower priced scenic papers and began producing designs in both historic and modern styles. This trend lasted into the 1960s, reaching its peak in the late 1950s.

Visuele Communicatie Nederland (Visual Communications in the Netherlands) is one of designer Wim Crouwel’s best posters, created in 1969 for an Art Directors Club Annual exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. The Stedelijk Museum has been one of Crouwel's major clients. Trained as a painter at the Minerva Academy in his home town of Groningen, and at the Kunsthijverheids onderwijs in Amsterdam, Crouwel started his professional life working on exhibition design for Bedroeders Enderberg, Amsterdam. He rapidly gravitated to the graphic design field, establishing his own firm in 1954. A turning point in his career came when he met the Swiss trained designers Karl Gerstner, Gerard Ifert, and Ernst Scheidegger, who impressed him with their rationalized design and typography, particularly the sans serif font Akzidenz Grotesk, a forerunner to Helvetica. From the Swiss model, he adopted the practice of the grid as a way of creating visual order: he later acquired from his colleagues the nickname "Gridnik." His big break came in 1956 when Edy de Wilde, then director of the Van Abbemuseum, gave him an initial graphic design commission which resulted in a regular partnership with Crouwel to design all of the museum's printed material. This client/designer relationship continued after de Wilde transferred as director to the Stedelijk Museum in 1963. For Crouwel, de Wilde was an ideal client as he permitted him to experiment with different fonts which he would create for each of his posters. From 1971, Crouwel was also providing graphic materials for the Fodor Museum in Amsterdam.

In the early 60s a series of discussions took place in the Netherlands and England, which included Crouwel and other Dutch designers, about the necessity of creating a multi disciplinary firm in the Netherlands, like those already established in the United States and in England, that could service a variety of commissions including industrial design, interior architecture, graphic design, etc. These dialogues resulted in the creation of the Associatie voor Total Design NV(abbreviated TD),whose members included (other than Crouwel) Friso Kramer, industrial designer; Benno Wissing, graphic and spatial designer; and Paul and Dick Schwarz, covering the business end. The aim of this firm was to develop and execute design ideas in all fields, based on a single vision. Standardization was the key concept, standardization of paper format, restricted choice of typeface (normally sans serif), clear pattern, and close regular spacing of words. This approach easily fit the needs of the corporate world, and clients included the cities of Gronigen and Rotterdam, IBM, many banks all over the Netherlands, as well as cultural institutions. As the partnership in TD began to break up in the late 1960s, Crouwel cut back on his involvement but remained as an advisor, and turned to teaching at the Technical University in Delft, becoming dean of the industrial design department from 1983 to 1985. From 1985 until 1993 he served as director of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. During this time he also taught at Erasmus University in Rotterdam as associate professor of art and cultural sciences.

It was as a member of TD that Crouwel (working with assistants) designed this poster. This work, like all of Crouwel posters, is based on a grid system (upon close inspection the pre-printed, gridded paper is visible; each line represents 1 cm). The letters of the major text are square, 4.5 x 4.5 cm, while the smaller letters in the subtext are also square, 1.3 x 1.3 cm. 

When Crouwel was asked if design was pure problem solving or whether there was also room for personal expression, he responded, "Of course design is about problem solving, but I cannot resist adding something personal. A page should have tension." It is the tension in this work, created by the florescent colors as well as the 3 1 3 spacing of the grey vertical bars, which make this poster unusual and compelling. Also tension-making is the experimental font (all lowercase), which Crouwel developed after considering the technical limitations of the first computer controlled typesetting machines in the early 1960s that only permitted dot matrix printing.

The theme of travel as expressed through ship and boat motifs on ceramics was very popular in early twentieth-century England. Eric William Ravilious was a prolific designer of this period whose work reflected this practice. Ravilious, who studied engraving, illustration, color printing, and mural painting, took over the legendary firm of Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, at Etruria in Staffordshire, in the 1930s. His work for Wedgwood included designs for commemorative wares, and also incorporated patterns for dinner and tea ware, lemonade sets, and nursery ware.

The footed “Boat Race Day” bowl, designed in 1938, is a stylized depiction of a crew race along the banks of the River Thames. This was an annual competition between rowing crews from Oxford and Cambridge Universities that Ravilious enjoyed watching when he lived by the Thames in the early 1930s. There are three similar scenes in ovals on the exterior of this punch bowl, and on the inner wall, a mermaid in the water under a shining sun, framed on both sides by oars.

The Clearview typeface is a beautiful example of the way design helps to improve people's daily lives. A product of the design team of Donald Meeker and Chris O'Hara from Meeker Associates and type designer James Montalbano of Terminal Design, the Clearview project seeks to improve the readability of highway signage for drivers, especially those over sixty five, who constitute roughly one sixth of the driving public. Working with researchers from the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute and the Texas Transportation Institute, the team showed that the traditional Federally mandated expressway signage incorporating a font known as Highway Gothic (in use since 1949) did not meet the needs of older drivers, many of whom have reduced contrast sensitivity, especially with highly reflective road sign materials, and slower reactions to changing road conditions. To meet this challenge, Meeker and Montalbano created a new font of graceful, elegant letterforms that increased visibility at night and from a distance. They achieved their goal by adopting several strategies, the most important of which were: using mixed case letters as opposed to the original all capital letter Gothic font; opening up the interstices of problematic lowercase letters (a, e, s); and increasing the height of the lowercase letters with respect to the capital letters. Most importantly, they achieved greater clarity without enlarging the size of the signs and adding visual clutter to the roadways.

Clearview received provisional approval from the Federal Highway Administration in 2004, giving states the choice of adopting the font for their expressway signage. As of 2011, it is used in more than twenty states and also has been adapted for road signs in Cyrillic and Greek.

The London-based design studio Wallace Sewell was established by Harriet Wallace-Jones and Emma Sewell after graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1990. Both women trained as weavers, and all of their products are designed by hand on the loom. The fabrics are then woven on power looms, with careful attention given to maintaining the qualities of a hand-weave. All of their yarns are sourced from British companies, and are woven at a mill in Lancashire. The studio also works with a finisher in Yorkshire. In addition to their line of fashion and home accessories, Wallace Sewell has created fabrics for the London Underground, Overground trains, Croydon trams and the East London Transit.

Both the aesthetic and the working methods of the Bauhaus weavers have strongly influenced Harriet Wallace-Jones and Emma Sewell. They keep traditional dobby looms in their London studio, and use them to work out their ideas, but all of their products are woven on power looms. They are inspired by the capabilities and the limitations of traditional weaving, and have a broad range of skills for translating their hand-woven ideas into industrial techniques, and to maximize efficiency at the mill. Combining a fascination for woven structure, intuitive understanding of yarn properties, and a masterful color sense, Wallace and Sewell create such a variety of colors and textures within each fabric that each one feels bespoke.

Employing a simple double-cloth structure, like a traditional coverlet, and twisting together single ply yarns to develop a sophisticated palette of browns, greens and blue-grays, this lambswool blanket has an abstract composition that calls to mind the early tapestry work of Anni Albers and Gunta Stolzl. The use of color mixing and the overall columnar aspect of the design also relate beautifully to the Asante strip-woven cloths of Ghana.

Russel Wright was one of the most important pioneers in American design, especially in his efforts to revolutionize how people live and relate to their domestic environment. As Donald Albrecht wrote in his 2001 exhibition Russel Wright: Creating American Lifestyle, Wright’s “inexpensive, mass produced dinnerware, furniture, appliances, and textiles were not only visually and technically innovative but were also the tools to achieve his concept of ‘easier living’, a unique American lifestyle that was gracious yet contemporary and informal.”

To help complete his idea of an American life-style, Wright also designed textiles. This tablecloth represents one of his patterns, Modern Spice, which was produced by Simtex. It was included in Better Homes and Gardens in May 1951, and the advertisement offers it in two colorways – Paprika and Curry – and in two sizes: 52 x 52 and 52 x 70. The ad also refers to Wright’s and Simtex’s “Good Design” distinction, bestowed upon them by the Museum of Modern Art as part of their Good Design series. 

Modern Spice is a fairly intricate pattern where four bands of color intersect to create a total of ten different tones (four main colors plus the six blended combinations). This beautiful overlay of color on top of color recalls Anni Albers’s 1930 tablecloth design and textile (in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art), an even more intricate pattern of line and color. Within the complexity of Wright’s and Albers’s patterns is a simplicity of overall effect that befit the modern interior in 1930s Germany and 1950s America and makes them timeless even today.

Paula Scher—the 2013 National Design Award winner for Communication Design—along with Marion Bantjes and Christopher Niemann have produced the first three in a series of twelve posters promoting the concept of Sustainability. The series, commissioned and art directed by William Drenttel and Jessica Helfand of Winterhouse Publications, features the interpretation of sustainability into conceptual graphic design. Produced in collaboration with international paper manufacturing firm Stora Enso, the posters are presented in two formats: as the folded brochure advertising Stora Enso's commitment to reforestation projects while manufacturing a superior paper product, and as a stand-alone horizontal poster.

The three graphic designers selected by Drenttel and Helfand—Scher, Bantjes, and Niemann—are major figures in contemporary graphic design. In this poster, Scher, known for her innovative uses of typography, and one of the principles of the design firm Pentagram, has constructed an image based on the word Sustainability. She reconstructs the word as the infinity symbol, with no beginning and no end, constantly renewing itself. In this poster resembling a blueprint, the architect's primary tool for constructing a new building project, Scher has presented the word sustainability in plan, section and elevation. The white letters on a blue ground provide maximum legibility while the reference to architectural plans allows for an intense scrutiny of the word itself.

Hector Guimard (French, 1867–1942) is best known for his architectural works, in particular his iconic Art Nouveau subway entrances for the Paris Métro company. Guimard's designs employed sensuous curving lines and natural organic forms that transmitted exceptional elegance. For Guimard, architectural design was all-encompassing; every interior and exterior detail was considered as a total work of art. He was not known for designing many personal accessories, but during a particularly happy period in his life, he designed textiles, jewelry  and clothing for his wife. Guimard married Adeline Oppenheim in Paris in 1909; she was an American painter from a wealthy New York family. At their wedding, she wore a dress designed by her husband. After their marriage, he devoted himself to the design of their new home, Hôtel Guimard.

In 1949, Adeline Guimard, now a widow, made a generous gift of textiles to the Cooper-Hewitt that included this sample of a beautifully embroidered dress panel designed by her late husband. It was made around the time of their marriage. The unfinished sample is a delicate and monochromatic expression of curvilinear lines suggesting stylized lilies. Embroidered on a sheer silk chiffon ground, the stitches include chain stitch using a tambour hook and other types including stem, satin and wrapping stitches. There are also areas of net insertion indicating that the final product may have been worn over another fabric, possibly a dark one, which would show the embroidered details to a greater advantage. Other textiles in the gift included a handsome tea cloth and a pair of curtains. Adeline Guimard worked tirelessly after her husband's death to preserve his legacy. She made generous donations of furniture and textiles to several American museums.

Part of an iconic collection of designs known as the Americana Prints, It, with its typographic subject and nod to cubism, represents a conscious shift away from traditional French silk design. French manufacturers had long dominated the silk industry, while American silk producers got by hiring artisans to merely copy French designs. Americana Prints intended to challenge that system. As the name of the collection suggests, the designs were meant to be patriotic, but in a less traditional sense, as they referenced jazz and urban life and evoked a general sense of movement and energy.

Americana Prints was the brainchild of Kneeland “Ruzzie” Green, who also designed It and a few other text-based patterns for the collection. As an Art Director for Stehli Silks, Green saw firsthand the prevalence of uninspired, watered down French copies on the American silk market. That troublesome trend, and a trip to the 1925 Paris Exposition (in which the United States chose not to participate), seem to have inspired Green to put together a defiantly American collection.

In an article in The American Silk Journal in 1925, Green expressed his frustration and the goals of Americana Prints:

“The confessed purpose of Americana Prints is to capture all that is truly American and distinctively American and write it into designs which shall be beautiful and national. After all, we know of no other way to father authentic art. The Frenchman knows that he is not likely to turn out a good thing if he scorns the images which are in his blood and tries to sell to his countrymen a trumped up representation of another spirit and atmosphere. Similarly American artists can make no headway by copying the evidence of the French psychosis.”¹

Some of the Americana Prints featured direct references to American life, like Manhattan by Clayton Knight. Others were simply inspired by a truly American sense of ingenuity, like in Edward Steichen’s patterns, which were based on photographs of everyday objects and the shadows they created. All of the Americana Prints took a very intentional divergence away from traditional aesthetics associated with silk.

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.

Edward Gorey, an author and illustrator known for his macabre stories was very passionate about ballet. One of his most well-known books is The Gilded Bat, the story of how Maudie, a girl given to staring at dead birds, is transformed into Mirelle, a chic and mysterious prima ballerina. The woeful tale chronicles her journey from fame to dreadful demise, and in typical Gorey style, mixes in humor by including ballet puns and jokes.

Gorey was a great fan of dances by George Balanchine and for thirty years (c. 1957-1982) regularly attended performances at the New York City Ballet.  In 1973, his book The Lavender Leotard: or Going a lot to the New York Ballet was published as a tribute to the 50th anniversary of the company.  The Lavender Leotard includes caricatures of several decades of the New York City Ballet, complete with personalities, events and atmospheres. 

As an enthusiastic supporter of the company, he created posters that could be printed as merchandise and sold in their gift store.  An example is New York City Ballet, an eye-catching lithograph on paper that promotes the company in a whimsical way. Gorey organized the poster as a wide column with nine rows with a black background.  A pattern of a wide row with an illustrated beige colored pair of feet in ascending order from first to fifth position skips with a slimmer row with a word in all caps spelling out the company name NEW YORK CITY BALLET. Gorey’s design choice to use the basic positions of ballet is clever and creates an image that any dance enthusiast can appreciate.

One part learner
One part teacher
To follow up on waste unadorned
A blind bluesman
Fills the room with color
A ROOMBA sees the world in math
And tries to rid you of you
And the trail you left behind
Plastic and vehicular
Meticulous and lonely
Hot for a charge
Betrayed by a bunched up area rug
Forlorn the broom and dustpan divorced
Smite thee swiffer
Jack of all trades
Master of none
Trapped here forever
An object for some
Gift of iRobot