The artist who made this doily-style table mat is unknown but the embroidered object dates to the first quarter of the twentieth century and was made in Appenzell Innerrhoden, Switzerland. The canton (or state) was an unlikely sanctuary for hand embroidery skills, which resisted industrialization despite literally being surrounded by it.

Embroidery is a long-standing tradition in eastern Switzerland. The St. Gallen canton in particular has historically been associated with the medium. There are still nine modern embroidery manufacturers in the region, which supply major high-end fashion designers. However, today’s Swiss embroidery market pales in comparison to the heyday of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when men and women from nearly every household in St. Gallen worked in the manufacture or trade of embroidered goods. Growth in Swiss embroidery production was bolstered by industrialization during that time but in Appenzell Innerrhoden embroiderers continued to employ traditional manual techniques well into the mid twentieth century.

Appenzell Innerrhoden, along with its neighboring canton, Appenzell Ausserrhoden, (both distinct cantons) are jointly referred to as Appenzellerland, and this region is situated entirely within the borders of St. Gallen. Technological advancements that turned the surrounding St. Gallen into a globally recognized center for mass-produced embroidery, were rejected in mountainous Appenzell Innerrhoden. While St. Gallen enjoyed its own notoriety for production volume, the thousands of women who embroidered in Appenzell Innerrhoden continued to refine the art of hand embroidery. Traditional stitching skills were treasured in the alpine community and since 1889 state-funded embroidery education was available to girls in the region. The rich history of the region in which this textile originated suggests that it was hand made.

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.

Relatively little is known about this pair of men’s silk stockings.  The donor of the stockings, Richard Greenleaf, identified them as being French and dating from the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century.  But the most striking thing about the stockings is their decoration.

     By the early eighteenth century, men of all social classes wore close-fitting breeches and stockings.  The shaping of most stockings was accomplished by the insertion of triangular gussets (known as “clocks”) on both sides.  The fashion for decorating clocks and areas bordering the clocks seems to have emerged during the reign of James I, and it was adopted by women as well as men.[i]   Generally, this decoration took the form of embroidery in contrasting thread on otherwise plain white silk stockings.  But sometimes, as was the case with our green-and-red stockings, the decoration was much more elaborate.  Plain or fancy, decoration of the clocks was clearly intended to draw attention to the wearer’s calf.  By the 1770’s, this focus on the calf led some men to wear pads on the inside of their stockings to enhance the shape.

     By the middle of the eighteenth century, fashionable upper-class Frenchmen seem to have been overcome by a sense that the extreme formality demanded by dressing for court functions was increasingly anachronistic.  The French were also in the grip a wave of “Anglomania” which extended to a preference for the greater comfort afforded by English “country” clothing, a trend which favored a reversion to plain stockings.

     The French Revolution brought with it profound changes in men’s fashion.  The costume of the sans-culottes, the working-class Frenchmen who were ardent and sometimes violent supporters of the Revolution, did not include breeches; instead, they wore loose, ankle-length pants.  For them, breeches were a symbol of wealth, and, once the Terror began, a man in breeches was potentially a man under suspicion of counter-Revolutionary sentiments.  Not surprisingly, many Frenchmen, regardless of their politics, adopted ankle-length pants during the Revolution.  Even after the end of the Terror and a return to more ordinary patterns of life, men’s attire continued to be more sober in style.  The trend toward long pants or, alternatively, breeches with high boots continued.  Because a man’s calf was no longer visible, the fashion for decorated stockings for men faded.[ii]  But they didn’t disapper:  women, who were beginning to show a daring glimpse of ankle beneath the long skirts of their dresses, continued to wear stockings well into the nineteenth century.

Nancy Olson is a student in the Parsons Masters program in the History of Decorative Arts and Design.  She is delighted to have the opportunity to use the study of material culture as a means of gaining a deeper understanding of our collective history.

Matches seem almost trivial to us in 2014. However, carrying matches was once a novelty and feat of man’s ability to harness instantaneous fire.  Gas-powered lighters and safety matches in matchboxes were not available on a wide scale until the 1930s. Wooden friction matches were first invented about a hundred years earlier, but were fickle and extremely combustible. Matchsafes were the solution to carry matches safely: to protect them from moisture and to hinder them from lighting involuntarily by reducing added friction.

Matchsafes came in many shapes and sizes depending on the intended use. Some were hung on walls, while others were made to stand alone on tabletops, and generally used by women. This portable pocket matchsafe was of a type intended to be used by men, to light a cigar, cigarette, or pipe on the go. It is likely that this matchsafe belonged to a man, as it was made before the turn of the twentieth century when it would be considered highly inappropriate for women to smoke in public.

Aside from the practical function of matchsafes, many have a decorative quality, which is arguably what makes them so appealing. This silver matchsafe was not executed as a simple rectangular box to merely hold matches. This container with a hinged lid is in the form of a clinched fist and forearm with the whimsically engraved inscription: “In This You’ll Find A Match.” A matchsafe like this would have been used as a conversation piece, and for personal entertainment. It is an example of matchsafes that use rebuses and other word or picture puzzles based around the word “match.” The clenched fist dissuades any stray finger from carrying out the invitation suggested by the inscription.

So next time you see a free hotel matchbox, you can use it as conversation piece about the disappearance of matchsafes. What was once an everyday accessory is now a treasured relic. Yet, we’re still being asked: “Do you have a light?”

Gabrielle Golenda is a graduate student at Parsons the New School for Design in the History of Decorative Arts and Design program, focusing on film and modern design. She has previously worked in fashion as a stylist assistant and in PR at Tom Ford.

The early nineteenth century marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars, which left Germany and many other countries in a state of destitution.[1] As the German middle class developed and grew wealthier due to industrialization during the succeeding decades, they demanded a new style of furniture characterized by “plain, unpretentious, and inoffensive”[2] objects. The period, which lasted from about 1815 through 1830, was known as the Biedermeier era, named after the fictitious schoolmaster and poet Gottlieb Biedermeier.  Designs for Mechanical Furniture: Bidet and Reading Washstand resembles furniture from this time in their  lack decorative elements. In addition, the light brown color of the furniture indicates that it was made of wood, which was the common material for furniture during this time.[3] Finally, the portability of the objects due their light and flat surfaces gives further clues that the drawing was indeed from this period.[4]

Although the title suggests two pieces of furniture, careful examination of the drawing shows three: a bidet, washstand, and reading table. The idea of furniture for gender-specific use was common in the nineteenth century.  The reading table, which had the tendency to function as a place to conduct business activities, was most likely for the male. Literature reveals that bidets and washstands were primarily placed in the female’s bedroom. The bidet, washstand, and reading table in their banality characterize the Biedermeier period and most likely functioned for activities particular to the male or female.

Jane Oh is a History of Decorative Arts and Design Master's student at Parsons The New School for Design/Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. She graduated from the University of California, Davis with degrees in Art History and Communication, and her focus is on contemporary art and design.

 Imagine being able to change the entire look of your favorite dress by simply changing the front panel. If you lived in the eighteenth century, this would be your reality. Stomachers were an important part of a women's dress between the seventeenth and nineteenth century, they were most popular during the Rococo movement in eighteenth-century France. The stomacher is a panel that is attached to the bodice of a dress. It can be removed and changed for different styles or formal occasions. Bodices were constructed so that this decorative piece would leave an open space specifically for this type of decorative panel to show through.

What makes this extravagant stomacher unique is the pastoral nature of the narrative that is embroidered onto the stomacher. A pastoral theme is one that is related to a farm or the countryside. It is almost as if this piece is representing a specific person or place; perhaps it is symbolic of a courtier, or famous mistress of the King working in the gardens of Versailles. This stomacher illustrates the importance of the pastoral themes in the French court at the time. For example, Louis XV often held pastoral themed court masques where courtiers would dress as shepherds and shepherdesses.[i] In addition, royal mistress Madame de Pompadour was known for her love of pastoral themed decorative arts collections and pastoral themed performances at the Theatre des Petits Cabinets in Versailles.[ii] This stomacher is an example of the fondness for pastoral imagery during this time period.

There are eighteenth century accounts of metallic and color embroidery techniques being reserved only for the noblest of courtiers.[iii] Some of these techniques can be seen in this stomacher. Therefore, this particular stomacher may have been used to impress important figureheads and worn by someone who had access to the most sought after places inside and outside of the palace. After all, the better a courtier looked, the better the chance that their status would be elevated by the monarchy and high society. Who knows, this may have even belonged or been worn by Madame du Pompadour herself.

Katie Kupferberg is a graduate student at Parsons the New School for Design in the History of Decorative Arts program, focusing on fashion and textiles. Katie has previously worked on Broadway and Off-Broadway shows on the Costume Design team.

This etching, a screen design by great artist François Boucher, is iconic for its inclusion of the French word rocaille. In the eighteenth century, rocaille referred to the irregular rockwork that was used to embellish picturesque grottos and garden fountains but the word has since come to be synonymous with the rococo as a style. The design exemplifies the fanciful profusion of flora and fauna characteristic of the period. Sinuous plant forms asymmetrically frame a fountain encrusted with shells. Below, two monkeys squabble beside a flowing pool of water. The entire composition evokes motion, tempting the viewer’s eye to travel continuously. There is the sensuous suggestion that one could hear the splashing of water and feel a breeze in the air.  The configuration of the scene is similar to screen designs by Jacques de Lajoue (Petit Palais, Paris) particularly in the placement of the stream of water in the lower third of the composition.

Boucher contributed  five screen designs, including this one,  published in the Nouveaux Morceaux pour des Paravents [New Concepts for Screens]. The engraver Claude-Augustin Duflos uses a masterful balance of expressive lines and hatched marks to achieve the scene’s tonal variation and sense of liveliness. Painted in bright polychrome, the design could be applied to a multi-paneled folding screen. Freestanding screens provided privacy and invited painted ornament, creating a perfect synthesis of fine and decorative arts. Rococo interiors were conceived as total works of art, with architectural ornaments, furniture and objet d'art complementing one another; painted screens would be enjoyed within a greater ensemble of coordinating fixtures of eighteenth century domestic life. Boucher’s interest in the decorative arts distinguished him throughout a fifty-year long career, in which he produced designs and models for a variety of media.

Rebekah Pollock is a Master’s student of the History of Decorative Arts and Design at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum/ Parsons the New School for Design. After graduating from the Ontario College of Art and Design with a focus in Criticism and Curatorial Studies, she is pursuing her interests in European ceramics and eighteenth century interiors.

You can read more about Boucher and Rococo in our publication Rococo: The Continuing Curve, 1730-2008 available at shop.cooperhewitt.org

John Piper, a well-known British painter and author, was most famous for his watercolor paintings of the English landscape. A lover of English architecture, particularly churches, Piper was instrumental in promoting a romanticized English countryside in an attempt to establish a sense of national identity. It wasn’t until he was appointed official artist for his home country during World War II that Piper was able to truly make his mark.  In November 1940, the painter was sent to the city of Coventry to record the shell of its cathedral after an air raid left the city in ruins. The painting he created from this experience is one of his most famous, and served to establish him as the voice of the British wartime experience.

Although he was most well known as a painter of landscapes and distinctly British themes, Piper’s full and very varied career was not limited in terms of medium or subject matter. He experimented with abstraction, citing Georges Braque and Raoul Dufy as inspirations, and explored many different media and techniques.  Piper’s work in the applied arts began after the war, when he worked as a stage designer and gradually shifted to stained glass and other decorative forms, including photography, book and magazine covers, illustrations, advertisements, printed textiles, tapestry, and ceramics.

This printed textile is from 1955, and shows a grid of narrow rectangles, each one encasing an abstract, colorful design.  Piper’s design displays a painterly element in its combination of colors and forms, drawing upon his earlier work as an abstract painter and exposing the artist’s style as it runs across different media.

Emily Shapiro is a Masters student in the History of Decorative Arts and Design program at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum/Parsons New School for Design. She worked at the Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies for two years after graduating from Brown University in 2009, and is pursuing research in 20^th century fashion and interiors.

Though in western cultures, suntans are appreciated for their indication of good health and a leisurely lifestyle, the Japanese standard remained quite different even up to the mid-1960s. Since ancient times, Asian cultures have idealized lighter complexions because they indicated a person’s privileged status. Those people living richly enough to remain indoors maintained a whiter complexion by avoiding work outside in the sun. Expanding out of this lineage of traditional thinking, Shiseido Cosmetics radically adopted the theme “Beloved by the Sun” for their summer campaign in 1966. This advertising campaign promoted the health beauty of tanned skin as a way to introduce the idea that tanned skin was part of a woman’s right to be beautiful.

For this poster advertising sun oil, designer Shin Matsunaga photographed more than 1,500 different people at the beach, always at the same time of day so that the shadows remained consistent.  The individual figures were then collaged together against a white background. In a second poster from the same 1971 series (1992-144-31), this time advertising Shiseido’s Beauty Cake (a compact bronzer), the same beach scene is shown with only the female figures remaining. By using photographs of real Japanese people tanning on the beach, Matsunaga commented on the mutable standards of idealized beauty pioneered by the “Beloved by the Sun” campaign.

Matsunaga began working in the advertising division of Shiseido Co, Ltd. after graduating from the design course at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1964. These posters received the Tsusan Daijin (The Ministry of International Trade and Industry) Award and The Tokyo Art Directors Club ADC Prize in 1971. That same year, Matsunaga founded Shin Matsunaga Design Inc. In addition to his numerous works for Shiseido cosmetics, Matsunaga is renowned for his posters PEACE, as well as for the creation of the corporate identity design for Issey Miyake Inc.

Kristina Parsons is a Masters student in the History of Decorative Arts and Design program at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum/ Parsons New School for Design. After graduating from Columbia University in 2013 with a background in Art History, she is pursuing her interests in costume history and contemporary design while assisting the Drawing, Prints and Graphic Design curatorial department as an MA Fellow. 
 

                Flowers have always had meaning within art. Though the craze for flower language in England did not start until the nineteenth century, the choice of flowers within this textile is quite deliberate as it combines flowers native to both Britain and the Americas in ways that they would not appear in nature. While a designer cannot be identified for this pattern, it is most likely that he or she knew the meanings of these flowers when combining them. What is especially interesting about the flowers on this textile is that depending on how you read it, the textile can have two very different meanings.

                This double meaning is most heavily implied by the inclusion of the nasturtium, which means patriotism. Since it is quite possible that this textile was meant for export to America, the meaning of patriotism could be a double-edged sword; it could imply either British or American patriotism. The other flowers included also add to this double meaning. For a positive, pro-America meaning, the passion flower, which means faith, along with the daffodil, meaning new beginnings, combines with the nasturtium to create a message of hope for the new nation and faith in its future.

                For the British meaning, one has the buttercup, which means ingratitude and childishness, convolvulus major, or morning glory, meaning extinguished hopes, and the pea plat, a symbol of departure. These combine with the nasturtium to say that America is being ungrateful for all that Britain has done for it by leaving. Whichever meaning the viewer chooses to see, they both relate to the loss of America as a British colony, something that had happened only recently at the time of the textile's creation.

Audrey Sutton is a graduate student at the Cooper-Hewitt/Parsons the New School for Design Masters in Decorative Arts and Design Program. She graduated from Cornell University with a Bachelor of Science in Apparel Design.           

Garden designers and brothers André and Paul Vera designed stunning landscape architecture that reflected the changing mode of the early 20^thcentury and the shift toward rational modernism. Their unique vocabulary of geometric forms, symmetry and bold color contrasts, helped usher in the Art Moderne style, applying it not to just furniture and architecture, but the natural world as well.

André Vera was a founding member of the Atelier Francais, founded in 1912 by the designer Louis Sue.  The impetus for the Atelier was to unite French artisans and designers to create a modern style that could compete with the more pared down geometric styles of the Weiner Werkstätte and the English Arts and Crafts, yet still referenced French tradition.  Vera published a manifesto titled, “Le Nouveau Style,” published in L’Art decorative in January 1912. In it Vera contended that a modern style of decorative arts should reject internationalism and pastiche but nevertheless continue French traditions, especially the rationalism of Louis XVI. The manifesto also retained the art nouveau motif of using nature as inspiration, yet rejected the sinuous, curving line, in favor of clarity, order and harmony and the use of bright, frank color schemes.

This design was preparatory for a plate in the brothers book, Le Nouveau Jardin, published in 1912. The book features 35 plates and woodcut designs by Paul along with two chapters on André’s theories on the modern garden. This is followed by plans and descriptions for rustic, rose trellised and fantasy gardens along with sections on bee-keeping, fruit cultivation and garden ornaments.  The brothers’ genius came from their sense of collaboration, beginning with André’s sense of the conceptual and Paul’s skill in architecture and illustration.

For this ‘garden of love,’ the home is situated at the center of the ground plan.  The black pattered border represents groves of trees to provide privacy.  The smaller squares indicate planned gardens where the colored sections imply flowers as well as colored gravel in black, shiny jet, white marble and red and yellow.  This nuanced encounter between artifice and nature is a defining characteristic of a Vera garden.

Erin Gillis is a Masters student in the History of Decorative Arts and Design program at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum/Parsons New School for Design.  She worked as a photo editor in the magazine and fashion industries in New York after graduating with a degree in Art History from Columbia College, Chicago and is pursuing research in late 19th and 20th century interiors and material culture.

The designer and manufacturer of this textile are unknown, but the subject is telling of the cultural climate that produced it. If I didn’t know its approximate date, I might have guessed it was designed in the 1930s.

The photo-collage pattern clearly depicts New York City architecture, from older landmarks like the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, to brand new skyscrapers like the Empire State and Chrysler buildings.  Like Clayton Knight's Manhattan and textile design of the same name by Ruth Reeves , this design, by depicting dynamic scenes of America’s most glamorous city, seeks to set  a distinctively American national style.

The conspicuously factual approach also functioned as a morale booster, much like the murals produced and funded by the Works Progress Administration in the same period. In a time of woeful economic depression, highlighting American accomplishments and industries, and turning them into art, was often meant to inspire pride. The photographic style of the pattern speaks to some of the WPA’s other initiatives, which used photography to document the lives of Americans. The push to emphasize and define an American style was also directly fueled by our nation’s failure to participate in the 1925 Paris Exposition, due to the simple fact that we had nothing to contribute.

The perfect storm of inspiration may have ultimately resulted in a dizzying array of American styles rather than a definitive one, but that urge to defend our reputation for taste and innovation undoubtedly inspired some wonderful designs for us to reflect on. And when we consider our melting pot of people, that variety of designs produced in the 1930s is arguably a fairly appropriate representation of the United States after all. 

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.

Hendrick van Hulst, Head of the Department of Decoration at the Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres, once said, “the heavy and the trivial should be avoided; we should produce the light, sensitive, new and varied.” These words denote a clear desire, consistent with the firm's history, to set the Manufacture de Sèvres apart from all the European porcelain factories.

With its soft edges and smooth unity, this vase features a particularly interesting decoration and presents a combination of multiple ornamental elements that are whimsical yet elegant. Thick swirling ribbons in light grey color add a dynamic touch to the creamy off-white ground and their fanciful pattern, perhaps inspired by Arabic-like calligraphy, certainly plays with the vase’s curvy body. A hand-painted network of golden lines extending from the lip to the foot creates a grid while outlining various parts of the calligraphic motifs. In between the wavy lines of gold, are painted three horizontal rows of gilded Greek astronomical symbols encircling the body of the vase. In fact, the decade following the second World War, mostly characterized by the refusal of ornament in the decorative arts, still encouraged the creation of new imagery – the Cosmos was one of them. This imagery, promoting a vogue of astronomical motifs among many others, allowed for the development of a new era defined by a post-war consumer boom.

During the immediate post-war period, nearly all potters moved away from traditional utilitarian or decorative pottery towards a redefinition of the art of pottery and its practice. The Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres, however, positioned itself as the guardian of tradition, without adjusting its practices to follow the artistic and social developments of the time. Inaugurating itself as the institutional guardian of techniques and expertise, the Manufacture de Sèvres sought to emphasize the craft and mastery of its workers and the abundance of the Sèvres repertory of designs. Although forms and decorations tried to incorporate new, innovative and unique designs, they were often inspired by older styles and patterns. The vase entitled Jeux de Fonds – Astronomie, made at Sèvres, reinterprets traditional forms and common decorative schemes and combines them with new designs that focus on the purity associated with the popular ‘less is more’ maxim. By doing so, it positions itself in a particular moment in French history defined by a nationalistic approach to the decorative arts in order to establish the nation’s former prosperity.

After graduating from Sorbonne University, Paris with a degree in History of Art and Archeology, Melissa completed a graduate degree in Art Business at Sotheby's Institute of Art, London. She is currently enrolled in the History of Decorative Arts and Design program at Parsons, New York. Her professional experience includes internships at two major museums and one of the oldest auction houses in Istanbul as well as an internship at a well-established gallery in New York. She was also a Master's fellow in the Product Design and Decorative Arts Department at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York.

This shirtwaist day dress was designed by celebrated fashion designer Claire McCardell, who is noted for her important contribution to “The American Look” of casual and active sportswear for women. It was made from a printed cotton fabric, Parade Sauvage, designed by Fernand Léger, one of the most prominent, prolific, and influential modern artists of the early twentieth century.

In the post-World War II period, advocates for the American textile industry actively promoted ways for manufacturers to improve the design quality of their products. One outspoken champion, the magazine American Fabrics, encouraged manufacturers to find design inspiration in the collections of fine art to be found in museums. “Let’s have art in industry,” they demanded. [1] In 1953, Dan Fuller, President of Fuller Fabrics, went one step further. He bypassed the museums entirely and went directly to the studios of five of the twentieth century’s most distinguished artists: Fernand Léger, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Joan Miró, and Raoul Dufy. The groundbreaking collaboration between the American manufacturer and the five European masters resulted in the acclaimed Modern Masters Series.

Fuller’s Modern Master Series was unique in America in the 1950s. The artists were not commissioned to produce original patterns specifically for the textiles. Instead, Dan Fuller worked personally with each artist to select motifs from their existing oeuvre that were then incorporated by the company’s designers into repeating textile patterns. It was truly art by the yard for the masses. [2] Fidelity of reproduction was essential and Fuller’s designers worked diligently to successfully render the motifs in printable form. The patterns were designed to be roller-printed rather than screen-printed because the fabric was to be mass produced and sold at low price points, less than $2 a yard, for use by both garment manufacturers and home sewers. This was not haute couture, but rather modestly priced fabric for sportswear and casual clothes. [3]

Each artist approved the final patterns derived from his work and was involved in the selection of the colorways. Every design was copyrighted. Engraving the rollers and printing the patterns on cloth was technically challenging and took more than a year to meet Fuller’s high standards. [4]

Marketing was a key element of the project – the Modern Master Series was launched in the fall of 1955 with a museum exhibition and documentary film that featured the artists in their studios, the original works of art, the finished fabrics, and the production process. The film and exhibition opened at the Brooklyn Museum and then traveled to other American Museums. [5]

Publicity for the Modern Master Series also included a five-page editorial in Life Magazine, “Modern Art in Fashion.” [6] Life’s fashion editor Sally Kirkland enlisted the participation of her friend, designer Claire McCardell. McCardell designed a wardrobe of separates and dress ensembles using Modern Masters Fabrics which were featured in the Life photo essay, including the Parade Sauvage dress. [7]

The Modern Masters Series was much celebrated when it was launched. American Fabrics applauded Fuller for its daring and courage in bridging “the abyss” between fine and applied arts. [8] The brilliant collaboration between Fuller and the artists was held up as an important example for other American textile manufacturers. Claire McCardell was an influential American mid-century ready-to-wear designer, and her fashions using Modern Masters fabrics added prestige to the collection. The fabrics were also a commercial success. In addition to McCardell, other prominent American sportswear designers and manufacturers like Adele Simpson and Lanz of California used the Modern Master Series. [9]

The Museum currently holds six fabrics from Fuller’s Modern Masters Series in its collection, including one other by Léger, Vitrail. The source motifs for most of these fabrics are conventional: for example, the fabric Birds by Picasso uses a figure of a bird taken from a painted ceramic plate. [10] Léger’s designs, on the other hand, represent decidedly odd motifs for American sportswear fabrics. The motif for Vitrail is a monumental stained glass window that Léger designed for a Catholic Church in France, Pincers and Nails, depicting the instruments of Christ’s passion. The motif for Parade Sauvage is even more curious.

In 1949, Léger completed a series of fifteen lithographs for an illustrated edition of French symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud’s Illuminations (1874). [11] Rimbaud was the influential enfant terrible of late nineteenth century French poetry, whose writing draws heavily on his rebellious and dissolute lifestyle.

Léger’s lithograph Parade Sauvage is an illustration for “Parade,” one of the prose poems in Illuminations. The joyful iconography of circus parades, including clowns and acrobats, appears frequently in Léger’s work, but the figures in Parade Sauvage are different. “Parade” is a graphic and violent homoerotic poem and Léger’s illustration aligns with its more sinister imagery. The lithograph also contains the final line of the poem in French: “J’ai seul la clef à cette parade sauvage,“ in Léger’s own hand. [12] The lithograph in its entirety, with the calligraphy, was used as the motif for the Modern Masters fabric, in an offset repeat pattern. Consistent with Léger’s painting style, independent patches of bright colors in organic shapes are superimposed on the black and white lithograph design. The fabric was made in several different colorways.

The bold strokes of Léger’s complex black and white lithograph, combined with the bright colors, created a lively and appealing fashion fabric. The origin and meaning of the original motif, and the incongruity of its use in a cotton day dress for American middle class women, was apparently ignored at the time. In retrospect, there is a certain irony in Fuller Fabrics’ advertising for the Modern Masters Series, which noted that Léger’s work “lends fashion its greatest surprise.” [13]

Maleyne M. Syracuse is a candidate for a Masters Degree in the History of Decorative Arts at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum/Parsons New School for Design and is President of the Board of Directors of Peters Valley Craft Center. She recently retired as a Managing Director in the Investment Bank at JP Morgan and continues to work part-time as an independent professional in corporate finance and investment management.

===

[1] “$780,000,000 worth of Design Ideas – Free!” American Fabrics, 1 (Fall 1946): 80-87.
[2] Geoffrey Rayner, Richard Chamberlain and Annamarie Stapleton, Textile Design: Artists’ Textiles 1940-76 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Antique Collectors Club, 2012), 139.
[3] “Trying Abstraction on Fabrics,” ArtNews 54, issue 7 (November 1955): 43.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] “Modern Art in Fashion,” Life Magazine, November 14, 1955: 142-46.
[7] Kohle Yohannan, and Nancy Nolf, Claire McCardell: Redefining Modernism (NY: Abrams, 1998), 126.
[8] “Fine Art and Textiles come to Terms,” American Fabrics 35 (Winter 1955-56): 49.
[9] Rayner, 139.
[10] Another Picasso fabric, Fish, also takes its motif from a painted ceramic. Chagall’s Woman Amid Foliage fabric takes its romantic image from the artist’s painting, Evening Enchantment (1948). Miro’s Femme Écoutant fabric is a recombination of motifs from the artist’s painting, Femme Écoutant La Musique (1945). 
[11] The project was initiated by the Swiss editor Louis Grosclaude and published by Editions des Gaules, Lausanne, Switzerland.
[12] Lawrence Saphire, Fernand Léger: The Complete Graphic Work (NY: Blue Moon Press, 1978), 14, 267. In English, the line reads, “Only I have the key to this savage parade.”
[13] Advertisement for Fuller Fabrics Modern Master Series, American Fabrics 35 (Winter 1955-56): 32.

The works of German metalsmith Georg Dobler are imbued with geometry; both in the construction of the forms and in the visual relationship between the forms and the body. Dobler received his masters in goldsmithing in 1979 in Pforzheim and thereafter founded an atelier with fellow goldsmith Winfried Krüger.[1].  In recent years he has worked as a Professor at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hildesheim, Germany.

In the early eighties, Dobler’s architecturally inspired works gained recognition in the world of art jewelry for their stunning angular framework and presence on the human form.  This brooch from 1983, constructed in steel wire and coated with black acrylic lacquer, is among Dobler’s early body of works notable for having the appearance of being at once planar and voluminous. The form of the brooch is visually deceptive and the triangular steel framework is slighter in depth than the lines suggest. Because of this illusion the brooch manages to appear architectural in dimension without being cumbersome when worn. In regard to Dobler’s oeuvre, metalsmith and gallerist Paul Derrez stated: “Wearability plays a subordinate role in brooches; even if it is not being worn, a brooch always maintains its distinctive character as an object.”[2]

Though there is certainly truth in this assertion, Dobler’s forms are only truly actualized when worn on the body.

The geometric construction of Dobler’s brooches may seem rigid, and cold but when applied to their intended site, the human form, the mathematical perfection of these forms compliment and highlight the subtle, organic geometry of the wearer’s body. In photographs, showing the brooch worn horizontally along the top of the shoulder, it is clear that Dobler is not just making small sculptures with wearability as an afterthought. Dobler’s brooches are able to stand on their own as gorgeous, masterfully constructed forms but are not fully realized until juxtaposed with the curvilinearity of the human body. Rather than standing in stark contrast to the organic lines of the human form, the works in this series highlight, frame and exalt the bodies that wear them. 

[2] Paul Derrez, “Space and Structure” in Georg Dobler: Schmuck 1980-2000 ed. Georg Dobler, Etienne Girardet, Tomas Didier (Munchen: Galerie Spektrum, 2000), 15

Philip Schwarz’s Novelties in Laces for Furniture and Decoration. The prints were delivered to the museum in a cloth-bound box with a leather-bound presentation folder. The folder describes the object’s approximate date, 1880, place of origin, Vienna, and maker, Philip Schwarz, “Manufacturer of Laces.” The presentation folder also lists an address: "ZiegerGasse 11," in Vienna’s Mariahilf, then an important business district near Vienna’s major shopping street, Mariahilfer Strasse.

The late nineteenth century saw a veritable boom in the consumption of trimmings both in Europe and the United States, facilitated by manufacturers such as Philip Schwarz. Indeed, a popular Danish term for the period is klunketid, or tassel period. In his seminal Handbook of Ornament, first published in 1886, Franz Sales Mayer describes the pervasive use of trimmings in interiors, but also notes that they “occur perpetually in various national costumes, and in the toilet of our modern ladies.”[1] Indeed, many of the examples featured in Schwarz’s Novelties in Laces for Furniture and Decoration can be likened to trimmings used in women’s fashionable dress and men’s military regalia of this period, and several explicitly reference national symbols. This example incorporates the crescent moon of the flag of the Ottoman Empire, demonstrating the use of interior decoration in expressions of national pride.

Le garde-meuble. (1841-51) Paris : D. Guilmard. Decorative use of tassels in window treatments.

Draperies des croisees ronds au grand salon. Valances, Livre 28, Pl. 074. Smithsonian Libraries f NK2547 .Z8G96 CHMRB

Mae Colburn is a graduate student in the History of Decorative Arts and Design program at Parsons the New School for Design. Her focus is textiles.

In March of 1966, Scott Paper Company created the first paper dress as a promotional ad gimmick to help sell their product. To receive their newest paper fashion, customers simply mailed in a coupon from a Scott product along with a small fee (around $1.25) and in return they would receive for their paper dress. This advertising gimmick quickly and unexpectedly caught on with consumers. At the height of production and popularity, The Mars Manufacturing Company of Asheville North Carolina, responsible for the creation of the Cooper-Hewitt’s paper dress, sold between 80,000 and 100,000 dresses each week.

For many Americans in the 1960s, participating in the culture of mass consumption was a way of engaging with the new modern age. Consumerism and consumption thus became equated with a belief in modernity and the future. Ephemeral objects fulfilled the desire for owning the newest and latest products without a long-term financial commitment, leaving the owner free to replace or refresh their possessions whenever they fancied. Throwaway clothing fit neatly into a futuristic vision of the world where everything was conveniently automated and fashions changed at the speed of light.

The silhouette of the Cooper-Hewitt’s paper dress fits seamlessly into contemporary trends with its short hem and A-line shape that was favored particularly by the Mods (a prominent youth culture of the time). Additionally, the 2-dimensionality of the paper dress was the perfect canvas for transferring the daring and graphic prints of the contemporary art scene to the fashion world as a sort of wearable billboard. In fact, the advertising potential of these dresses was so great, that they were adapted for everything from Campbell’s soup advertisements to propaganda for the Nixon Campaign. Paper dresses represented the combined interest in fashion, pop/op art and popular culture that was prevalent in the 1960s.

 People predicted that by 1980, paper dresses would take over the clothing industry altogether. In the midst of growing environmental concerns and distaste for government policies however, the propensity for paper dresses was quickly seen as frivolous in comparison. The fashion for paper garments burned brightly but was short-lived as the Mod and Pop styles were overturned by the hippie lifestyle that valued a “back-to-nature” attitude. The disposable garment, though no longer the forefront of vogue fashions, remains a prominent fixture of our society’s landscape however, in hospital settings as well as in the restaurant and factory industry.

Kristina Parsons is a Masters student in the History of Decorative Arts and Design program at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum/ Parsons New School for Design. After graduating from Columbia University in 2013 with a background in Art History, she is pursuing her interests in costume history and contemporary design while assisting the Drawing, Prints and Graphic Design curatorial department as an MA Fellow.

When I think of modern design, a joyful outburst of color and pattern is not what springs to mind. Instead, I imagine an all-white room decorated with highly functional, minimalist chairs and couches. Everything is simple and streamlined, in sharp, crisp lines and primary colors.

How surprising, then, that Josef Frank, a man who is considered to be one the pioneers of Swedish modernism, designed this graphic patterned textile in 1944, when modern design was indeed moving towards an almost entirely functional aesthetic. While the Bauhaus and other modernist designers were using tubular steel in a hard-edged modern aesthetic, Frank, who was born in Austria but moved to Sweden just before World War II, rejected the purely functionalist design of his peers, which he saw as cold. Instead, the designer favored a free, colorful, and eclectic style of interior decoration that emphasized comfort, ease, and calm in the home. Functional furniture, to Frank, was not purely utilitarian; to him, comfort was a part of function, and he sought to imbue his furniture and textile designs with a sense of pleasure and ease.

At the height of the war, Frank fled to New York, where he designed Vegetable Tree. In a dynamic and extravagant natural scene, a tree winds its way up the center of the piece, its branches curved and sprouting an array of vibrantly colored fruits, leaves, strange vegetables, and exotic flowers. The fanciful pattern remains one of the designers’ most famous pieces, and is still in production today.

Emily Shapiro is a Masters student in the History of Decorative Arts and Design program at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum/Parsons New School for Design. She worked at the Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies for two years after graduating from Brown University in 2009, and is pursuing research in 20^th century fashion and interiors.

The ITF Internationale Tentoonstelling op Filmgebied (International film exhibition) poster is an unusual advertisement. The subject of the poster - an educational exhibition on the history of film, new technologies, screening (all film types including the avant-garde) and all other facets to the world of film – is reflected in the poster’s execution. The focus on the new medium of film and Piet Zwart’s exposure to the new techniques of photography and text explain why the poster stylistically appears as it does, and why he chose to compose the poster the way he did.

Piet Zwart rejected aligning himself with any particular group or aesthetic throughout the entirety of his career. However, he was largely influenced by El Lissitzky and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, who set the foundation for the aesthetic of the modern poster.  El Lissitzky was one of several avant-garde artists who popularized a type of cameraless photography sometimes called “photograms,” in which objects are laid on photosensitive paper to leave a negative image, and could incorporate text. Zwart used this technique until 1926 when Moholy-Nagy’s book Malerei, Photographie, Film, was published. The book treats word and image as they would in film.  It substantiated how the unity between typography and photography could together make a “cinematic whole.”

Zwart was not only inspired by the idea of film, he was also a self-proclaimed film enthusiast. In 1926, just two years before the film exhibition, he joined an experimental theater association in the Hague called Wij Nu (Us Now). This led him to organize the International Film Exhibition with the objective of rousing interest in “the new medium.”[1] Not only did he design the poster and the program, but largely the entire presentation: including the building’s entrance and interiors.

The execution of the poster is done in the Dutch Modern style, but what is arguably the crux of the advertisement, is the juxtaposition of the word “FILM,” the eye, and the filmstrip. Zwart uses photography and typography to hint at the educational undertone of the festival, but also more importantly to create a representation of visual verbal wit, which on one hand is a true story about the exhibition, and on the other, is “passing into imaginary spheres.”[2]

The poster tries to appeal to the masses, but also it is clear that Zwart sides with the style of film that was not trying to appeal to the masses. This inherently makes the poster an advertisement that is apropos to the twentieth century, where design is at the mercy of advertising, publicity, and some would say ignorance. Though that is only one side of the story. Zwart harnesses the pawns in graphic design to position a message for rapid transmission. His twentieth century speed and functionalism can artistically move around the need for graphic design to: “follow from compression of society and its corollary demand for mass communication.”[3]

Joel and Ethan Cohen’s movie that is in theaters now, Inside Llewyn Davis, sets much of its story around the Greenwich Village folk scene of 1961. From 1946-1979, over on 140 West Fourth Street, the African-American jewelry designer, Art Smith (American, born in Cuba, 1917-1982), fashioned modernist pieces from simple metals that achieved new expressions in shape and form.

Visual resonance can be detected between pieces of Smith’s and the works of artists associated with modernist abstraction, such as Jean Arp (French, born in then Germany (Alsace), 1886-1966) or, Alexander Calder (American, 1898-1976). Especially in the case of Calder, there is an immediate connection as he too made jewelry. For Smith, his jewelry’s fullest expression is dependent on its interaction with the human body. Smith said, “I see jewelry as bold–as an integral part of the face, arm, or body. It should be incomplete until it is on, related to the body.”

Smith’s work was included in the 1969 exhibition, Objects: USA, which featured three hundred objects that Lee Nordness selected for S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc. Smith was also included in the Museum of Modern Art’s 1946 exhibition, Modern Jewelry Design; the Walker Art Center’s 1948 exhibition, Modern Jewelry under Fifty Dollars; and a 1969 solo exhibition at New York’s Museum of Contemporary Crafts (now the Museum of Art and Design).

Greenwich Village neighbors were many of Smith’s clients. The bracelet and a pair of gold earrings by Smith were gifted to the Cooper-Hewitt by the famous preservationist, Margot Gayle, who was a longtime resident of Greenwich Village.

 Pair of earrings, Designed and made by Art Smith, New York, NY, ca. 1950, Gold, Gift of Gretchen Gayle Ellsworth and Margot Gayle, 1997-171-2-a,b

Smith made cufflinks for Duke Ellington, and was selected to create a brooch for Eleanor Roosevelt. Even a character from the Cohens’ movie could have stopped in.

Abby Bangser is a M.A. candidate in the History of Decorative Arts and Design in the program offered jointly by the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and Parsons the New School for Design. She is also the Head of the Americas Foundation of the Serpentine Galleries.

Julia Ann Nivers’ sampler features a townscape beneath three alphabets and a religious verse, enclosed in a border of stylized strawberries. Of the buildings depicted on the sampler, only the Hopewell Presbyterian Church can be identified. Construction on the Gothic Revival building, which still stands today in Julia’s hometown of Crawford, New York, began in 1831. The first services were held there in 1832, which may have been why Julia chose to highlight the church on her 1833 sampler.

Born in 1823, Julia Ann Niver was the daughter of Elizabeth Rumsey (1795–1863) and Ephraim Niver (1789–1879). She had at least one sibling, an older sister, Rachel Ann (1819–1898). In 1849, Julia married David Smith (b. 1823), a farmer. The couple had a son, Charles W., born in 1853, who also became a farmer. Julia lived until at least 1900, at which time she was seventy-six, widowed, and living with her son, two farm laborers, and a domestic servant.

Jennifer N. Johnson holds a degree from the Parsons/Cooper-Hewitt Master's Program in the History of Decorative Arts and Design. While pursuing her studies, she completed a two-year fellowship researching the Cooper-Hewitt's American sampler collection. She is currently a Marcia Brady Tucker Fellow in the American Decorative Arts department at Yale University Art Gallery.