Wearing complimentary red and green costumes, this group of golden children appears wise beyond their years. They have dour expressions on their faces, and most are too wrapped up in their studies to even acknowledge the spectator. Wm. Campbell-Wall-Paper-Co manufactured “The Froebel” frieze in 1905. It was innovative wallpaper because it was antiseptic, treated to prevent bacteria and germs from absorbing into the paper. Its name came from another innovator, Friedrich Froebel (1782-1840), the inventor of kindergarten.

Froebel believed that children needed to be active participants in their education, free from authoritative instruction. He wrote, “Education must be passive and protective rather than directive, otherwise the free and conscious revelation of the diving spirit in man – which is the free development of the human race – is lost.”  During the early twentieth century, education reformers sought to break from rigid and disciplined classrooms. They aimed to promote individual learning and democratic relationships within the classroom. In this frieze, adults are nowhere to be seen. The children possess tools for their education, such as an abacus and globe, and they have the support of each other. They’re not the typical school children one might find in a classroom filled with rows of desks facing the teacher; instead they’re unconfined, independent scholars.

Along the bottom of the frieze, a banderole is inscribed in German: Arbeit macht das Leben Süss [Work Makes Life Sweet]. Froebel advocated for children to work and learn independently, but not under such quiet and serious conditions as we see here. He recommended singing, dancing, and learning through open-ended play. Instead, these children stand like adults, reminiscent of Greek statues. The frieze markets a parents dream for a bright future where their children become solid and confident members of society. Sadly, it appears that playtime is not part of that dream.

i. Friedrich Fröbel, Froebel's Chief Writings on Education (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1912) 32.

Who can forget those 1990’s Levi’s commercials – marketing sex appeal, celebrity fashion, romance and rock ‘n’ roll style!  Instilling marketing slogans like “Originals stand the test of time” and “The more you wash them the better they get,” Levi’s jeans are an iconic image of American culture and style. Today, Levi’s signature button down jeans are worn internationally by men and woman of all ages.  Levi’s brand is over 160 years old and being trendy was the furthest thing designer Levi Strauss had in mind. 

Strauss, immigrant from Bavaria, opened a San Francisco whole sale business, and heavy duty work pants were one the most popular items sold. The poster “The Birth of the Blues” illustrates the story of how the original “Shrink-to-Fit” jeans were born with a marketing focus during the San Francisco gold rush era. The poster composition includes the header “The Birth of Blues: or how the original Shrink-to-Fit jean was born-& all that Jazz.” In the center is an illustration of the famous blue jeans and around it are photographs and captions that begin with “
Here is…” to be read left to right.

The first tidbit on the poster is about the designer, Levi Strauss, “who in 1850 made the first jeans (pants of Levi’s) from tough canvas tenting. He dyed them indigo blue. Gave them a button fly.” Next is about the client: city slicker men turned fortune seekers during the Gold rush in California.   With a photograph of two gold miners posing in front of the camera, the caption below reads, “Here are Levi’s first customers –San Francisco gold miners who needed tough work pants like they needed a hot bath after a month in the diggings.” 

The third photo is a picture of Alkali Ike, “a miner whose pockets kept ripping under the strain of ‘nuggets bigger’n than your thumb.”  The poster explains how Strauss’ unique design was able to solve this problem by adding cooper riveted pockets for long-lasting durability. To illustrate just how strong the jeans were, a drawing of two horses pulling on a single pair of jeans in opposite directions is depicted on the left edge of the poster. According to the caption below the illustration, Strauss did an “incredible torture test… devised to show just how tough the original shrink-to-fit blue jeans with cooper riveted pockets really were. Wild horses couldn’t tear them apart.”

The last two factoids include product accessories such as the leather patch that is on the right hip of every pair of original shrink to fit blue jeans.  Along with the image of the two horses pulling on a pair of Levi’s jeans, the patch highlights the patent date of May 20 1873, and the words “quality clothing.”  On the far right side of the poster is a convenient fitting guide and chart, in case any potential customers browsing the poster are curious about finding their “perfect fit in original Blue Levi’s.” At the bottom of the poster is a smaller banner reinforcing the words “original, Shrink-to-Fit, blue jeans” and finally, the famous back-pocket signifier:  the bow-shaped red tab “Levi’s.” 

It is unlikely that Strauss could have imagined that his hard-wearing but comfortable garment would remain largely unchanged 160 years later.  Furthermore, he would probably be surprised to learn that his “blues,” which were made for practicality and durability, would grow up to be synonymous with “cool.”  If only Levi Strauss were alive today, he would see that his brand was able to transcend the gold mines of California and become one of the most commercialized products and ionic symbols of American fashion. 

People are always inquiring how the Museum acquires its wallpaper samples. Wallpapers come to the museum in a variety of ways: they can be donated by the manufacturer when produced, sometimes people find old sample books or remnants of wallpaper up in the attic or garage, and sometimes antique samples are removed from the walls of old homes. Not all papers in the Museum’s collection are pristine, with many examples having spent decades or centuries hanging on the walls of homes, not always protected from the elements. I don’t know the provenance of this piece, other than it is one of the earlier wallpapers acquired by Eleanor and Sarah Hewitt for the Cooper Union Museum. Many of the wallpapers the founders collected strong examples of a style, or produced by a premier manufacturer, but not always in the best condition. Upon first appearance the paper seems to be a semi-well preserved example of a mid-eighteenth century wallpaper in the style then referred to as India figure or chintz figures. Closer inspection shows the paper is actually an amalgamation of many smaller pieces pasted together to complete the design. Many of the pieces are fills or sections that were added and painted to copy the original to complete the design. This paper had probably been installed on the walls of a home for a couple hundred years, and didn’t want to be peeled off. When it was forcibly removed it came off in sections and was later pieced together with partial areas being recreated to complete the design. The recreated areas were quite beautifully painted to match the original. This is one of the earliest wallpapers in the Museum’s collection, with the key word being paper. There are examples of repeating designs that date earlier but those are primarily block printed and flocked on canvas.

Owls are nocturnal birds that are characterized in most people’s memories as wise creatures, perched up on their branch overlooking the world’s activities; always awake, eyes never closed.  In my memory, owls are the talisman of a childhood favorite lollipop, the tootsie roll pop. The mind burning question of: “How Many Licks Does It Take To Get To The Center Of A Tootsie Pop?” The answer of course being, “The world may never know.”

The Owl textile is printed on cotton and was exhibited at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in 1978 in an exhibition titled “Look Again,” March 20-June 4, 1978. This exhibition featured 500 works from the permanent collection of all media, and was supposed to portray the Hewitt sister’s mission of inspiring the public with design and education. The owl’s body is printed from the back and bottom views in yellow ochre, sienna and olive green. It is a template, meant to be cut and sewn into a stuffed toy. Sewing instructions are printed in the center. "Arnold Print Works, North Adams, MA" is printed on the upper left corner. Although sewing indicated a feminine trade, sewing an object into a toy can be transformed into a unisex product. It also isn’t a craft only demonstrated in the 1800’s. In 1999, in  my seventh grade home economics class, we also received a fabric template to cut out and make a stuffed animal from. The activity illustrated to most of us that three dimensional items proved to be difficult to sew, especially while keeping the stuffing contained. The process resulted in lopsided toys and our fingers wrapped in bandages. The sewing manual that each animal came with was pages long, with instructional photos and was in two different languages, much more complicated than the directions rendered in The Owl textile: “cut paste board oval to fit bottom piece, then sew together.”

Although this textile was printed in the 1892, owls and birds in general have a specific fashion that has been restored in the 21st century. Even when searching in Cooper-Hewitt’s collection, 38 objects appear with associations tied to the owl. The owl is portrayed on our match safes, prints, furniture cabinets, and even magazine ads.

Hildreth Meière (1892-1961) was a distinguished Art Deco muralist, painter, mosaicist, and decorative artist often applauded for her defiance of normative standards against the professional success of females.  In 1936 she wrote, “It drives me wild to be spoken of as ‘one of the best women artists’. I’ve worked as an equal with men, and my rating as an equal is all that I value.” Indeed, Meière’s artistic achievements gained great attention throughout the art world during her lifetime and continue to be revered today. Here in New York City, her metalwork medallions prominently adorn the façade of Radio Music Hall.

Meière’s capacity for translating abstract themes into narrative images is evident in her commissions for the Chicago World’s Fair, held from 1933-1934. This World’s Fair, celebrating the city’s centennial was named “A Century of Progress.” The theme of the fair was technological innovation, and fittingly the fair’s motto was "Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms.” Meière’s Design for Sand-Blasted Glass Mural: Mercury Gathering Air Waves Amidst Planets and Stars, though never executed, was designed to grace the architecture of the Radio and Communication Building. Interestingly, the Communication Hall was connected to the Electrical Building to symbolize the vital relationship between communication and the various industries devoted to electric power.

In the mural design, Meière depicts Mercury (the patron god of commerce and communication) diving through the sky to gather air waves in his outstretched hands. Air waves are the medium through which radio and television signals are broadcast. Mercury’s swift flight from place to place is made possible by his winged feet, which are easily recognized in Meière’s drawing. During the turmoil of the inter-war years, speed was not only a representation of modern transportation and technology, but a figurative symbol of hope and optimistically moving forward to a better tomorrow.

This large hand-painted circular plate, measuring 13 9/16” in diameter, represents a period of Russian history during Stalin’s regime, where state sponsored porcelain products were used to promote the accomplishments of Russian society and culture and helped to play an important role in the official Party’s Soviet state propaganda campaign. As indicated by the mark stamped on the underside, the plate was manufactured by the Dmitrov State Porcelain Factory, a once imperial and private factory near Moscow that was nationalized after the 1917 Revolution, and later assigned by the state as one of the factories needed to produce functional and economic designs for mass-produced tableware and decorations. Designed by Russian artist Tatiana Mikhailovna Demorei, the plate reflects the “Socialist Realist style” of commercially produced porcelains during the 1930s, in which porcelain designers were “forced to limit their repertoire strictly to official propaganda themes or innocuous decorative subjects,” for fear of becoming an enemy of the state.[1]

The plate’s official subject matter is of the state sponsored sports and fitness campaigns of the 1930s. Its central figure depicts a woman swimmer dressed in a bathing suit and swim cap, standing before the famous Moscow Kremlin. Surrounding the center of the plate is a gilded border with a burnished star-like pattern and a deep cerulean blue background with six vignettes of other female athletes. The vignette on the lower left displays a woman holding a five-pointed red star medallion, which became the symbol of the new Soviet Union. On the lower right side of the plate, a woman holding a type of sword, is supporting a symbolic combination of the five-pointed red star medallion and a cog wheel fragment, referencing the state’s campaign of industrial development. Between each reserve are oval medallions hand-painted in gold with “USSR” in Russian integrated into a floral motif, indicating a more subtle decoration of revolutionary ornament.

An important aspect of this plate is the featured sole depictions of female athletes, displaying their prowess and triumphs, and demonstrating the style of “heroic realism” that became popular from the mid-1920s onward. The encouragement of physical fitness and teamwork within sports were high priorities for the new proletarian society, where the new man and woman of the Soviet future would be healthier, quicker and trained to peak efficiency in both body and mind. This plate not only demonstrates the role of porcelain as a way to communicate state policies and ideals during the early years of the Soviet Union, but its depiction of female athletes also assisted in promoting the state’s newly established political rights of women and their expanded role in Soviet society. As the central swimmer faces out optimistically towards the future, her figure helps to “exemplify the new woman of the Soviet Era.” [2]

This Cooper Hewitt object has a particularly relatable contemporary significance to the 2014 Winter Olympics which recently took place in Sochi, Russia. The spectacular opening ceremony was impressive to those who witnessed it, either in person or on television, but it was not without its political promotions and historical revisionism. The final Olympic medal count put the Russians at the top with 33 medals total, including winning 13 gold. While home field advantage may have played a role, the Russian Olympic team’s overall success demonstrates the country’s continued emphasis and priority on achievement in sports for both men and women.

Deborah's work is a contemporary example of trompe l'oeil which has a very long history in wallcoverings. Many of the earliest wallpapers were imitations of textiles, stone and architectural elements. The photo montage technique and the designer’s invite to interact with the scene are very contemporary takes on the mural tradition.  Hooks and Frocks is printed in a gray scale with only the dresses picked out in bright colors. The garments, accessories and furnishings are all of an older vintage so the scene has a rather retro look, and the use of black and white photography further enhances this look. "Hooks and Frocks" can also be embellished with actual hooks from which can be hung additional garments and bags of the owner's choice as the designer encourages interaction for a more personalized look. 

The interior view also differs from the norm in that the familiarity of the objects draws you into the scene, while the disjointed nature of the photomontage makes you step back and take another look. The line where the wall meets the floor also varies between the left and right sides which may cause a little vertigo.

Deborah Bowness is a British artist/designer currently working in London. She studied surface pattern and textile design at the Leeds College of Art and Design and received an M.A. in printed textiles from the Royal College of Art in London.  She creates beautiful trompe l'oeil designs incorporating everyday objects and room vignettes which are printed in a monochromatic format with certain articles screen printed in color. She has a line of ready-made designs which includes "Hooks and Frocks" and also does private commissions for a very personalized paper. Even her ready-made designs encourage interaction for a more personalized look.

Lace-making was a tradition in Luba Krejci’s native Czechoslovakia, but enthusiasm for the craft waned in the twentieth century. Krejci sought to reverse that trend by creating fresh lace designs like this one for others to produce. She intended to revitalize the disappearing art form by inspiring new interest in it.

The serpentine lines between the female figures in Four Seasons reflect a sinuous style seen other examples of Krejci’s large scale lace-like, needlework compositions, like Morpheus, that she made herself. In many ways, these textiles defy definition, although she preferred the term nitak, a Czechoslovakian play on words, which best translates as fiber work. The dreamlike forms seen in her nitak were personal, poetic expressions of Krejci’s own imagination.

While creating her nitak constructions, Krejci never used a cartoon, rather, she let her designs develop organically on a set of foundation yarns wrapped and stretched onto a frame. Using a tapestry needle, Krejci introduced yarns of varied weights and thicknesses, in all directions, pulling those scaffolding yarns together in some areas and apart in others, to form a web of motifs, which were usually anthropomorphic in shape despite their grid-based origins. Both her traditional lace designs and her nitak designs are highly prized in museum collections around the world.

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.

This buttercup-yellow plate was made by Fanny Levine, a member of the Saturday Evening Girls Club. Founded in 1899 by Edith Guerrier, a librarian, and Edith Brown, an illustrator, the Saturday Evening Girls Club was a charitable organization dedicated to the education of poor immigrant women, particularly Jewish and Italian, living in the North End of Boston. As it was originally associated with the Boston Public Library, the club initially served to teach its members about art, literature, and etiquette. Like Jane Addams’s Hull House in Chicago, the Saturday Evening Girls Club also attempted to “Americanize” the young women through technical training in craft. The Club focused particularly on teaching its members pottery making and painting, allowing them to execute pieces designed by women like Edith Brown. Influenced by the British Arts and Crafts Movement, the SEG believed that the process of making objects by hand was an uplifting endeavor. Writers such as John Ruskin and William Morris promoted a return to craft—away from industrialization—in order to create a utopian world, a doctrine that resonated with charitable organizations in the United States.

In 1907, Guerrier decided to turn the SEG into a commercial enterprise. With the financial backing of Helen Osborne Storrow, the Club purchased a house on Hull Street in Boston that would serve as a studio, shop, and apartment for the designers. Called the Paul Revere Pottery because of its proximity to Old North Church—where the lanterns that signaled the British invasion in 1775 were hung—the company specialized in breakfast ware, tea sets, and tiles. The simple designs, like the stylized lotus pattern on this plate, were often painted in shades of yellow, blue, and green. Many of Fanny Levine’s works feature the same yellow glaze. With its distinctive graphic style and bold patterns, the pottery was popular in the Northeast and as far away as Chicago. Priced within the reach of the middle class, plate or tea sets were popular gifts for children, especially as many of the designs featured rabbits or birds.

Fanny Levine was one of the most prolific SEG painters; she was active from the early 1910s until the mid-1920s. Young women like Fanny often did not finish school. However, through the Club, they were able to learn a trade, providing them with an alternative to labor in a factory. From their paintings, the girls could earn a small amount of money to help support their families. Plates such as this one represent an important moment in early twentieth-century American philanthropy, which saw craft as a means to improve the lives of their makers.

Elizabeth Mattison is a senior at Yale University, expecting to receive her BA and MA from Yale University in May 2014. She is currently writing a thesis on the development of narrative sculpture in late medieval Amiens, France. She was a summer 2013 curatorial intern in Cooper-Hewitt's Product Design and Decorative Arts Department.

Newsworthy is a handsome wallpaper that puts a new spin on an old technique. Woven on handlooms using the same technique as traditional grasscloth wallcoverings, the wallpaper is composed of 100% recycled newspaper and nylon filament. Newsworthy offers a nice texture, as well as subtle bits of pattern and color. As each of the woven strips is quite narrow none of the patterns or colors dominate and work together to form a nice all-over texture. Each roll is unique with slight variations alluding to its handmade nature, while the strips of woven paper vary from the standard black and white type to color advertisements. Newsworthy is woven in India on traditional handlooms using the coiled newsprint for the weft and nylon filaments as the warp. This gives the paper strength and keeps it flexible. After the paper is woven, it is shipped back to the United States where it is paper backed to facilitate being pasted to the wall. As with grasscloth, slight variations in color are inherent in the product. The finished product does not receive any additional surface treatment.

The bulk of the world's grasscloth has always been made in Japan. Traditionally woven from the bark of the honeysuckle vine, the use of grasscloth as a wallcovering dates back hundreds of years where evidence of its use is found in ancient temples. The many stages of production slowly became standardized, and some mechanized, after Japan was introduced to Western markets. Grasscloth was first exported to the United States in the 1880s.

The wallpaper makes a nice bridge between the traditional technique of hand weaving on looms and the modern notion of recycling. The Museum is making a concerted effort to collect responsible design, whether through re-use and recycling, to farming, and use of rapidly renewable resources.

Propaganda posters are among the most important documents remaining from the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). These posters are vivid testimonies depicting the social and political landscape that endured throughout Spain’s unrest.  Propaganda was seen on almost every building, disseminating messages against Fascism, military recruitment, and even the emancipation of women. These social agendas represented new realities for Spain, especially in the communication between men and women. What is more, there were radical changes that altered the status of women during the Spanish Civil War. For the first time, women had access to education, their legal status was secured and female organizations/ cultural journals were established. The following passage was one of many that inspired the voices of female organizations involved in the war effort:

“No luchamos contra los hombres.

No pretendemos sustituir el dominio masculino por el femenino.

Es necesario trabajar y luchar juntos pues si no nunca tendremos la revolución social.

Pero necesitamos nuestra propia organización

para luchar por nosotras mismas.”

-En Mujeres Libres “La Pasión de Decir”

This translates : “We do not fight against men. We do not claim to replace male dominance by the female. It is necessary to work and fight together or else we will never have the social revolution. But we need our own organization to fight for ourselves.”- in Free Women, “Passion to Say”

The Union de Muchachas was a sport camp for young women, sponsored by the National Confederation for Physical Education, and issued by the Ministry of Public Instruction and Health. The maker of this poster, Juana Francisca Rubio Garcia (1911-2008), was the only female cartelista, poster illustrator, who signed her work. It is possible that this poster was meant to indirectly reference the People’s Olympics in Barcelona for the summer of 1936, organized by the international Left in protest against the regular Olympics held in Nazi Germany. However, the event was canceled in Barcelona when the war broke out, encouraging some of the athletes to join the effort in blocking the military from taking over the city.

For this reason, athletic events maintained a political force in the Republic throughout the war.. The subject is a female figure, possibly a javelin thrower, with muscular legs and wide shoulders, carrying a large backpack. Wearing a royal blue collared shirt, black shorts, and red ankle weights, she smiles at the viewer, while prepared to take on a physical activity. The Union de Muchachas promoted the importance of exercise to the Republic and  the recruitment of strong and courageous women who would fight in the militias alongside men. By the spring of 1937, it was evident that militias were not capable of fighting large-scale battles in a prolonged war. Therefore, women began disappearing from combat as the militias dissolved, and the army increased in size, leaving fewer men to sustain Spain’s industries. This change allowed women to join the industrial workforce, accelerating the transformation of women’s rights in early-twentieth century Spain.

Carolina Valdes-Lora is a Masters student in the History of Decorative Arts and Design program at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum/Parsons the New School for Design. With a fine art and design background from RISD and Parsons, she aspires to pursue her interests in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century American and European design. Additionally, her Cuban-Spanish heritage inspires her interests in Latin American art history. She is a MA fellow in the Drawings, Prints and Graphic Design Curatorial Department at Cooper-Hewitt, as well as an intern at Christie’s Auction & Private Sales, 20th Century Decorative Art & Design Department.

Literally translated as “deceives the eye,” the French term trompe l’oeil refers to a technique that has been employed by artists for centuries and usually uses a two-dimensional plane to suggest a fictional three-dimensional space. For instance, the traditional use of tromp l’oeil in this plan for the ceiling of a chapel creates the illusion of a grand architectural space, a space that doesn’t really exist but imparts an impressive sense of luxury and heavenly light on its viewers.

More recently, this type of optical illusion has been applied to textiles in a variety of innovative ways. An example of that trend, Panache, designed by Anne White, is actually an image of a striped fabric that has been gathered or ruched, printed on woven cotton. Here, the use of a tromp l’oeil effect suggests more fabric than is actually present in a given length of the design.

White designed this pattern, originally in twelve different colorways, for Warner Fabrics, a company famous for pushing the postmodern envelope. The self-reference of a fabric within a fabric is an example of how designers can express postmodernist ideas through textiles. The design firm (which still exists) values creative freedom for their designers who, in the 1980s took fresh, ironic perspectives on historic style fabrics. The country home look, complete with balloon shades, had become fashionable in interior design and Panache, which seems to reference the voluminous window treatments, was a bold reaction to that trend.

Other contemporary trompe l’oeil textile references can seen in Junichi Arai’s Nuno Me Gara (1981) and  Paul Wunderlich’s Faltenwurf wallcovering. Today, the deceptive device has been employed beyond the realm of interiors and textiles and can even be seen in elaborate sidewalk chalk drawings and in trendy handbags.

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.

In the genteel Victorian parlor, fashionable women participated in various leisurely pursuits, like making needlework and playing musical instruments. In what today is a more unusual activity, women transformed the hair of a loved one—either deceased or living—into a picture to be hung on the wall or into a piece of jewelry to be worn. Although hair work in England existed as early as the seventeenth century, it expanded in the nineteenth century as one of the many mourning customs women practiced. The brooch and matching bracelet in the Cooper-Hewitt collection are probably examples of mourning hair work jewelry.

Hair work mourning jewelry served as a sentimental and tangible memorial to the deceased. In the late 1700s, hair work started to become professionalized, but tradesmen were soon deemed untrustworthy. Customers would send the hair of a loved one by mail, expecting it to be returned worked into a piece of jewelry. Instead, some tradesmen returned pre-made pieces containing anonymous hair, either for ease or because they broke the original locks. Some makers even replaced human hair with sturdier horsehair—leaving the jewelry with none of the sentimental attachment Victorian women coveted.

To combat such deceitful practices, articles and books were published to instruct women how to make hair work jewelry in their own homes, encouraging the practice as a domestic art and re-instilling its immaterial value. The Lock of Hair, published in London in 1872, became hugely successful across England while Mark Campbell's 1867 Self-Instructor in the Art of Hair Work popularized the craft in the US. Such guidebooks described how to work the hair into differently patterned chains, braids, and pictures, and illustrated preferred shapes, including one matching the Cooper-Hewitt’s brooch and bracelet ornament. Although the jewelry was intended to serve as a tangible remembrance of an individual, undoubtedly many women wore nearly identical pieces, as they followed published instructions or chose designs from tradesmen’s books.

Throughout the nineteenth century, mourning customs flourished, but by the last decades of the nineteenth century, the particular practice of hair jewelry fizzled out. Today, surviving pieces continue to be that tangible reminder of a deceased person, but they also remember a lost Victorian sentimental culture when wearing someone else’s hair as ornament was not only normal, but highly valued, and a mark of a genteel, sentimental woman.

Rebecca McNamara is a Master's student in the history of decorative arts and design and a freelance writer, editor, and researcher, specializing in nineteenth- and twentieth-century design and material culture. She is based in New York.

When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby in 1925, the Valley of Ashes he described as “fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens,” was a very real place. This wasteland between Brooklyn and Queens was known as the Corona Dump, where the Brooklyn Ash Removal Company disposed of the vast quantities of coal burned in New York furnaces. It may be hard to imagine, but the bright and beautiful scene gracing the cover of this issue of the New Yorker from 1939 is the very same place!  

Robert Moses, the infamous city Parks Commissioner, purchased the Corona Dump in the 1930s, and the Valley of Ashes was transformed into what would become the site of the 1939 New York World’s Fair. The World’s Fair opened to the public on April 30, 1939, corresponding to the 150^th anniversary of the inauguration of George Washington in the nation’s first capitol, New York City. The fair’s theme was “Building the World of Tomorrow”, and was designed to be the “everyman’s fair”, demonstrating what man could attain for himself and for his community.

This playful New Yorker cover honoring the World’s Fair was designed by Hungarian born designer Ilonka Karasz. Between 1924 and 1973, Karasz published 186 covers for the New Yorker, many of which featured scenes of New York. Karasz was a tremendously versatile artist whose artistic oeuvre was instrumental in introducing European modernism in the United States. Her design for the September 2, 1939 issue depicts the bustling Avenue of Patriots, which connected Bowling Green in the Community Interests Zone with the iconic Trylon and Perisphere at the center of the fairgrounds.

Karasz’s joyful depiction of the World’s fair is filled with families, couples, sailors, and even a few adventurous nuns. An article from this issue of the New Yorker explains that to accommodate the large number of visitors (an estimated 26,000,000 in the first season alone) and the vastness of the fairgrounds (more than 1,216 acres), “there are roller chairs pushed by guides, electrified motor chairs, Fair-ground buses with regular routes and stations, tractor-pulled trains of 3 open coaches, and sightseeing buses with lecturers.” If you look carefully, you may be able to find many of these features cleverly incorporated into the design. 

This paper may look familiar as it was included in the Design Is Not Art exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt.  Eiweiss also appeared on the cover of Nest magazine in the fall of 1998.  Trockel is a sculptor, printmaker and designer and is a well-known figure of the contemporary art scene in Germany, with her work frequently confronting feminine stereotypes. She entered the international art scene in the 1980s and represented Germany in the Venice Biennale in 1999. Since then she has been widely exhibited in museums and galleries in Europe and America. This design was inspired by her "Egg White" photos published in 1993. To create these images she would whip up egg whites and smear them onto a background.  She then photographed this smear and had positives made of the negatives, which reversed the light and shadows.  It is the silhouettes of these prints which form the design on Eiweiss, with each repeat containing eight smears. This paper is a good example of contemporary flocking as each of the whipped egg motifs is printed in taupe flock on a lighter colored ground.

Flocking is a very old wallpaper tradition which allowed many of the early flocked papers to better imitate textiles. The oldest dated wallcovering in the collection, made in the 1670s, is a canvas that was block printed and flocked to look like a more expensive textile. Later, as it was realized that the wool flock reflects light differently than the printed paper it was used in a less imitative manner and designs employed flock to create more depth in a design. Flock seems to be making a resurgence today as contemporary designers and consumers enjoy the tactile nature of this material. Historically, flock was made from remnants of the textile industry, with the bits of fabric or threads being chopped into miniscule pieces. To adhere the flock to the paper, the design would be printed in varnish, the paper was then laid in a trough, and the flock was rained down onto the tacky varnish. Once dry the excess flock was shaken off.

Shells II is one of a series of four shell weavings created by Finnish textile designer Dora Jung (1906-1980). It features four tan shells against a dark grey background. As journalist Charles Talley observed in a 1985 article in FiberArts, the series epitomizes Dora Jung’s ability to “sketch” at the loom, working out and refining a design through successive woven drafts.[1] Indeed, Shells I took a single day to weave; Shells II took two; Shells III, four; and ShellsIV, the last and most complex in the series, eight.

Dora Jung opened her weaving atelier in Helsinki in 1932, shortly after graduating from Finland’s Central School of Arts and Crafts. In the lean years leading up to World War II, she wove draperies and lampshades out of spun paper and linen. She abandoned spun paper after the war, but continued using linen throughout her career. Indeed, most of her work is done in linen using a damask technique. Damask combines multiple weave structures to produce a subtle pattern, sometimes only visible in raking light. It is most commonly used in table linens and upholstery. Jung used the technique to these ends in her utilitarian designs, but also found ways to incorporate damask elements in her artistic work. In Shells II, for example, she variegates the tan shell pattern by alternating a weft-faced twill weave and a warp-faced satin weave.

Jung is a venerated figure in Finnish textile design, recognized for her mastery of the damask technique and innovative use of abstract natural motifs. The museum acquired Shells II in the late spring of 1959, shortly after then-curator Alice Beer met Young during her two-month tour of the United States. It was acquired with a second piece, Pigeons, a linen damask panel with brocaded accents. Beer’s idea was that together, these two examples would demonstrate the breadth of Jung’s work. Reflecting on her trip to the United States in 1959, Jung signs off a letter to Beer, “My trip round your enormous country was most interesting. I saw beautiful collections…and the nature was marvelous.”[2]

Mae Colburn is a master’s student in the Parsons-Cooper Hewitt History of Decorative Arts and Design program. Her focus is textiles.

Tune up your flux-capacitor and take a trip back to 1984. Macintosh computers are making their first appearance and causing waves across industries, especially the design market. Devoted to traditional methods, most designers are skeptical of integrating computers into design practices. They fear that the creative ability of the hand will be usurped by a plastic box full of wires and bytes… What is to become of design when these emerging technologies threaten the very survival of human imagination?

April Greiman was one of the inspired few to comprehend the immense potential of this new medium. She recognized that graphic design was rapidly evolving and that the introduction of new technologies would revolutionize the field. Greiman once said, “what the computer offers is the power to create new visual languages, hybrids of design… you spend a lot less time doing and a lot more time looking… it stretches our potential and allows us to encounter chance.” Harnessing this power, Greiman pioneered a visual strategy dubbed “hybrid imagery” that utilized her Macintosh computer to combine various elements produced in different media.

Greiman’s compositions often emphasize the production process of the piece itself, as seen in Your Turn My Turn. This poster for the International Contract Furniture Design Symposium (1983) highlights the halftone dot size such that the picture self-consciously displays its method of illusion. Greiman carries this illusion one step further by integrating the use of 3D glasses so that viewers experience the piece in (literally) another dimension.

3D Glasses: April Greiman - Reinhold, 1986. Gift of April Greiman, 1995-167-5.

Using the rhetoric of Wolfgang Weingart's New Wave aesthetic, Greiman manipulates the typography to transform the text into another tool for visual communication. To this she adds color, collage and pictorial imagery to create a complex composition that must be actively interpreted by the viewer. 

The ubiquity of smart phones today makes it almost impossible to imagine a time when there were not many choices when purchasing a telephone, and they were not customizable, let alone portable. This began to change in 1959 when Bell Telephone Systems released the Princess telephone as the first phone specifically created for teenage girls and women. The Princess phone began a trend of using the telephone itself as a form of expression by taking a previously neutral communication device and transforming it into a gendered object. Described by its own advertising slogan “It’s little!…It’s lovely!…It lights!,” it is clear that this phone’s aesthetics were key. To appeal to the intended customers the Princess phone’s appearance was drastically different from previously successful telephone models such as the 500 series desk phone from 1949, and the wall model from 1956.

The Princess phone, as well as the other two aforementioned models, were all products of the design firm of Henry Dreyfuss. As one of the first celebrity industrial designers in America in the 1930s, Dreyfuss was responsible for creating objects ranging from clocks to locomotives throughout his career. The Princess phone’s handset firmly rests on its flat, ovoid base, and they blend together into a single form. The phone’s form is soft, curvy, and biomorphic. The shape of the phone was complimented by its pastel colors, with the phone originally available in white, beige, pink, blue and turquoise. The form is punctuated by its rotary dial, which lit up when the handset was lifted, so that the user could make calls in dim light or use it as a nightlight. This function, as well as the phone’s smaller size, indicates it's intended location of the bedroom, as well as suggesting that the phone is suited for use in personal, intimate situations. Overall the princess phone, in its beauty, and place in the home, was the embodiment of perfect womanly qualities of the time.

Despite the Princess phone’s stylish new look, there were issues with its operation. The phone was lightweight, but this attempt at convenience ultimately hindered the use of the phone because the base was too light and would move when the phone was dialed. Finally, the Princess phone did not come with an internal ringer so a separate one had to be purchased and mounted on the baseboard of a wall.[1] Despite the sexism inherent in the favoring of form over function, the formal design qualities of the Princess phone endured and were a stepping-stone to the Trimline phone released in 1965 that is still in production today. Compared to the unisex, yet endlessly adaptable phones available today, the Princess phone proves that we have come a long way. 

Taylor Alvis is currently earning a M.A. in the History of Decorative Arts and Design at Parsons and is focusing her studies on popular culture and Scandinavian design.

Sanscrit is one of ten different designs from Mary McFadden’s first collection of wallpaper for Kirk-Brummel’s Raintree Designs. The collection is based on McFadden’s travels abroad where she studied different cultures and was especially inspired by such ancient cultures as pre-Columbian, Coptic and Byzantine. She re-invents the essence of these antique discoveries with a contemporary sophistication. Sanscrit has the appearance of moving water or fire or smoke traveling upward in a vertical fashion. This example is printed in a very soft monochromatic blue colorway with a seemingly random placement of rectangular shapes containing calligraphic elements or scrolls. Overall the design is very subtle and would be appropriate in any number of rooms. The wallpapers name, Sanscrit, or Sanskrit, is an ancient language and the calligraphic elements are possibly characters of the Sanskrit alphabet or stylizations of such. Many of the designs in this collection are subtle at first glance but contain detailed elements that appear on closer inspection, capturing the essence of her fashion style of simply crafted gowns with ornate embellishments. She is also known for patenting a pleated polyester material which became one of her signatures.

McFadden had worked with major fashion houses and publications both in the States and abroad before launching her own design business. She credits Vogue for launching her fashion career when she was working there as a special projects editor in 1973. One day she wore an outfit of her own design to work and all her coworkers thought she should be photographed for the magazine. In order for her clothes to appear in the magazine they needed to be available at retail. This she managed to do and so began her new career.

Active from the 1940s through the 1980s, Finnish artist Eva Anttila famously wove, or had a hand in weaving, every tapestry that bears her name. With pieces now in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Helsinki, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, her work is considered an enduring expression of the “artist weaver” concept. As she explained in an interview published in Finland’s Taide art magazine in 1948, “Tapestry revivals led by painters produce unsatisfactory results – painters only draw cartoons, and their conversion into textiles is left to professional weavers.” A designer, she explains, “…should start by weaving.”[1]

The “artist weaver” concept has its roots in the idealized concept of the craftsman advocated in the German Bauhaus movement, and first articulated in Finland by industrial designer Arttu Brummer, Anttila’s husband. Brummer was appointed to the faculty of the Central School of Applied Arts in Helsinki in 1919, two years after Finland’s independence from Russia. For him, the Bauhaus represented a symbolic link to Europe. Eager to forge international ties, he made numerous trips abroad. During a trip to Gothenburg in 1923, he observed “In the same way as Sweden, we should explore all the possibilities that are provided by the technique in the art of weaving…” and in a 1924 article on the Finnish handcrafts industry, he reported that several Finnish artists “…had in particular at the loom found new possibilities and expressions for their artistic aspirations.”[2] He was likely referring to Anttila, whom he had married the year before.

Trained as both a painter and a weaver, Antilla was eager to engage new models of artistic practice. Photographs show her weaving with a working drawing behind her warp, but the weft pattern often appears to take on dimensions of its own. Indeed, Anttila’s goal was not to copy the drawing. It was to interpret it though what Bauhaus textile artist Anni Albers would later describe as the “grain and gloss, smoothness, roughness, the relief quality” of the textile surface.[3] With its strong vertical rhythm and stippled shading, Evening echoes these ideas, demonstrating Anttila’s sensitivity to the aesthetics of the woven structure.

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.