Eiko Ishioka was a prolific and revolutionary designer. She contributed enormously to the fields of art direction, graphic design, production, as well as costume design for film, theater and opera. Based in part on her innovative work for the Japanese cosmetic manufacturing company, Shiseido, Ishioka was hired as the chief art director for a new breed of Japanese department store called Parco. The establishment was centered on the philosophy that the Japanese youth needed a platform to establish their identity in connection with the rest of the world, particularly the West. Parco used profits from retail and commercial ventures to fund and support theater, book publishing, art exhibitions and film showings. The poster featured here, The Theater Very Parco, is part of a larger series of advertising images (likely produced in 1980) for which Ishioka served as creative director. Each poster is illustrated by a different artist and features a different department of Parco: shoes, dress, music, sports, kimono, book, restaurant, and theater.

This poster does not showcase a physical consumer product, but rather displays the sensibility of the Parco establishment. In attempting to develop a uniquely Japanese identity in post-war society, relationships between East and West were a particularly prominent aspect of Ishioka’s program for Parco. Her aesthetic is decidedly unconventional and often delves into the realms of surrealism and eroticism in order to jolt viewers out of their preconceived perspectives. Like much of Ishioka’s work, this poster presents and questions voyeurism particularly in the context of the relationship between Japan and the West. 

The seemingly bizarre composition features a diagonal row of Caucasian men pictured from behind, all of whom are dressed in identical suits using a long floor urinal. The arrival of a new, distinctly hatless man in the foreground has pulled the attention of one man in the midst of his vulnerable position at the urinal. The rest of the men in line are unaware of the presence of the newcomer approaching them from behind. Ishioka seems to be commenting both on the fascination of Western culture in Japan, as well as the subversion of the stereotypical conception of voyeurism as focused on the female nude (Asian) body. 

Born in 1917 in the remote Russian town of Vladivostak, Irena Brynner was raised in a tightly knit two family household. However, the families were dispersed in 1928 due to political upheaval that forced Brynner and her parents to relocate to Manchuria.[1] Brynner left Manchuria to study painting and sculpture in Lausanne, Switzerland but returned to her family in 1939. After her father’s death, accusations of spying made against the family by the Japanese government forced Irena and her mother to flee, first to Beijing and shortly thereafter to San Francisco. In a firsthand account of her early life, Brynner expresses the impacts of both the warmth of her family life and the tumultuousness of political unrest. The bearing of each of these aspects can be seen as having indirect influence on the execution of her works. [2] Brynner first became interested in Craft mediums in San Francisco as a way to provide financial support for her mother. Though she started out working in ceramic she soon turned to jewelry processes under the guidance of Franz Bergmann and began making her own jewelry line at home in 1950. [3]

The influence of Brynner’s earlier classical training is notable in the example of these “wrap around” earrings. While sculptural in form the draping, lace-like elements also read as painterly, meandering brushstrokes. These forms were created through the process of lost-wax casting, in which each earring is first rendered in wax and then used to create a re-usable mold from which multiple forms may be cast. Though made in multiple, these earrings are also hand-forged, with each pair tailored to the individual wearer. In an interview Brynner speaks about the design of these earrings stating, "Lots of people that saw my things wanted to copy it, and then they come and they say, ‘It doesn’t work. People can’t wear it.’ Because if it is not fitted exactly to your ear, the wire will start pressing a little bit somewhere in the back. You can’t stand it. It really hurts.”

These earrings are an example of a design solution in direct response to the issue of individual wearability but are also an example of innovation borne out of technical limitations. Because oxygen torches were prohibited in New York apartments, Brynner was limited in how she could create works in metal. She circumvented this issue through her application of the lost-wax process.[4]

Though Brynner stated that she was not overtly political in her artistic expression she attributed vivid childhood memories as being significant to her personal and artistic development.[5] It is clear, from her initial arrival at jewelry as a medium to her execution of these unique forms, that Irena Brynner’s work points to the life of a woman for whom flexibility and ingenuity were crucial.

Adriane Dalton is a graduate student in the History of Decorative Arts and Design at Parsons The New School for Design. She is a studio jeweler, illustrator, and writer whose interest in adornment overlaps both her artistic and academic pursuits.

In 1947 the Cooper Union received a sample book featuring the new wallpaper collection designed by Dorothy Liebes for United Wallpapers. The book contains eight different patterns with each shown in multiple colorways. The patterns are all based on the hand-loomed woven fabrics for which Liebes had become known. She introduced color and texture into her fabrics and incorporated unexpected materials such as rawhide, cellophane, bamboo strips and metal threads. While she is known for the beautiful colors and textures of her hand-loomed fabrics, she was also adept at translating these values into terms understood by industry, working directly with manufacturers, so fabrics in the style of her originals could be mass produced and enjoyed by all. She stated that her “…satisfaction comes from designing something aesthetically decent at a price people can afford.”ⁱ  Liebes has been credited with inspiring the color revival in the post-war years. The war years were bleak ones indeed for the wallpaper market as manufacturer’s were not allowed to introduce new patterns as all the raw materials necessary for new print rollers, etc. were needed for the war effort. This meant the same patterns kept getting printed each year, so I’m sure Liebes’s wallpapers seemed very fresh and were much appreciated. All the designs in this book are plaids or stripes in the tradition of her woven fabrics, avoiding the traditional floral and medallion designs currently popular. All of the patterns are printed on paper embossed to look like textile weaves so at first glance they do appear to be woven. They are printed with highlights of metallic colors, simulating her use of metallic and synthetic threads in her loom woven fabrics. None of her patterns were designed to be used in specific rooms as each is subtle enough to be appropriate in any room. These were definitely designed to form the background of the room, with the subtle patterns and textures complementing the interior without overwhelming.

Dorothy Liebes was a native of Santa Rosa, CA and was educated at schools in both California and New York. She began her working life as a painter in California but her love of texture used along with color led her to take up weaving. She ended up with a studio on Lexington Avenue in New York City.

ⁱ The Washington Post, Sept. 23, 1972. “Dorothy W. Liebes, Famed Designer” by Sarah Booth Conroy, pg. C10.

California textile artist Lydia van Gelder (1911-2012) created this piece for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE) in San Francisco. Having taken up weaving only several years before, her inclusion in the GGIE marks the beginning of a distinguished career as both an exhibiting artist and textile arts educator. Best known now for her contributions to the fiber art movement of the 1960s and 70's, it also serves as a unique reminder of her early engagement with the modernist aesthetics championed at the Exposition.

The 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition unfolded over the course of eight months on San Francisco's newly-minted purpose-built Treasure Island. The exhibition’s architectural program merged design elements from both eastern and western pacific coasts in a modern style then dubbed pacifica. Massive windowless exhibition palaces over 100 feet high were intended to "give the effect of an ancient walled city."[1] Pictured here, the Palace of Fine and Decorative Arts reflects this aesthetic. Inside, the Palace was divided into three main exhibition halls: contemporary American Art, contemporary European art, and Decorative Arts, positioned center front. Selected under the direction of textile designer Dorothy Wright Liebes, Van Gelder was among 110 artist-craftspeople exhibited in the Decorative Arts hall. Nearly a quarter of those exhibited were Californian, signaling the vitality of the state’s arts and crafts sector to the Exposition’s more than ten million visitors.

Historian Melissa Leventon describes California textile design of the 1930s as largely architecture- and industry-focused, responding to California's recent population surge and subsequent housing boom. Textile designers, she explains, were often called upon to soften the hard lines of modernist interiors.[2]Houses on a Street was one of three pieces donated to the museum by van Gelder in 1996. The other two, Study for Houses on a Street and a placemat of the same subject, reveal the development of the motif and its multiple interior applications. This piece reflects the reciprocal relationship between modernist textile and architectural design, not least in its subject.

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

At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the population of refugees increased rapidly. Among them were thousands of children who had evacuated to other European countries, such as the USSR and France, however, many stayed under the support of the Republican government of Spain. By 1937, government- funded housing welcomed refugee and orphaned communities. This poster most likely recognizes the Republic’s effort to promote residential support for children throughout the war.

Towards the bottom-left, a woman nurtures a child sitting on her lap. The woman’s position expresses the motherly care that was provided at these residences. This was an important marketing statement, and is arguably what appealed families to place their children in these homes. Most of the teachers were women who oversaw the social and personal development of the children. Nevertheless, the Republic ensured high quality living and proper protection for the children, in attempt to dissolve fears felt among families in wartime Spain. Next to the woman and child is a series of black and white photographs demonstrating the hotel exteriors and interiors, where children are seen engaging in communal activities.

The Ministry of Public Education and Health and the National Council for Evacuated Children managed the regulations of the residences. Often, more than one child was placed in one room in order to encourage cooperation among the children. They were educated about Republican values with the idea that they were to grow up as working adults in the agricultural and industrial unions, which were forming at the time. Instead of laresidencia, residence, there were other options for refugee children, such as the family organization. Yet, the children preferred to be surrounded by their own, rather than be adopted by a family. In the effort of a promoting a nationalistic agenda, not only did these homes provide a special refuge for children, but the housing program also educated them to become the future of Republican 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 the Cooper-Hewitt, as well as an intern at Christie’s Auction & Private Sales, 20th Century Decorative Art & Design Department.

Compendium was part of the "Palladio 8 Collection" which contained 38 designs by 22 different designers. Geometric patterns dominated surface design in the 1960s and op art and pop art were major sources of inspiration. Op art created optical illusions by distorting patterns, and many patterns were created using design fragmentation, psychedelia or historic revivalism. For this design Newson fragmented the circle by chopping it, then rotating and printing in various shades of intense red, creating a strong visual disharmony. The wallpaper patterns created during this period were visually dynamic and aimed to dazzle the viewer.

The increasingly strong patterns created during this period necessitated a change in wall fashion. As the color intensity of the wallpapers was turned up, the volume of wallpaper used in a room decreased. The use of strong primary colors dominated wallpapers at this time. Bright colors used in limited quantity offset the abundance of white walls, adding warmth and creating balance in a room. During the 1950s wallpaper was still being applied to all four walls, as well as the ceiling, and frequently contained a dominant pattern on one wall with a complementary pattern on the remaining three walls. The idea of the dominant wall, or focal wall, continued into the 1970s. With the bold patterns being used beginning in the late 1960s, it was common to hang paper on just one wall with the remaining three walls left bare. The shocking use of reds in this wallpaper does not allow it to fade into the background.

Virginia Hamill, one of the first American women in the field of industrial design, called herself a “decorative art consultant.” Under this broad title, she gained prominence as an exhibition organizer and designer, retail merchandiser, product stylist, and interior designer and educator. She was influential in her use of department store exhibitions to introduce European modernist design to mainstream American consumers. Hamill may be best known as the Executive Director of R.H. Macy and Co.’s 1928 International Exposition of Art and Industry, for which she scouted, selected, and organized hundreds of examples of furniture and objects by a wide range of international designers. [i] Hamill also recognized the practicality of collaborating with American designers and manufacturers as they modernized their products.

This compact fitted tea service—teapot, creamer, sugar bowl, and tray—was part of the Dinette line of tea sets geared for the modern-minded woman. Considered revolutionary, the sets were created by the International Silver Company’s Wilcox Silver Plate division as a modern line, space savers for the small rooms common in city apartments of the time. The Dinette set was first developed by Wilcox staff designer Jean George Theobald, whose background was in jewelry design, but the company engaged Hamill to refine and modernize the forms. Hamill was one of the few women practicing product design in the 1920s and 30s, the early years of industrial design. This set characterizes an emphasis on function and process by utilizing clean and simple cylindrical forms with flat, circular, tightly fitted lids and trapezoidal ebonized wood handles that are easy to grasp and hold. The teapot, sugar bowl, and creamer nestle together in the shaped tray. The set could be easily carried as a unit and required less storage space in the apartments of design-savvy urbanites.

While the Wilcox Silver Plate Company produced Dinette sets in silver-plated metal, this example by Old Colony Pewter is made of polished pewter, a cheaper alternative to silver-plate. Durable and easier to clean than silver, polished pewter also has a soft luster. The Dinette set's smooth, pristine surfaces lent themselves to personalization through the addition of a monogram: here a bold block letter G is prominently engraved on each piece in the set.

The level of sophistication demonstrated by this design is not surprising given Hamill’s extensive exposure to European modernist works. One contemporary art critic and journalist considered the Dinette set “a fine example of what can be done…by an American commercial firm when it decides to appoint a modern designer of good judgment and sound taste.”[ii]

The work of contemporary Dutch designer Nicolette Brunklaus is filled with narrative and imagination. She often manipulates photography to generate pattern and tell a story, whether printing a wooded forest scene on the interior of a lampshade, or, as in Blond Curtain, digitally printing long blond tendrils on velvet to create a curtain. The textile, at almost ten feet (three meters) tall, creates a dramatic and arresting image, with long lines of blond hair stretching downward and cascading into a mass of curls. Each of the two curtain panels is printed in mirror image, together forming a symmetrical design.

A rather literal installation of Blond Curtain.

Brunklaus, in describing the inspiration behind the design, says “When a woman throws her hair in front of her face, she creates her own introverted world.” Here, the hair becomes a metaphoric and literal curtain behind which to withdraw. It signifies the function of a curtain itself—to separate and close off. And the choice of material further develops the narrative. Initially printed on silk to move and flow, Blond Curtain was later printed on velvet, as is the piece in Cooper-Hewitt’s collection, to enhance the idea of privacy and isolation.

In creating the textile, Brunklaus opted to utilize digital printing technology rather than rotary screen printing, a widely used technology in the textile industry. Digital printing enables textile designers to not only freely manipulate images, but to print on fabric in unexpected ways, and in a single run. With quick production, designers no longer need to maintain a large inventory, reducing waste (if unsold) and needed storage space. Such flexibility allows for more experimentation and innovation in design, which suits Brunklaus well. In 1998, she left the wholesale market in which she had been working to establish Brunklaus Amsterdam and self-produce her own products. In keeping her production small, she is able to freely experiment, avoiding the compromises of commercial production. The sweeping, sensual, and expressive blond curls in Blond Curtain are one alluring result.

I have always been drawn to this wallpaper design. It is a beautifully rendered stripe pattern created using differently-scaled photo enlargements of rose stems. The varying thickness of the stems and the color contrast create a wonderful flow to the design, and while it is a strong design it’s not too heavy. One thing I find so striking about this design is that it goes against the grain of the usual wallpaper connotations, which are welcoming, endearing, or charming. This is especially visible in the media, on movie sets, even cartoons. If the producers are trying to create a “homey” feel that is inviting and not threatening they include pattern on the walls. But if you look closely at this design those are some pretty large thorns on that central stem. Ouch! This is not the usual stripe pattern found in these warm and charming interiors. This is wallpaper with an edge! But I must add that the concept and skill in execution definitely outweighs any inherent danger seen in the motif. This is one of twelve wallpapers by Tarkowski in the Museum’s collection, several of which are non-traditional takes on very traditional design formats including stripe, plaid or trellis patterns, and polka dots. And most include unexpected elements such as broken table legs, Standard drains, and meatballs.

Christine Tarkowski is a Chicago-based artist who works in a variety of formats including sculpture, printed matter, photography and song. Her works range in scale from the ordinary to the monumental. Equally variable is her scope of production which incorporates the making of permanent architectural structures, cast models, textile yardage, and temporary printed ephemera. Many of her earlier works involved wrapping walls, both interior and exterior, with repeating imagery that totally transforms the structure. One of her projects leading up to the production of this wallpaper involved lining the windows of a Woolworth’s store, post liquidation, with mothball-printed panels, incorporating unexpected yet humorous imagery.

This sketch for a book cover by Alice Cordelia Morse (1863-1961) is a far cry from what book covers look like today. With its organic forms and handmade attributes, My Study Fire is an example of the late 19^th-century characteristic Arts and Crafts/Art Nouveau style in America.

Alice Morse studied drawing at the Woman’s Art School of the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (1879-83 and 1889-91). During the late 19^th to early 20^th centuries, women designers were trained in applied skills that would be beneficial both to their professional independence and to the manufacturers who would eventually employ them.[1] Women were placed by schools, like Cooper Union, into the employ of local businesses, such as Tiffany & Company, which only hired unmarried women to design for their stained-glass window studio. Morse had studied under John LaFarge at Cooper Union and it is believed, through this connection, she retained a job at Tiffany’s.[2]  After five years at the stained-glass design studio, Morse outgrew the work and made a decision that would dramatically change her life: to pursue an independent career in book-cover design. For many, designing publishers’ bindings was not such a leap from stained-glass windows. Book covers and windows have defined borders that limit the artwork to a single focus.[3] Furthermore, the late 19^th century saw a resurgence in handmade and artisan objects, making book-cover design one of many commercial objects that were revived with the advent of the new style.[4]

Morse’s book-cover designs incorporate characteristics of the Arts and Crafts movement, Art Nouveau, Rococo, and Classical periods and even have some Eastern influences.  These designs demonstrate her versatility.  As seen in My Study Fire (1943-33-1-9), Morse combines the curves of the Rococo with the symmetry and organic arrangement of Art Nouveau which had grown out of the Arts and Crafts movement. For the book cover 1943-33-1-5 (below), she applied blue gouache in a pattern that is reminiscent of wrought iron gates, with a floral scheme and a row of delightful S-curves typically characteristic of the Rococo style.

Drawing, Design for a Book Cover, ca. 1896–1903. Designed by Alice Cordelia Morse. 1943-33-1-5.

This versatility made Morse a unique designer. Once she set out on her own, she received steady commissions from some of the most renowned publishers, such as Dodd, Mead & Company, Charles Scribner’s Sons, and G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

The cover of My Study Fire was commissioned by Dodd, Mead & Company (see image below). The author, Hamilton Wright Mabie (1846-1916), was a writer of children’s books and fairytales, but he also enjoyed reflecting on life. In this book, first published in 1890, Mabie considers life and offers comfort through moral and ethical opinions.  Morse’s cover design for the book appears on the 1899, 1901, and 1904 editions.[5]

Book Cover: My Study Fire, by Hamilton W. Mabie, ca. 1899; Alice C. Morse (American, 1863-1961).  Image courtesy of Mindell Dubansky.

The final cover evolved significantly from the sketch in the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt. While the symmetrical aspect of the design is the same, the components are different. The finished cover is in monotone gold and features one large central tulip from which grows lengthy leaves that draw the eye upward toward the cartouche (the empty space for the title) that is formed from vines bearing small tulips with curled tips. Morse’s sketch for the cover, on the other hand, is more colorful. A knotted continuous green vine meanders its way through leaves over a central yellow scalloped floral motif, terminating at finials. Gold text on black bands cover parts of the design, and the artist’s monogram can be found inside one of the curled tendrils on the right.

The considerable variation between the drawing and the final book cover can be attributed to the process used by Dodd, Mead. Publishers typically asked designers to produce two or three sketches for each commission. The publisher would select one design which was then prepared as a finished colored drawing by the designer. The designer had to specify colors and materials, and once these costs were accepted or modified, production of the cover would begin.[6] Therefore, we can assume that the Cooper-Hewitt sketch was one of at least two different options offered to the publishers.

In the 1890s, handmade book cover designs had reached their zenith in popularity, but by the first decade of the 20^th century, publishers began looking to less expensive means of attracting book buyers. Gold-stamped cloth covers were rejected in favor of illustrative ones printed on paper that was seen as more modern and economical.[7]

The book covers Morse left, distinguished by their eclectic style, remain as some of the boldest and assertive designs produced by women of the period.

This soup plate is one of my favorite designs of all times. Its wonderful, overlapping, radiating arcs create a design for any era. On this plate the design is moulded and sculpted in relief suggesting an openwork basketweave, with hand-painted highlights in gold set with pink-painted flowerheads where the weave crosses. Perhaps the pink of the flowers and the scalloped border are a nod to the femininity of the patron for whom it was created, Empress Elizaveta Petrovna of Russia (reigned 1741-61).  The daughter of Peter the Great, Elizabeth was a great patron of art and design, with a distinct taste for rococo design and French style in general.  Yet, perhaps because France did not yet have a royal porcelain manufactory and had not been able to emulate the secret formula for hard paste closely guarded by the German Meissen Factory in Saxony, it was not the source of inspiration for this design.

The service from which this plate came first appeared during Elizabeth’s reign shortly after the Imperial Porcelain Factory’s 1744 founding. The soup plate, a piece from the service known as Elizabeth’s personal service, is a very rare survivor dating from the earliest period of Russian porcelain. However, this form owes its existence to the creation, in 1756, of a kiln large enough to make plates and tureens, which enabled the production of matching dinner services. Originally designed for twenty five people, an intimate group by Imperial standards, the service, including this plate, belongs to that first era.

It is fitting that Elizabeth’s own service was made of porcelain rather than silver or gold, as the creation of true hard paste porcelain in Russia, using Russian materials, well before that of most European countries, gained for its porcelain creations an esteem at least equal to that of silver. For that, Elizabeth owed thanks to Dimitri Vinogradov, a scientist whose German studies and discovery of the needed materials in Russia enabled Russia to produce porcelain. 

Being the man behind the chemistry of porcelain, Dimitri Vinogradov would have had others create designs, or relied on printed sources or actual objects as inspiration in front of the modellers. The aim to look like German porcelain, to show that Russia could produce objects that vied with the Meissen factory’s, made me look at Meissen for design sources. But, while there are openwork baskets made of porcelain from Meissen, with similar trellis-like raised decoration, I found no plates that used this almost op-art arrangement of overlapping arcs as their design. Well suited to plates, the pattern appears in a few sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Venetian glass plates in which concentric latticinio spirals work around a center whorl. This would not be an unlikely source; French-born Italian architect Francesco Bartolommeo Rastrelli accompanied his sculptor father, Carlo, to Russia in 1716. Rastrelli provided Elizabeth with the Peterhof Palace among numerous other palaces in St Petersburg. He led the way for a series of Italians to follow suit, some of whom were trained in Venice. This plate defies finding an exact predecessor, so one wonders if the Empress herself indicated her preferences in this combination of designs.

Tapestry weaver Ann-Mari Kornerup (1918-2006) frequently depicted scenes of everyday life. Many include children. Kornerup was born in Stockholm, Sweden and studied at the Swedish School of Textiles, Borås. She moved to Denmark after her marriage to Danish architect Jørgen K. Ebbe and established a weaving workshop in Charlottenlund, outside of Copenhagen, in 1951.

A dedicated advocate of tekstilsløyd(textile handcrafts) in the Danish educational system, Kornerup was deeply invested in children’s creative development. She served as teacher and artistic mentor in experimental needlework education in her local primary school, and contributed to graduate school curricula in needlework at the Danish School of Arts and Crafts (now the School of Design at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts). Many of her primary school lesson plans are recorded in her lesson book, Embroidery for Children, published in Danish in 1969 and English in 1971.[1]

Kornerup also enjoyed international recognition as an artist. She received the silver medal at the 1946 Venice Biennale and is listed as a Danish artist of note in a book on Scandinavian design published in New York in 1961.[2] She produced tapestries for civic, commercial, and religious buildings including the Danish Parliament, the Danish National Bank, and Roskilde Cathedral. This piece, Grandmother and Children with Tulips, was donated to this collection by former House Beautiful editor Elizabeth Gorden and exhibited in the Cooper Union’s 1965 exhibition, “The Wonders of Thread.”

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

“May there always be sunshine,
May there always be sky,
May there always be Mama,
May there always be me.”

The poem "May There Always Be Sunshine," was one of the most beguiling verses of the Soviet era. Written in 1928 by a four-year-old boy, Konstantin Barannikov, the poem illustrates the conflation of mother and motherland in Soviet political iconography. The term rodina (motherland or homeland) regularly appeared in official regime slogans, particularly from the 1940’s onward, and images of maternity were ubiquitous in propagandistic visual culture. Motherhood was presented as a state institution where women were expected to produce future generations of workers and to uphold communist ideologies in the home. Didactic and authoritarian posters instructed women on all aspects of parenting – from giving birth in a modern hospital to rejecting the tradition of swaddling the child in tight bands.

In this porcelain sculpture, a serene mother holds her robust child astride a reindeer. Both wear fur-lined parkas and boots to protect against the snowy climate. It is one of several figure groups to depict the Yakut, a people of Turkish heritage living near the river Lena in Siberia. Reindeer herding was the essential occupation and way of life for many Yakut people, who sold the animals for meat and for use as beasts of burden in Russian mining activities. Here, the reindeer’s antlers are gilded, typical of the highly-decorative work that the Dulevo Porcelain Factory produced in the mid- 1950’s.

The government encouraged artists to produce works with national folk motifs, and the ethnic peoples that made up the Soviet Union were a popular subject for porcelain. The tradition of portraying people from eastern Siberia and from the central Asian republics in their colorful native dress dates to the eighteenth century, with Soviet examples from as early as the 1930’s.

The Dulevo Factory was established in 1832. Following the revolution, the factory was in a difficult position, due to shortages of materials and labor. Dulevo steadily modernized, moving to electrical kilns, and by the 1920’s it was Russia’s largest porcelain manufactory. In the 1958 world exhibition in Brussels, the factory received a gold medal and the Grand Prix for a sculpture of a falcon, which has since become a symbol for the factory.

Left: Paris, France, ca. 1925. Annual exhibition of the Primavera design department of Au Printemps department store.   Right: Paris, France, ca. 1926. Copper-color painted figure with necklace of diamonds and sapphires by Dusausoy and dress by Callot-Soeurs.         

Born in upstate New York, Thérèse Bonney (1897-1978), was a photojournalist whose work reflected a wide variety of interests and subjects. She studied at the University of California at Berkeley and Radcliffe College in the 1910s. Bonney immigrated to France in 1919 where she became one of the first ten women to graduate from the Sorbonne and founded the first American illustrated press service in Europe, the Bonney Service, in 1924. She established another career as a wartime photographer in the field during WWII.

The Cooper-Hewitt Library’s collection of 4,000 Therese Bonney photographs, 1925-1937 documents her personal observation of the life of Paris in the 1920s and 30s. The subjects of her photographs ranged from individual objects to interior settings to window displays to major building complexes and focused on the impact of modernism on European design. In 1985, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum had an exhibition titled “Paris Recorded:  The Therese Bonney Collection”. It displayed her work there during the 1920’s, which chronicled  the evolution of the interiors and designs after the watershed Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in 1925.  Examples showed  the great changes in Parisian streets caused by the modernist facades and the art-deco influences and many fashionable ways of displaying merchandise in store windows, as seen here As seen here, the interior of a department store, jewelry, a desk set, and mannequins in a store window featured the designs of popular institutions and new and innovative designers.

Left: Paris, France, ca. 1930.  Desk set for business man in red lizard.  Picture frame in shade of silver horseshoe with hold studs. Pencil in silver with bright enameled bands. Made by Hermès, Paris. Right: Paris, France.(n.d) Display of raincoats offered by Au Printemps.  Coats are made of rubber, displayed on mannequins placed in front of a screen backdrop.

Bonney captured images of decorative arts and architecture that are an important visual documentation of little photographed subjects or structures that no longer exist during this time period of Art Deco in France. Some examples of the diversity of her interests include the interiors of the homes of artists and designers, ceramics and glassware, barbershops, furniture, tapestry, lighting, gardens- the list goes on and on. Drawing from her life in Paris and experience with decorative arts she wrote with her sister Louise, Buying antique and modern furniture in Paris.  Bonney’s WWII experiences and photographs are chronicled in  Europe's children, 1939 to 1943. Thérèse Bonney was a woman on the forefront of history- in design, architecture and life in Paris of the 20’s and 30’s, and later of the battlefields.

Elizabeth Broman and Megan Czapski

In the late 1920s, industrial design began to emerge as a viable field in the United States.  Because of the Great Depression, there was a great deal of competition among companies who were beginning to rely on visual form as a way to sell products. Men dominated the field until Belle Kogan came on the scene in the late 1920s.

Belle Kogan is credited with being one of the first, prominent female industrial designers.  She was born in Russia in 1902 and immigrated to the United States with her parents when she was four years old.  She always demonstrated an interest in art, and in high school one of her teachers recommended she take a mechanical drawing course. She was the only woman in the class. After graduation she went on to teach first-year mechanical drawing at the school and said that her knowledge of mechanical drawing was “one of the factors of my ability to provide my clients with exact working drawings.”[i]  Kogan realized early on that design was about the process and that designs were constantly developing and evolving.  She commented that, “...design didn’t just happen.  It had to be developed. I felt that it was wonderful, like a puzzle, all the parts fitted in: the business training, painting, color study, and my interest in mechanics, machinery and production problems.”[ii]

Print: Rendering of Sugar Bowl, Boonton, New Jersey, USA, 1958, Designer: Belle Kogan, Gift of Belle Kogan, 1959-59-7-c

Kogan’s career as a designer really began to take off after her chance meeting with the head of the Quaker Silver Company of Attleboro, Massachusetts, in the late 1920s.  Kogan was hired to design pewter and silver objects on a freelance basis.  When she opened her own design studio in 1931, she continued to work with metals but also experimented with different types of plastics and was one of the first in her field to do so.

This serving dish in Cooper-Hewitt’s collection, from circa 1938, is an example of one of Kogan’s works in metal.  She was known for always being at the forefront of modern design.  This piece demonstrates her keen sense of what was popular in the decorative arts at the time, referencing modernism by using a rectangular form as the backdrop for a pair of linear handles that run through the center of the object.

Kogan’s career was not without adversity and the male-dominated field was inimical toward her, especially at the beginning.  But after some “cruelly discouraging years,”[iii] as Kogan put it, her firm began to grow steadily and by the late 1930s, she was employing three women designers.  Over the course of her career, Kogan designed objects for many established companies and in 1994 she was awarded with the Personal Recognition Award from the Industrial Designers Society of America (ISDA).

Belle Kogan played a major role in opening up the field of industrial design to women and March, Women’s History Month, is a wonderful time to recognize her accomplishments.

Andrea Osgood holds a Master’s Degree in Art History, with a concentration in Decorative Arts and Material Culture, from Binghamton University.  She is a former curatorial intern in Cooper-Hewitt's Product Design and Decorative Arts Department.

There are lots of ways to sort and view the works in our collection.

Perhaps you'd like to see everything that's considered art deco. Maybe you want to see everything in wool. Or everything that's got a dog on it. Or all things light green.

We've recently begun to explore a new category of collection objects: things that move.

Collections in Motionis a new experiment from Cooper-Hewitt Labs showcasing objects that whirr, pop, click, and furl.

This fan has tiny portraits painted into the guards. They wave miniature fans with the pull of a hidden lever.

Popup books lend themselves to video particularly well.

 
To see all 17 objects currently documented as part of the Collections in Motion project, check out the full playlist of videos on YouTube.

After viewing this wallpaper frieze in the collection numerous times and always being enamored by its simplicity and charm, I finally took the initiative to do some research to see what it actually was. Stylized birds and peacock feathers are intertwined with a scrolling rinceau pattern, creating a delightful frieze pattern. The design is rendered in a very flat manner with no hint at shading to suggest depth.While the design is quite intricate it is not overly complicated. The use of stenciling in certain areas creates a more artistic look, making the print appear more like a watercolor. Stenciling on wallpaper is rare as it is a hand process that slows down the production time and increases the cost.

All these design decisions made sense when I discovered this frieze was designed in 1900 for the Children’s Room at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Samuel Pierpont Langley, third Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, wanted the Museum to be an enriching learning environment for children as well as adults, so he converted a room on the first floor of the Smithsonian Institution Building’s south tower into a natural history gallery specifically for children. He believed children were more likely to learn in a comfortable environment and proposed that the Children’s Room be designed around their needs and interests. The room served this purpose, with the frieze intact, from 1901 until 1939. But the good news is that the original decorative scheme by Grace Lincoln Temple was restored in 1987.

Grace Lincoln Temple was a native of Boston where she studied at the Art Museum School. She moved to Washington, D.C. in the 1890s. She continued teaching art classes and began doing interior decoration, becoming the first woman to work as a decorator of public buildings. She helped First lady Frances Cleveland with some decorating in the East Room of the White House, decorated the United States Government Building at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (St. Louis World’s Fair, 1904), and supervised decoration for the Smithsonian Institution rotunda.
 

            A young Italian female immigrant in Greenwich Village in the early twentieth century had few options if she wanted to earn a living outside the small tenement apartment she likely shared with her family. If she found work, it was almost certainly unskilled factory labor in unhealthy working conditions for little pay. In 1905, progressive upper class New Yorkers Florence Colgate Speranza and her husband Gino Speranza imagined an alternative: a clean, light-filled workshop where women might learn a skilled trade and earn decent wages. While on vacation in Italy, the Speranzas had observed small-scale revival textile industries cropping up in Italian cities and towns such as the Aemelia Ars in Bologna and the Scoula di Sorbello in Pischiello. The Speranzas set out to establish a similar studio in the all-Italian neighborhood of Greenwich Village. The Scuola d’Industrie Italiane operated until 1927 producing “embroideries copied from ancient designs and adapted to modern uses.”[1]

This linen sampler served as a teaching tool to provide step by step instructions on how to form the raised knot that decorated many of the Scuola’s embroideries and often represented stylized grapes. Numbered threaded needles inserted into a piece of linen detail the technique for a young embroiderer just learning to reproduce Italian Renaissance patterns. While the studio’s promotional materials extolled the Italian women’s natural ability as inheritors of a storied craft tradition transported from the Old Country, the young workers of the workshop learned to copy antique laces in the workshop from instructors using guides such as this one.

Diana Greenwold is a Ph.D. Candidate in the History of Art department at the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently the Douglass Fellow in American Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her dissertation deals with immigrant craft workshops in American Settlement Houses in New York and Boston between 1900 and 1945.

This family register sampler, with its melancholy verse about the fleeting nature of life, was stitched in 1833 by Abigail Barnard. Although such samplers were typically part of the needlework education of schoolgirls, Abigail created this example at the age of twenty-seven to document the birth, marriage, and death dates of her parents and siblings.

Born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Abigail was the daughter of a military sergeant. She had four brothers and four sisters, including another Abigail, who died before her namesake was born. Abigail never married and resided with her father and mother until their deaths in 1842 and 1852, respectively. According to census data, she was living alone in 1870, but by 1880, at the age of seventy-four, she was sharing a household with her fifty-three-year-old niece, Lucy, who worked as a dressmaker.

Unlike many recorders of such family histories, who often left their samplers incomplete, Abigail faithfully stitched in the marriage and death dates of her brothers and sisters as they occurred. The single missing date is that of the 1886 death of her brother John, who was the only sibling to outlive her. The date of Abigail's own death, October 2, 1885, has been added in ink.

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.

Animal Kingdom is a beautifully illustrated wallpaper design by Edgar Miller. The design contains line illustrations of eleven different animals and birds which include a pelican, dog, horse and lion, each a wonderful caricature of an identifiable species. They are drawn in a gestural fashion with a splash of white filling in the creature’s body. Miller received recognition for his wallpaper designs at the 1951 Good Design Exhibition jointly sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. This was the second year of the Good Design show, and the first year that wallpapers were included. Miller had two designs featured in the exhibition including Animal Kingdom and another design with gourds. This is one of two designs by Miller in the Museum’s collection, the other being Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia was illustrated using a similar line format with a single object or animal representing each letter of the alphabet. The design was available with and without descriptive text beneath each image. All three of these designs were from the same wallpaper collection which is the only one known to have been designed by Miller for Bassett & Vollum. Around this same time Miller created a set of silk-screened fabric placemats which also uses the cheetah image.

Miller moved from Idaho to Chicago to study at the School of the Art institute of Chicago and became known for his creation of murals, wood carvings, stained glass and metalwork for building interiors on Chicago’s North Side. Miller was unusual in that he designed and executed the work himself.