Dated to circa 1100 BC, this ancient Egyptian lotus-shaped cup remains a stunning example of a drinking vessel three thousand years later. It only stands 3 1/8 inches tall, but its brilliant blue glaze catches the eye and draws one in to take a closer look. Only then does the decorative black outline of a lotus flower become apparent around the cup, along with a single wavy line near the base to represent the shallow water from which the flower grows.

The cup gets its distinctive turquoise color from the addition of copper to the medium, a ground quartz-based material, called faience. This type of faience was widely popular in both ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and is considered a precursor to glass and clay. To make it, craftsmen ground quartz or sand and then mixed the particles with soda, lime, and other compounds. Copper was also added before the mixture was sculpted and left to dry in the sun. Afterwards, the sculpted pieces were placed in a specially designed kiln and baked. The copper reacted to the extreme heat of the kiln, resulting in a brilliant blue color when it finished baking hours later.   

In the case of this particular drinking vessel, the striking turquoise color is not only decorative, it also reflects the lotus motif around the cup. The Egyptian lotus flower, which has many sharply pointed blue petals surrounding a yellow center, was a powerful symbol in ancient Egyptian culture. It was seen to represent life, death, and rebirth because every morning the flower blooms, opening up its blue petals as if being born; each evening the flower closes its petals, symbolizing death. The next morning, the process starts all over again, reflecting the idea of rebirth, renewal, and ultimately, immortality. With this in mind, it is no wonder that this motif is often found in tombs of ancient Egyptian pharaohs hoping to be reborn into the immortal afterlife.

For being so small, the lotus-shaped cup wields a great deal a power with both its appearance and symbolism. It is a wonderful example of how both form and function can blend together seamlessly.

Resources:

Paul Nicholson. Faience technology. UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 1(1). nelc_uee_7930. (2009) Retrieved from: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/9cs9x41z

C. Ossian. The most beautiful flowers: Water lilies & lotuses in ancient Egypt. KMA: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt, 10 (1). (1999) Retrieved from http://www.kmtjournal.com/

Massimo Vignelli’s poster was commissioned by the Napoli 99 Foundation along with twenty-three other artists from around the world as a contribution towards the cultural image of Naples. Each artist’s interpretation of the city touched on a wide range of topics from architecture, poetry and music, to Mount Vesuvius, the earthquake, and pollution.  The posters were first exhibited in Naples but later traveled to Rome, Los Angeles, Dundee and Lahti in order to contribute to the knowledge, promotion and enhancement of the Neapolitan cultural heritage.

As seen throughout Vignelli’s design “canon,” or aesthetic, his designs are distinguished by the brilliant use of typography and a strict adherence to the grid. Order and clear meaning are Vignelli’s top priorities – he only violates the grid when absolutely appropriate. Vignelli believes that both the proliferation of media and the hazards of living in the computer age contribute to a new level of visual pollution threatening our culture. Like those of the modernist school, as exemplified by the Bauhaus, Vignelli believes in “simple things that work, that last, that are good, and that are real.” Following his mantra, “if you can’t find it, design it” Vignelli uses his own standardized version of the Bodoni typeface, refined specifically to work with Helvetica.

Though a seemingly simple composition, Vignelli’s design is in fact a complicated play on the superstitious nature of Neapolitans. The stark white text spells out the popular epithet vedi Napoli e poi muori, which translates as “see Naples and die.” The phrase means that before dying you must experience the beauty and magnificence of Naples.  Just above the text, directly center but barely discernable, are two black eyes confronting the viewer’s gaze. Breaking free from the grid and the two-dimensionality of the poster hangs a totem of Neapolitan culture. The horned hand gesture known as the mano cornuto is believed to protect the wearer or gesturer from the effects of the evil eye. Hung with the mano cornuto , is a bright orange horn that perhaps alludes to the vulgar interpretation of this same gesture by other cultures. The composition is at once ominous and ambiguous; it’s hard to tell if Vignelli is poking fun at superstition or validating it, but for the sake of his brilliant design, we will have to take our chances!

Artists included in the Napoli 99 Foundation’s poster exhibition: Allner, Ash, Bass, Blackburn, Cerri, Chermayeff, Confalonieri, Edelmann, Federico, Fletcher, Folon, François, Glaser, Gonda, Henrion, Hillman, Igarashi, Kurlansky, Lupi, McConnell, Milani, Paul, Pericoli, Schwartzman, and Vignelli.

More information about the posters created can be found here: http://www.napolinovantanove.org/ventiquattro.php 

It’s hard to say which looks more lethal, her sword or her high-heeled shoes? Miss Lucy Work (1861-1934), the soon to be Mrs. Peter Cooper Hewitt, is seen here as Joan of Arc. The elaborate costume was said to have cost $1,500. During the Gilded Age, women frequently wore costumes for fancy dress balls and private theatricals. Work wore this outfit on March 26, 1883 to Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt’s infamous costume ball. José Maria Mora, the famous society photographer, commemorated Work as the Maid of Orléans two years later in a tableau.

Lucy Work was considered “the famous star of private theatricals” in New York City. The creation of tableaux vivant (French for living pictures) was a popular theater game from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century. During a tableau vivant, scenes from literature, art, or the everyday were performed on a stage by models where they would hold their silent poses for roughly thirty seconds. Upper class women were especially involved in the genre because it was a tool for showing off their social stature. As well, the performance provided them with an opportunity to try on a new identity, especially one that might not have been socially acceptable. A tableau allowed women to merge their private and public image, to discover and reveal something new about who they were.

Work’s choice of wearing Joan of Arc’s costume reveals something about her personality, and it was an especially interesting choice for a woman to make in 1883. Joan of Arc was a controversial figure because she traded in her domestic role for a traditionally male role as a soldier. Her behavior was often overlooked because she was answering to a higher calling; three saints had appeared to her in a vision and told her to fight for the King of France. Her religious devotion eventually overshadowed her gendered rebellion. Work’s facial expression and body language suggests that she felt connected to Joan’s vision and determination. Dressed in armor, what could Lucy Work want to fight for? As a member of high society, Work could leverage her privilege to wear the costume of a radical woman.

Politically, the image of Joan of Arc was frequently used during the Suffrage campaign. Joan was a revolutionary and fiercely loyal to her country. This was just the sort of image the suffragists needed. In 1913 the Suffragette newspaper, published by the Women’s Social and Political Union, described Joan of Arc as “not only the perfect patriot but the perfect woman.” She could be both radical and womanly, a paradox for the Modern Woman. Political or not, Lucy Work embodied this conflict with courage and grace.

This red glazed earthenware pitcher is one of fourteen colorful pieces of “Fiesta” ceramic tableware objects that came to the museum in 1991. Designed by English potter, Frederick Hurten Rhead in 1936 for the American manufacturer Homer Laughlin Pottery Co., the “Fiesta” dinnerware collection was an instant success with the ceramic industry and the housewives of America.

Through thorough planning, market analysis and creative development, Homer Laughlin Co. offered a casual line of dinnerware with well-planned accessories and whose simple art deco style and streamline shape was compatible with any décor. Homemakers could mix and match services of all types and with other wares already in their cabinets, lending distinction and bright spots of color to the plainest table.

The dinnerware’s chief design element was color, with a semi-reflective surface glaze. To avoid the color being too severe, concentric band of rings were added at the edges of each piece. The brilliant orange-red glaze, as seen in this pitcher, was the lead with regard to color when Rhead first designed the collection. It had increased the total cost of the original Fiesta set, due in part to the higher cost of raw material, and that the red items required strict control during firing; the losses that did occur had to be absorbed into the final cost. Nevertheless, the Fiesta red was a key note that could either blend or appropriately contrast with the other four distinct colors, namely ivory, cobalt blue, yellow and green. In 1938, a sixth color-turquoise-was added to the existing five.

Over the years of production, the Fiesta color assortment changed with new colors added and others eliminated. In 1943, the US government assumed control of uranium oxide, an important element used in the manufacture of the Fiesta red glaze. As a result of this wartime restriction, Fiesta Red, the most popular of the collection’s colors, was dropped from production. After the war and at some early point in the fifties (exact documentation from HLC is unclear), color changes included the retirement of light green, dark blue, and old ivory, replaced with forest green, rose, chartreuse and gray, augmented by two older standards, turquoise and yellow. [1]

It was not until 1959 that Homer Laughlin Ceramic Co. was again licensed to buy uranium oxide and Fiesta Red returned to the market. Medium green was offered for the first time, and what are referred to as the ‘fifties colors’--rose, gray and chartreuse, and dark green--were discontinued. Even when the Fiesta brand was restyled in 1969, in an effort to keep on trend with modern day décor, Fiesta red remained the only original color whose production was continued. After a hiatus in production from 1973-1985, the Fiesta line was reintroduced to the market in 1986 and collectors’ interest surged for both the vintage colors and the line’s newly released colors, including sea-mist green and periwinkle blue.[2]

Knowing the gap in production for the Fiesta Red and the changes in the color assortment over the years, one can see why this red pitcher and the other pieces in original Fiesta ware colors are considered worthy additions to Cooper Hewitt’s collection.

April showers bring May flowers, but these buttons tell a more interesting story. In the 1940s plastics were quickly being incorporated into all aspects of everyday life. Lightweight, inexpensive, and available in a wide range of colors, plastic was popular with designers and manufacturers of countless goods—including women’s accessories. Nylon was invented in 1938 allowing pantyhose to hit the market as early as 1940. And, even during wartime, fashion-forward embellishments like these buttons were available to an evolving group of American women moving into the workforce.  A prominent female figure in the early years of the industrial design profession, Marion Weeber Welsh, produced designs for products such as silverware and jewelry.  These winking suns embody that moment in history: as the hand-painted faces represent a more craft-based past, the bold shapes and colors hint at a very modern future. 

The buttons are made of cellulose nitrate, which is an inherently unstable plastic. Over time, cellulose nitrate reacts with elements from the surrounding environment causing the crazed surface now visible. Conservators work to impede further deterioration by using specifically developed storage materials that capture and absorb harmful acids. Good preservation practices ensure these buttons survive to see those May flowers.

Deep under the waves in the depths of the realm of the Sea-King, designer Serge Soudeikine created a world of whimsical creatures that brought the Russian opera, Sadko, to life.  The opera, written by composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, follows the journey of a guslar (Southeastern European stringed instrument) player named Sadko, and ultimately provides a parable for the creation of the River Volkhova that links Lake Ilmen and the sea.  The US premiere of Sadko (performed in French) opened at the Metropolitan Opera house on January 25, 1930.  Sadko received eleven performances that season and ran for another nine performances in the subsequent two seasons. Soudeikine designed both the sets and the costumes for all of these performances.

Soudeikine’s design depicts a red-bodied and green-tentacled squid costume with orange, green and blue dots.  A figure with raised arms, stockinged feet and a green headdress is visible through the superimposed squid.  Likely the Squid Costume would have been part of the scenes taking place in the palace of the Sea King.  The protagonist, Sadko, has won the approval of the King and Queen with his singing and is awarded the hand of their daughter Volkhova.  During the lively wedding celebrations that follow, there is a Dance of the Fishes as well as a dance of the Denizens of the Sea both of which may have featured the squid.

Before being expelled for creating obscene drawings, Soudeikine studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.  He developed his artistic aesthetic as a member of the Mir iskusstva movement in Russia.  His work is rooted particularly in traditional folk art and incorporates playful and grotesque elements rather than focusing on the solemn or emotional.  After a brief stay in Paris, Soudeikine immigrated to the US in 1922, and lived in New York for the remainder of his life.  He was a prolific designer and produced many costume and set designs, including the Tony Award winning sets for the Broadway musical Porgy and Bess in 1935.  Two of his set designs, as well as a photograph of the character Sadko wearing Soudeikine’s costume (pictured below) provided courtesy of the Metropolitan Opera Archives. 

The great degree of realism achieved in this wallpaper border was created with the use of relatively few (about ten) colors. To achieve a true sense of depth in any given motif, be it a flower or drapery, the design needs to be printed in five to six different shades, with a different wood block for each color. So printing a bouquet, with an assortment of flowers, can add up to a lot of woodblocks. A greater number of woodblocks usually generated a higher retail cost as it took additional time and expertise to carve and print a block for each of the colors with precision. While a number of different motifs can share colors for highlights and shadows it is not uncommon for a block printed wallpaper to contain thirty or more colors. In this case, five different colors were used to print the drapery, while three colors were used to create the lace. The same three colors were again used to print the strung pearls. The same white was used as the highlight color for each of these motifs.

This border panel would have been used at the bottom of the papered wall, most likely above the chair rail or dado panel. A similar pleated fabric and lace composition would have continued in the drapery sidewall paper as can be seen in another paper in the Museum’s collection in a different colorway. The border would have finished off the drapery design at the bottom. There is a third piece of wallpaper in the collection that shows the drapery and sidewall papers used together. The fashion for draped walls became popular when decorator team of Charles Percier and Pierre-François Léonard Fontaine began covering walls with silk fabrics in the early years of the nineteenth century. This trend was quickly realized by wallpaper manufacturers who soon began producing a variety of drapery wallpapers.

Born in 1801 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Willamina Rine was twelve when she stitched this sampler at Mrs. Armstrong's school in 1813. The archives of the Trinity Lutheran Church in Lancaster reveal that her parents, Christian and Barbara, had several other children: Henrich, Christian, Veronica, Sophia, Martha, and Elizabeth. A Fanny Rine embroidered a sampler at the same school in 1808, and evidence strongly suggests that Fanny was the nickname of Willamina's older sister Veronica. (Fanny's sampler describes her as the daughter of Christian and Barbara and has a birth date that corresponds to Veronica's.)

The school where the Rine sisters created their samplers was established by Leah Galligher in 1797. When Leah left town in 1802 after her marriage ended in a bitter and public separation, her sister, Rachel Armstrong, and her sister's husband took over the school. An 1805 newspaper advertisement announced that "Mrs. Armstrong teaches, as usual, spelling, reading, writing, plain sewing, sampler work, spriging, flowering on muslin and satin, rug work, and setting in lace." By 1820 the Armstrongs had left Lancaster, but in 1822, Rachel's daughter, Sarah, placed an advertisement announcing that she was returning to open a "school for young ladies." The samplers embroidered by Willamina and Fanny are two of the four known to have been made at Rachel Armstrong's school.

Mourning samplers like Willamina's, with its imagery of a tomb and weeping willow, were extremely popular in the early nineteenth century and did not necessarily memorialize a specific person. The fact that such a subject was considered appropriate for young girls, however, intimates an early familiarity with and acceptance of death. A poignant record of tragedy in Willamina's own family can be found in the church archives, which document the loss of her parents' first child: "Buried in our churchyard, Christian Rine's little son, Henrich, aged 11 months, 2 days, [died] of whooping cough."

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.

While it is expected that many people have their monograms, names or other personal devices on stationery, towels, and sometimes porcelain, having personalized furniture is going several steps further.  There are examples of chairs with coats-of-arms carved into the crest rail, and side chairs from New York of ca 1742 with Robert and Margaret Beekman Livingston’s monogram as the pierced back splat, I cannot think of an earlier chair with the unusual solution used on the back of this chair. Made for Nicholas Leke who was the fourth Earl of Scarsdale, the chair is one of a large suite, comprising twelve such chairs, two settees and two pedestals all of which have the unusual solution of verre eglomisé –or reverse-painted- armorials on the glazed piece set into the back splat in the case of the chairs and settees and on the pedestals. They were probably supplied to him shortly after he commissioned a new house to be built incorporating elements from a previous house from the architect Francis Smith in 1724.  As the fourth Earl died in 1736, this gives quite a narrow timeframe for them to have been made. Given that the chairs have his specific armorials, which involve both sides of family history when marriages took place, we are able to know for whom they were made.
Sadly the Derbyshire house, in the early Georgian classical style of symmetry and proportion reflected in these chairs, fell into neglect by the early twentieth century and the estate and its contents were auctioned off in 1919. I suspect that the Kanes, the donors of this chair, purchased it-along with another pair and a pedestal that they owned now at the Metropolitan Museum- either from that sale or from a dealer who would have bought at that sale. Everything worth salvaging, from room paneling, some of which found its way into American interiors and museums- to exterior elements was carted off the estate in 1919. The house is now a protected ruin, but we have a piece of its former glory that would have complemented the woodwork of the house, to see how architecture and furnishings also connected with other decorative techniques.

In 1927, Adam Gimbel, President of Saks Fifth Avenue, commissioned the painter-turned-designer Donald Deskey to create a number of window displays, as well as covers for advertising brochures to rejuvenate the store’s image. This brochure cover Deskey sketched depicts an abstracted cubist landscape perhaps alluding to the bright open widows of Saks Fifth Avenue. Both the composition and style is reminiscent of paintings by artists like Georges Braque, whose work Deskey would have encountered in journals or at the 1925 Paris Exposition. This exposition, titled the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts, featured a sleek jazz-age look, characterized by strong geometric compositions. The designs featured at this exhibition introduced the world to the modern European design aesthetic.

As the impact of the Paris World’s Fair began trickling into the United States, the modern style was met with resistance by American consumers who preferred more traditional concepts. Through the combined effort of designers, department stores, museums and the press, modern design eventually rose to the forefront of the American consciousness and taste. Designers like Deskey, who were commissioned by department stores in the late 1920s not only brought modern design to the attention of Americans, but it made modern design part of what it meant to be middle class. Department stores including Macy’s and Lord & Taylor used exhibitions of European modernist furniture and decorative arts to solidify their role in consumer society as the taste makers of the middle class.

By engaging with the visual vocabulary of contemporary artists, Deskey positioned his own designs amongst the ranks of modern art, while also elevating the status of department stores. His designs for Saks emphasize the department store’s connection with the high status of the fine arts community while simultaneously promoting the taste for the modern design aesthetic in America. This calculated use of modern art, “represents America’s newest venture toward raising shops and shop display above the common place and giving them fresh individuality.” These displays were also unique in that the department store setting drew an audience of average Americans and thus introduced the mode to the casual, browsing and shopping public more effectively than museum exhibitions in the US. Even today, the store-front windows and advertising materials of department stores continue to be both widely popular and extremely influential.

Whitaker, Jan. Service and Style: How the American Department Store Fashioned the Middle Class. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006.

“Modern Art in Shop Display.” Giftwares 10, no. 2 (1927): 20.

In a 1971 article, Lenore Tawney's studio was described as a "gymnasium sized" space filled with "clumps of projects in progress - feathers, egg shells, and delicate animal bones ready for inclusion" in the artist’s weavings and assemblages.[1] One can easily imagine Mourning Dove, pictured above, coalescing from these materials. Tawney is a revered figure in American fiber art, recognized for her ability to translate and combine diverse techniques and materials in her abstract woven constructions. She was one of the first American fiber artists to revive ancient Peruvian gauze weave, and even modified her weaving equipment to manipulate warp threads in gauze-like patterns. In this piece, she employed another ancient technique, slit tapestry, to separate the warp threads into the thin bands that fan into the bottom fringe.

Tawney was born in Lorian, Ohio and spent her early career working as a proofreader for a court publisher in Chicago. It was not until the early 1940s when, newly widowed, she began taking art classes at Chicago's Institute of Design, studying under Russian avant-garde artist Alexander Archipenko and Hungarian Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy, also the Institute's founder. She studied weaving under Finnish textile artist Martta Taipale at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina in 1954, and moved to New York in 1957.

It was then, at age fifty, that Tawney’s life and art became one. She settled in a loft that had once been a sail maker’s workshop in Coenties Slip, near where the Vietnam War memorial now stands in Lower Manhattan. There, she joined a community of artists that over time included Agnes Martin, Robert Indiana, and Ann Wilson, among others. Many artists in the area used local found objects in their work, and Tawney was certainly one of them.[2] A 1994 photograph of Tawney’s studio echoes the 1971 article mentioned above, picturing rows of rocks and gears standing at attention. Tawney found inspiration both within and without, in complex woven structures and in the natural objects in her midst. This black woven hanging with a crown of feathers, in the Cooper Hewitt collection, appears to tell us as much.

Tawney’s New York loft, 1994, Photo: William Seitz

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

The Livingston is a pattern inspired by an earlier wallpaper design, and gets its name from the home in which the antique document was found. It is said the wallpaper fragments were scraped off the walls of the Livingston manor house in Catskill, New York and mailed to the Birge Company. The original design was produced in the mid-nineteenth century and was most likely a wood block print. The pattern contains a landscape view enclosed within an elaborate scrolling framework which alternates with a pair of doves and a trophy of dairy farm implements. The M.H. Birge & Sons Company first produced this design around 1903 when a published illustration of the paper refers to it as Watteau. This name references the French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau, who is credited with inventing the genre of fêtes galantes, or scenes of bucolic and idyllic charm, which inspired the enclosed view. The design was then re-introduced by Birge in 1935, very possibly re-colored and renamed.

Landscape views first appeared in repeating wallpaper patterns in the arabesque designs of the late eighteenth century and continued to be popular through the nineteenth century. The early twentieth century witnessed a renewed interest in this genre during the Colonial Revival movement. The early views were frequently shown as floating scenes balanced along a central axis, then morphed into being totally enclosed within elaborate scrolling frameworks during the mid-nineteenth century, as seen in this design. Landscape views enclosed within elaborate floral medallions continued to be used in the early twentieth century.

The M.H. Birge & Sons Co. was founded in 1834 and was one of the largest and longest running American wallpaper manufacturers until the firm sold to a Canadian manufacturer in 1959.

The impetus for Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far came directly from a list in Stefan Sagmeister’s diary under the same title. Over the course of seven years, Sagmeister found unorthodox ways to create interactive installations in the global world that visualized the maxims catalogued in his diary. He used spaces traditionally occupied by advertisements and promotions (billboards, brochures, and notably a cluster of giant inflatable monkeys), and replaced the content with his personal truths.

This series of typographic works was later compiled into the boxed set of booklets, now in the Cooper-Hewitt collection, each displaying a different aphorism from this endeavor. Sagmeister states that the project was influenced in part by his grandfather (a sign painter in their hometown of Brengz, Austria) who kept his many pieces of wisdom around the house.

In his vast body of work, Sagmeister has strived to highlight a human aspect in the world of design, which he believes is by and for individuals, not machines. His designs often invite the participation of viewers while simultaneously emphasizing the physicality of the human body. The interactive nature of the Things I Have Learned… installations is paralleled in the format of this book. The reader can variously arrange the order of the individual booklets to drastically change the appearance of Sagmeister’s trellised face adorning the cover.

On the eponymous website created by Sagmeister Inc., contributors are invited to submit the things they have learned in their life so far. Sagmeister invites the public to “write it down beautifully. Design it digitally, photograph it, draw it, scan it and upload it. Use any media that works for you, paint, sculpture, film…” Through this project, Sagmeister extends his personal project to meld a community through shared truths while continuing to engage the public in art and design.

Watch a video from our new Collections in Motion series featuring Things I Have Learned So Far and see the book's many transformations!

Relatively little is known about this pair of men’s silk stockings.  The donor of the stockings, Richard Greenleaf, identified them as being French and dating from the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century.  One thing that we do know about them is that they were knitted on a machine; although we tend to associate the Industrial Revolution with technologies related to woven textiles, knitted textiles, particularly stockings, were in the vanguard of the Industrial Revolution.

People of all classes in Europe, both men and women, had worn stockings since the beginning of the Middle Ages.[i]  Until the early seventeenth century, stockings were made by hand, either knitted or sewn out of pieces of woven cloth.[ii]  Knitted stockings were preferred because the greater elasticity of the fabric allowed a skilled knitter to fashion a stocking that would fit the leg and foot more neatly than a stocking that was sewn.  The shift in fashion in the mid-sixteenth century to short breeches that ended above the knee, a style which exposed more of a gentleman’s leg, undoubtedly contributed to the demand for high quality knitted stockings offering a smooth fit.

Fortuitously, in 1589, William Lee, an Englishman, invented a machine that could produce textiles having the same properties as the materials produced by hand knitters, although using an action that is more akin to crocheting than to knitting.[iii]  While the product of his initial “stocking frame” was relatively coarse, within ten years, Lee had succeeded in increasing the number of needles per inch from eight to twenty, which allowed him to produce much finer fabric.[iv]

Lee’s invention revolutionized the production of knitted stockings in Europe.  Almost immediately, they became much cheaper because of the dramatic reduction in the labor component built into the price.  Working with fine yarn on thin needles, a hand-knitter could produce two pairs of stockings a week.[v]  By contrast, knitting frames could work much more rapidly, producing between twenty-five and thirty pairs of stockings per week.[vi]  The lower price and the increased demand set the stage for the development of what would quickly become an “industry” in the modern sense, and the use of “stocking frames” became wide-spread by the middle of the seventeenth century, more than a hundred years before the mechanization of other parts of the textile industry.

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

Architect and designer, Eero Saarinen, was born in Finland and immigrated to the US with his family in 1923 when he was thirteen years old. His father, Eliel Saarinen (1873-1950), was also an architect and the founding director of the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan.  His students included Charles and Ray Eames, Florence Schust (later Knoll), and Harry Bertoia. Eero’s mother, Louise Gesellius, was a textile designer and sculptor. Eero studied sculpture and furniture design at Cranbrook, learning from his renowned father that design should encompass a “total environment”—landscapes, buildings, furniture, and interior decoration. After his time at Cranbrook, Eero studied sculpture in Paris and returned to the US to complete his studies at the Yale School of Architecture (1934). Starting in 1936, Saarinen worked with his father, both in his architecture firm and as an instructor at Cranbrook, collaborating with Charles and Ray Eames, and Florence Schust. As a designer, Saarinen developed several new furniture forms with Eames, including innovative designs for furniture molded from laminated wood.

In 1946 Knoll Associates (Hans and Florence Knoll) started collaborating with Eero as a designer since he and Florence remained in touch after their time at Cranbrook. Saarinen created many iconic furniture designs for Knoll, several of which are in Cooper-Hewitt’s collection. However, few today seem to be aware of his first sculptural lounge chair for Knoll, the Model 61, also known as the Grasshopper chair, designed in 1946. The curved, organic style of the chair's bentwood arm-leg reminded Saarinen of the beloved grasshopper's hind legs, hence the chair’s charming name. It was created for comfort and lounging with its curved, upholstered back flowing into a deep angled seat. It also had a modernist and highly stylistic appeal, especially for 1946. The continuous arm and leg elements are made of bent laminated wood, a relatively new, light yet strong material utilized particularly for aviation during World War II. This new material was adapted for post-war furniture manufacture, especially since a number of more traditional materials were still scarce in the years immediately after the war.

The Grasshopper chair was not a huge success for Knoll, and it did not become an iconic mid-twentieth century design. However, it was steadily produced for nineteen years, from 1946 to 1965, and is back in production today. Throughout his career, Saarinen explored new materials and began using fiberglass, aluminum and plastic to create what became his more iconic pieces, such as the Womb chair and the Tulip chair, both of which eclipsed the Grasshopper. I personally can’t wait for an opportunity to view Cooper-Hewitt’s Grasshopper chair in the Museum’s renovated galleries, slated to reopen later this year.

"Drop" is from J. Abbott Miller’s second collection of wallpaper for Knoll Textiles called "The Ink Collection". Based on Miller’s experiments with the liquid movement of ink, and how ink reacts as it moves across the surface of paper, each design has a random look but still maintains a feeling of control. "Drop" forms a loosely organized polka-dot design, with a definite vertical orientation composed of varying sized dots. Each dot appears to have been dropped onto the surface where the ink then proceeded to splatter or run.
 

Knoll Textiles has consistently included in their production a number of wallcoverings suitable for both residential and commercial interiors which break away from the traditional neutral wallcovering. “The Ink Collection” is part of this group, with brightly colored bold designs that create energy in a room, rather than merely forming a background. "Drop" possesses a spontaneous feel, keeping it light-hearted and appropriate for use in a variety of interior settings, from children’s rooms to meeting rooms. "The Ink Collection" wallcoverings are eco-friendly as they are printed on Recore, a vinyl wallcovering composed of 30% recycled content which is Greenguard certified for low chemical emissions. The non-woven backing is made from recycled polyester.
 

Miller is a graphic designer and writer who studied at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York. In 1989 he founded the multidisciplinary studio Design/Writing/Research with Ellen Lupton, and in 1999 he became a partner of the Pentagram design firm. Miller has received numerous design awards, and along with Cooper-Hewitt, his work is in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Bibliothèque National de France.

Rebeca Méndez has come to terms with her identity.  Having been called a teacher, filmmaker, photographer, graphic designer, and fine artist, Méndez has lovingly embraced all of these labels.  In fact, Méndez has always been interested in different disciplines. For most of her childhood, she trained as an Olympic gymnast, learning to use movement to communicate emotion at a very young age.[1]  As a teenager, Méndez and her family moved from Mexico to the United States, where she had to adapt to a new culture.  In college she studied physics and mathematics to pursue her dream of becoming an astronaut.  After a year, however, she was introduced to something much more gratifying and more abstract: graphic design.[2]  Méndez felt she would finally be able to express her total identity and the many layers it embraces when she combined the knowledge and experiences of her life into graphic design.

In The Will of the Potato (1995), Méndez takes us through pictorial and conceptual layers of symbolism.  At first glance, the poster looks like charming wallpaper with delicate and cheery floral motifs on a cream ground. But a closer look reveals that the wallpaper is not pristine; there is a decidedly dirty or sun-damaged rectangular area that takes up most of its surface. Furthermore, there is a somewhat unidentifiable shape beyond the darker cream color. What looks like a misshapen blimp is actually a potato wrapped in latex. With her visual device of layering, Méndez forces us to scrutinize this object, but as we try to determine what it is, our view is disturbed by black lines of crossed out text cutting across that delicate background.  Curator Ellen Lupton suggests, in Design Culture Now, “Rebeca Méndez designs complex surfaces in which images accumulate in veil-like layers.”[3]  Visually, her work seems to transition from 2D to 3D and from text to image.

Méndez’s interest in symbolism and iconography began when she was a child.  Her father worked as a chemical engineer, but had a passion for Mayan history and, with fellow enthusiasts, traced glyphs and icons throughout the Mexican landscape.[4] His influence on Méndez can be seen in her invented iconography.

For this reason, conceptually, Méndez’s artwork is more complex and enigmatic. According to her, the potato in this and other posters (1996-59-8) serves as a symbol for mankind. It represents Earth, the soil, energy and strength.  By wrapping the potato with an extra layer of protective “skin,” she believes she has given it a choice: either grow roots and break through, and free of, the restrictive latex or rot and die.[5]  While Méndez’s inclusion of six lines of text, five of which are crossed out, delivers a visual interruption, the meaning of the remaining visible line brings forth another layer of interpretation to the poster.  Michel Foucault’s text, “The Birth of the Asylum,” from where this quote is copied, offers an understanding of mankind by tracing the development and evolution of the insane asylum. The text is actually a footnote in Foucault’s essay: “6. I knew, as did everyone, that Bicêtre was both hospital and prison; but I did not know that the hospital had been built to nurture sickness, the prison to nurture crime.”  It refers to the different power structures within asylums and prisons, and how those structures affect each individual’s identity as a patient or a prisoner.

Méndez has had a successful career integrating identity and symbolism with her graphic art.  She has been on the faculty of the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles since 1985, and in 1998 she founded Rebeca Méndez Design (RMD).  Her acclaimed posters earned her the 2012 National Design Award in graphic design, a feat that propelled her career to the national stage. Méndez embraces her multiple roles as an artist and reminds us that art, like life, can be seen through a myriad of lenses from which we can draw layers of significance.

1. Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit, Women of Design: Influence and Inspiration from the Original Trailblazers to the New Groundbreakers (Cincinnati: F.W. Publications, Inc., 2008), 132.

2. Ibid.

3. Steven Skov Holt, Ellen Lupton, Donald Albrecht, Design Culture Now. National Design Triennial, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000), 211.

4. Women of Design, 132.

5 Rebeca Méndez. Graphic Design America: The Work of Many of the Best and the Brightest Design Firms from Across the United States, Exhibition at Gallery 1220, 1998.

This silk bag is embroidered with colorful glass beads and embellished with a blue beaded fringe trim. The body is decorated with rows of flowers, dogs, birds, and stars. A notable feature is the inscription “Sally Exnights” and “Watersbourough 1837.” Inscriptions noting the name and home of the maker and the date of completion were commonly used in embroidered samplers.

The drawstring bag is also known by another name--reticule--a forerunner to the modern day purse or handbag.  Through the eighteenth century, women wore pockets as a separate garment underneath their voluminous skirts. The introduction of sheer “empire” style gowns at the end of the century, and the impossibility of wearing pockets beneath them, gave rise to the fashionable reticule or small handbag.

Early examples of beaded bags are designed with a drawstring closure at the top and decorative fringe or a tassel skirting the bottom. The style of the reticule began to change around the time of the Industrial Revolution. Drawstring bags waned in popularity as ornate metal clasps became widely available and replaced the drawstring as the method of closure, a style which is used by designers to this day.

The beaded bag is still sought after by collectors and consumers. Judith Leiber, Prada, and Chanel are just a few contemporary designers who continue to delight us with the cherished, embellished beaded bag.  Its legacy is dazzling! 

Jean Pearson has been a volunteer docent at Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum since 1989.

The building illustrated on this bandbox has served many purposes over the years. Built in 1808, it originally was used as a stronghold in New York Harbor for the War of 1812 and was first known as Southwest Battery and renamed Castle Clinton in 1817. In 1823 the Federal Government deeded the fort to New York City and the following summer, a new restaurant and entertainment center opened at the site, renamed Castle Garden. A roof was added in the 1840s, after which Castle Garden became an opera house and theater until 1854. Many new inventions were demonstrated there, including the telegraph, Colt revolving rifles, steam-powered fire engines, and underwater electronic explosives.

In 1855, Castle Garden became the major immigration port of entry into the United States.   Over the next thirty-four years more than eight million people entered the United States through its doors. One of the most famous concerts of all time was the recital of Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind, who traveled to America in 1850, at the invitation of P.T. Barnum.  At this time, she gave the first of ninety-three concerts at Castle Garden. Performing soprano roles in operas across Europe, Lind was one of the most highly regarded singers of the nineteenth century.

This bandbox and matching lid illustrate Castle Garden in this latter period. Figures can be seen promenading the gardens in front of the hall wearing their finest clothing. The image printed on the box was inspired by a lithograph by Alexander J. Davis and published, just prior to 1830, by Imbert & Company. The original intent for bandboxes was the storage and transport of men’s collar bands. They also became widely used as hat boxes and general carryalls. During the 1830, many boxes were decorated with sporting scenes of historical events and technological innovations.
 

The Castle Garden information was gleaned from http://www.nps.gov/cacl/historyculture/index.htm

Woven portrait busts were a popular way to decorate clothing and soft furnishings in late Roman (third-fourth century C.E.) and Byzantine (fourth-seventh century C.E.) Egypt.  Records show that woven busts could sometimes portray real people.  For example, the Emperor Gratian (d. 383 C.E.) sent the Consul Ausonius a tunic inwoven with a portrait of Constantius.[1]  While the weaving displayed here, a bust of a woman surrounded with a jeweled border, may represent a real person, the textile gives no indication of her identity.  Three textiles with similar imagery, materials and techniques, two in the Victoria and Albert Museum and one in Berlin’s Staatlichen Museen, also do not specify their bust’s identity.  Like the Cooper Hewitt textile, these examples do not include identifying attributes, like cornucopia that accompany figures of the god Dionysus.  Perhaps these busts were generic figures, or perhaps the identity of the figures held personal, rather than public, relevance to their owners.  Shading in the depiction of the jewels in the framework aims to resemble the cabochon rubies and roughly faceted emeralds used in fine jewelry.  The depiction of the Empress Theodora in the Basilica San Vitale uses similar shading to depict the Empress’s jewels.