Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), a painter of flora and fauna, was one of the first naturalists to have observed insects directly from nature.  She was a pioneer in the study of how caterpillars become butterflies and moths, which was still a mystery at the time. Her large folio volume http://archive.org/details/Metamorphosisin00Meri  depicting on its first plate Cockroaches on a Flowering Pineapple (above), was considered the most outstanding work on insects of its day. 

 Merian undertook an unusual scientific expedition at age 52, to Surinam, a Dutch colony on the northern coast of South America.  Her aim was to study indigenous flora and fauna in their tropical habitat.  She examined, recorded, and made illustrations of hundreds of rare and colorful insects and plants.  When she returned to Amsterdam, Merian developed a large folio edition of her notebooks that was first published in 1705, in Latin and Dutch.  The Cooper-Hewitt’s 1730 volume, published posthumously in Dutch, contains hand-colored copperplate engravings based on her original gouache and watercolor drawings. These c.1701-1705 drawings on vellum were purchased in 1755 by George III, when Prince of Wales, and are in the Royal Collection. 

In aesthetically pleasing images, she depicted in the same drawing all stages of the lives of insects (egg, larva, pupa and adult) around the plants that they live on or are attached to.  Her accurate and appealing pictures have inspired designers for centuries, including in 1997, those of the U.S. Postal Service, which issued two stamps featuring her designs: Cockroaches on a Flowering Pineapple, as well as Moth, Larva, Pupa and Beetle on Citron.

For more information on the artist, see the online version of the Getty Center 2008 exhibition: http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/merian/ Maria Sibylla Merian & Daughters: Women of Art and Science.

Today marks the 148^th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, which closed “With malice toward none, with charity for all… let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds...” This delicate design of floral wreaths encircling womanly hands clasped in friendship seems to embody the ideal of reconciliation set forth by the President as he entered his second term of office, just a few weeks before his assassination.

Inexpensive printed cotton calicos were used for commemorative and promotional purposes, much as t-shirts are today, and this design, “The Union Forever,” was created as part of his second campaign. While the economics of cotton textile production and consumption contributed to the polarization of the country leading up to the Civil War, textiles also provided an overt means to communicate political and social beliefs. Women were a strong moral voice in the abolitionist movement, and had a substantial impact on the discourse surrounding slavery in the public sphere, often using their “needles as daggers” in defense of their moral views. This fabric would have given women a means to express their support for Lincoln, even while being denied the right to vote.

During c.1900 – 1914, the period immediately preceding World War I, often referred to as the "return to order," the international avant-garde held sway over the cultural life of Paris, and saw a renewal of French cultural values -- that is, "tradition" and, of course, "Classicism." When these values in design were touched by the lingering spirit of the avant-garde, the result was one of the most successful and admired styles of the 20th century:  Art Deco. Architectures, the manifesto of the ensembliers, La Compagnie des Arts Francais (CAF), represents this phenomenon better than any other artifact of the period. Headed by Louis Süe, a classically trained architect, and André Mare, a Cubist painter, the CAF not only embodied that superb dichotomy of classical/ avant-garde, they were also committed to the concept of artistic unity: collaboration among artists in various media.

(l:) Broad, clean rectangles, squares, arches - evoke Classicism, but also abstraction and Cubism, especially when intensely and obliquely colored. (r:) Though the shell has been a ubiquitous element in Classical design since Antiquity, their “ribs” and stained glass effect recalls that most French of styles - the Gothic.

(l:) The Cubist-Classical nude is surrounded by signifiers of eighteenth-century French aristocratic life: a fan, devices that indicate gardening or pick-nicking, and of course, lots and lots of roses. (r:) The form and pattern of the upholstery draws upon designs from the great French styles of the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, but the palette is totally “Cubist”.

In the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt Library, Architectures showcased this by including, alongside interior design projects illustrating the results of this alliance, works of art by some of the firm's associates, who ranked among the most important Cubist artists of the era. The most unique and exceptional component of the book is the Socratic-style dialogue by the great, French Symbolist poet and man of letters, Paul Valéry. Commissioned by Süe and Mare for Architectures, the story, Epaulinos ou l'architecte, which emphasizes the essential role of the architect in bringing ideal form and beauty into existence, provides a most French, most Classical, and most cutting-edge backdrop for the works to follow:  stunning renderings, melding the structure and color of Cubism with Classical geometry and traditional details; and carefully selected works of fine art -- a field in which France was the current world leader -- which, if by some of the most important avant-garde painters of the pre-war era, also celebrated "French-ness" as much as modernity. Architectures is available full text online.

If you grew up in America in the mid-1950s-70s, you no doubt encountered the Model 500 telephone or one of its variants in almost every home or workplace you entered. The model 500 became the standard desk-style phone in the U.S., with over 93 million units produced for homes and offices between 1949 and the divestiture of AT&T (the Bell System) in 1984. I have distinct memories of my parents' harvest gold Model 500— the sound of the rotary wheel steadily ticking through the digits as I dialed (sometimes impatiently); the solid feel and warm thunk of the handset when I dropped it back into its cradle after a call; and the mechanical “rrrring” insistently signaling an incoming call.

Industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss began as a consultant to Bell Telephone Laboratories (BTL) in 1930. Working with the company's engineers, he sought simplicity and unity of form in their telephone equipment, resulting in the model 302, the first Dreyfuss design by BTL, in 1937. As demand for telephone service increased after World War II, BTL sought a new design that would be sturdier and easier to service (all telephones were leased at the time), as well as attractive and comfortable for a growing range of customers.

The model 500 debuted in 1949. Dreyfuss's care in designing a user-based object is evident in the changes he made: he modified the angular 302 body into a softer sculptural form in a lighter durable plastic. Unlike the 302's numbers and letters directly under the finger holes, the model 500 had the numbers and letters in a ring outside the finger wheel for increased legibility and greater accuracy when dialing.  The new handset, known as the model G, was flatter than its predecessor, making it more comfortable to hold and allowing it to be cradled against the user's shoulder, freeing the hands. This handset design is still used on pay-phones today.

In 1953, BTL and Dreyfuss updated the model 500, producing it in several colors and replacing the black metal finger wheel with a clear plastic version that would compliment any color phone.  The 1953 model also eliminated the long straight cord, replacing it with a coiled one, a feature used until the advent of the cordless phone.  Deeming the model 500 a success by the mid-1950s, BTL added a wall-mounted variant to the series, introduced a touch-tone version in 1963, with additional models introduced over the next two decades. Production of the traditional Model 500 ceased in the mid-1980s, but many of these durable phones are still available and adaptable for use today.

More about the looks and sounds of the Model 500, and the designs of Henry Dreyfuss:

Flinchum, Russell. Henry Dreyfuss, Industrial Designer: The Man in the Brown Suit. New York: Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution and Rizzoli, 1997.

On this date in 1876, the U.S. Patent Office issued patent 174,465 to Alexander Graham Bell for his telephone.

Love in Bloom is a beautifully designed wallpaper that speaks of the period during which it was made. The differing shades of taupe printed in transparent colors on the reflective Mylar foil ground create a great sense of depth. Produced in 1968, it speaks very strongly of the Flower Power movement, of peace in turbulent times, as well as the use of new materials. From student protests on university campuses to the march on the Pentagon October 21, 1967, people were rejecting the US involvement in the ongoing Vietnam War, and flowers were used as a symbol of peace and made a powerful, nonviolent statement. Mylar was developed by the DuPont Company in 1952, and the use of Mylar in wallpapers to create a mirror-like reflective surface became very popular during the 1960s and 1970s.

Samples of Love in Bloom are also contained in the Dialogue 16 sample book by Jack Denst in the Museum’s collection where the design is shown in four different colorways with matching borders. Also included is a black and white photo showing a room hung with this paper.  The sample book provides good documentation for the wallpaper sample, and it is nice to see how this design looks printed in different colors. The collection also contains numerous other wallpaper designs and sample books by this company for a good view of their production and contribution to the field of wallcoverings.

Love in Bloom was designed and produced by Jack Denst Designs in Chicago, one of the leading wallpaper companies during the mid-20th century. Their wallpapers always showed the latest trends and were printed with bold designs on paper, vinyl and Mylar foil.  Denst is credited with creating the wet look in vinyl wallcoverings and also for pioneering screen-printing on Mylar. By 1968 Denst had received 11 awards given by the American Institute of Interior Designers for his wallpaper and textile designs.
 

The American woven coverlet presents an appealing visual record of the patterns and designs of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The seemingly simple geometric elements come together in a boldly graphic way that resonates with many collectors today. This particular coverlet, acquired by Cooper-Hewitt in 2010, was most likely made before the arrival of the Jacquard attachment – a special mechanical loom component from France that was made of a series of punched cards. Invented in 1806, it was widely available in the United States by the early 1820s. Adding the Jacquard attachment to a loom gave weavers more control over warp threads, allowing them to create complex figural designs incorporating birds, flowers and even local architecture. Many weavers took to signing and dating their coverlets in the lower corner. 

Detail showing the "single snowball" and "pine tree" motifs.

Prior to Jacquard’s invention, coverlets like this one were woven at home or in shops on small looms in narrow widths that were then whip stitched together to make a bed-size coverlet. Many weavers working in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states had roots in the British Isles and Germany and brought their traditional European coverlet designs to the United States. This particular Pennsylvania coverlet was made in the early nineteenth century and is a reversible double cloth of cotton and wool in dark blue, light brown and off-white. The woven design consists of a central field with a single "snowball" pattern enclosed by intersecting circles and a "pine tree" motif for the border. It was made by stitching two woven lengths up the center, the top edge is hemmed, and there is fringe on three sides. The Textiles Department is fortunate to have many representative examples of early woven coverlet structures and patterns, but many are in the form of fragments. Cooper-Hewitt has very few wholly intact coverlet examples from the period before the adoption of Jacquard's invention in the United States. For me, this was an important acquisition as the coverlet demonstrates the inventiveness and skill that hand loom workers employed using only two to three colors and simple geometric patterns to make a warm and attractive bed covering with such lasting visual appeal and impact.

The reason I chose this wallcovering by Teresa Kilham was due to the mythology behind this piece. As a child I was obsessed with Greek and Roman mythology. I was so fascinated by all the different gods and goddesses. The gods portrayed in this piece, Neptune and Venus are largely involved in the ocean which I have also loved my whole life. When I was younger my favorite mythological god was Aphrodite due to her strange "birth." The story behind her birth is that she rose from the sea foam in a seashell. This story is re-enacted in Botecelli's "The Birth of Venus" which has always been a favorite painting of mine. In the wall covering, Venus stands in her famous shell floating on the sea. I love this piece because of its mythological and nautical themes.

Though most people only know of his first wife Joséphine, Napoleon I of France was married twice during his lifetime. Napoleon and Joséphine were married on March 9, 1796. Their marriage was a strained one, due to Napoleon’s extensive travel and their inability to have children. Though their correspondence shows that they had once cared for one another, by 1809, Napoleon was looking to divorce Joséphine and wed another woman who could offer him money and children. He chose Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria, daughter of Emperor Francis I of Austria, and great-niece to Marie Antoinette. In 1810, they were wed and, by all accounts, quite pleased with one another and their union. The Embroidery Design under discussion was commissioned around this time as a commemoration of this occasion.

The design was likely meant for a chair back or wall hanging and is, in many ways, a superb example of French empire style. During and after the French Revolution, Napoleon had risen steadily through the ranks of the military, culminating in his being crowned Emperor in 1804. As he was not of royal blood, it was exceedingly important that he create and implement motifs which could be used in place of heraldic, royal imagery. He quickly adopted Roman empirical motifs including eagles, laurels, bees, and stars – many of which can be seen in this design. Often, Napoleon’s initials, or cipher, were displayed on his personal furniture. In the center of this design are the intertwined initials 'N' and 'M'. In spite of this commemorative object, very few of the pieces that Marie-Louise received as Empress were commissioned in her honor. Several objects, including an embroidered velvet mantel, a lavishly decorated state bedchamber, and jewelry had been commissioned for Joséphine, but were returned to the state and used by Marie-Louise.

This black and white photograph represents just one of 37,000 from the National Design Library's Caldwell & Company Collection. Also containing 13,000 original drawings and watercolor sketches, this immense visual resource comprises one of the largest lighting fixture archives by a single American company. The library has digitized a large portion of this collection which can be browsed by category or searched by select fields.  

Founded in 1895 in Manhattan by Edward F. Caldwell and his partner Victor F. von Lossberg, they specialized in custom lighting fixtures and fine metalwork objects during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Caldwell & Company worked with the most renowned architects of their day, including McKim, Mead & White, Carrere & Hastings and Cass Gilbert. Their work continues to illuminate many of New York City’s most significant public and private buildings as well as others throughout the United States and beyond.

Designing fixtures for many Beaux Arts mansions, their clients included Henry Clay Frick, John Jacob Astor, and J. Pierpont Morgan. Public commissions included the East Room at the White House, the New York Public Library, and the Waldorf Astoria Hotel to name just a few.  

Visitors to the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, located in the former Andrew Carnegie’s mansion, are greeted by a series of bronze and alabaster ceiling fixtures leading to a massive chandelier that illuminates the grand staircase, all original Caldwell designs from 1901. Come see them in person in the Great Hall when the museum reopens.

Pojagi is a Korean ceremonial wrapping cloth used to cover gifts, protect sacred writings, hold food or carry objects in everyday life. The primary purpose of a pojagi is to respect an object and present the recipient with blessing and good will. Pojagi is still used in contemporary Korean society but it became a cultural icon in pre-modern Korea during the Chosŏn dynasty (1392-1910).

This multi-colored patchwork pojagi was stitched in silk around 1900. It is typical of its time period, reflecting Korean aesthetics of simplicity and asymmetrical design. Each square is a different color; some of them are separated by strong diagonals that transform the square into a new shape. There is an incredible rhythm that aids the eye moving through the piece. The squares are larger toward the perimeter and get smaller and more detailed as they reach the middle, causing a radiating effect. In the center is a crimson ribbon, akin to awareness ribbon that many society’s use to represent a political issue, illness, or death. Therefore, even beyond the extensive stitching and sewing throughout the textile, this ribbon serves to further exemplify the concept of memory. Memory of the person who wrapped the piece, the occasion for the gift and for future blessings in creating new memories.

Gregory Johnson writes, “Many surviving patchwork wrapping cloths from the Chosŏn period have never been used, attesting to their preservation as reminders of the affection and blessing of their makers.” Wrapping paper in Western culture has an extremely different meaning. It is usually a decorative surface to conceal the gift prior to the person opening it. The paper is torn off and discarded and creates a massive amount of waste. Pojagi alters the act of gift-giving into the act of remembrance. It underscores the notion that the process of wrapping is more important than the gift itself.

There is something very seductive about mathematical models and equations.  Whether it is their complexity and conciseness, orderly arrangement of symbols and numbers on the page, or their beauty as physical structures, they reflect the problem-solving process in action.   

This crocheted and crennelated form, reminiscent of living coral, is a model of a mathematical structure known as hyperbolic space.  The discovery that this type of geometric structure could be modeled in crochet was first made in 1997 by Dr. Daina Taimina, a mathematician working at Cornell University. Her inspiration was based on a suggestion put forward in the 1970s by an American geometer, William Thurston. Thurston’s model, however, was made of paper and taped together, making it inherently fragile and hard to handle. Taimina found that the essence of this construction could be implemented with crochet by increasing the number of stitches in each row. With each increase, the surface naturally began to ruffle and crenellate. The result is a model with a cohesive surface and dynamic form that exhibits many of the intrinsic properties of hyperbolic space. Because of the creation of this model these properties are now not only visible, but can also be experienced through handling the surface, making this textile an excellent and beautiful learning tool.

Even today, in the twenty-first century, when we think of ribbons and bows we tend to think of girls, not boys.  This design from 1755, has both ribbons and bows, but was designed by an Englishman: Thomas Chippendale.  What is more, it was published in a book meant exclusively for men: The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director.  Chippendale’s publication was a pattern book with multiple designs for domestic objects such as chairs, beds, tall clocks, frames, and high boys – all presented in a variety of styles including English Rococo, Neoclassical, and Chinoiserie.  Pattern books, like Chippendale’s, helped to disseminate these particular styles, including Rococo, throughout Europe and early America.  Objects in the English Rococo style, such as the chairs in this design, are nearly always whimsical, if not actually frivolous, with a buoyant asymmetry that imbues them with a lively energy.  But the real trademark of rococo design is the penchant for employing S- and C-curves, which this particular design by Chippendale displays successfully.  The chair splats are not only constructed of ribbons and bows, but also languid, small and large C-curves.  The chair legs too present this curvaceous penchant and, ultimately, undermine any hint of masculinity in the designs. 

Rococo was, even in its own time, critiqued for its fragile and feminine appearance.  The Neoclassicists who favored rigidity, rationality, and Classical right angles, were generally offended by the Rococo and its seeming playfulness.  Nonetheless, plenty of affluent members of English and American society used Chippendale’s Rococo designs to their fullest potential.  We know that the Director was meant to serve as a didactic tool, because often the designs for furniture are split down the middle, one half in one style, the other half in another.  Those who referenced the manual were meant to be inspired and could choose the elements they wished to see on their furniture.  With the Director in hand, gentlemen could now “design” furniture and objects, for a variety of rooms in their house, in whichever style they preferred.  No longer was the design choice left purely to the cabinet-maker, or only exercised through the process of purchasing objects.  Now, the choice was in the commission.

Graphic design plays a sinister supporting role in Steven Soderbergh’s film Side Effects (2012), starring Jude Law, Rooney Mara, Channing Tatum, and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Mara plays an emotionally distressed junior designer with problems much bigger than kerning type. Slammed with depression, her professional life rapidly falls apart in several crucial scenes that were shot in the New York offices of Pentagram, the international design firm. Among the works on view in the office is a mysterious poster whose overlapping letters emerge from darkness; Mara rushes past it not once but twice to violently puke in the bathroom.

The bathroom does not belong to Pentagram, but the poster in the hallway most certainly does. It is Michael Bierut’s 1999 piece Light Years, created for the Architectural League of New York’s annual Beaux Arts Ball.  While sketching and playing with the text, Bierut noticed that “light” and “years” are both five-letter words. It occurred to him to run one word on top of the other. He handed over his sketches to Nicole Trice, then an intern at Pentagram from the University of Cincinnati, who then used Photoshop to create various solutions implying light, shadow, and transparency. The typeface Interstate, designed by Tobias Frere-Jones, gives the poster its suitably architectural solidity. Light Years shows how a simple idea can interact with digital effects to create an image rich with implied temporality.

Poster: der Film, 1959-60.  Josef Müller-Brockmann. Museum purchase from General Acquisitions Endowment Fund. 1999-46-2.

Bierut cites among his influences the Swiss modernist designer Josef Müller-Brockmann, whose famous poster Der Film (1959-60) superimposes white letters over gray ones in order to translate the principle of cinematic montage into type. Another influence is the American artist Ed Ruscha, known for his industrial-strength typography, his subtle word play, and his cool documentary eye. (Read more about Bierut’s design process and influences at http://observatory.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=3557.)

We asked Bierut if he was pleased to see Light Years play a bit part in a major motion picture. Yes, he was very pleased indeed, but being a stage dad comes at a price. For every single poster or piece of graphic ephemera that appeared in Side Effects, Pentagram had to get a signed release from the project’s client.

A collector of English furniture once asked me if I recognized who might have made a chest of drawers he had purchased.  It had beautifully executed inlays and was in an early neo-classical style that appeared to say it was made in London. In fact, the inlays looked like the work of the firm of cabinetmakers Mayhew and Ince who produced very fine furniture there from about 1759-1800, much of which featured sophisticated inlays in the style popularized by architect Robert Adam, with whom they worked. However, there was more whimsy in the style of the inlays on the chest. These included some vine-like trees that seemed to sway, which I came to call the “drunken tree” motif. I set about looking for the tree motif again and found it and other inlays re-appearing on a the work of a former employee of Mayhew and Ince, named William Moore often called “of Dublin”. Identification of Moore’s work is primarily based on a signed commode made for the Duke of Portland while the latter was in Dublin in 1782, after Moore’s return from London. In fact, Moore’s fine inlay work had shown promise in Ireland where he also attended a school of ornamental design before  leaving for London.  The Portland commode had several distinctive inlay motifs and an unusual method of construction using pine under the marquetry that are found in other pieces of furniture now attributed to Moore. The inlays with their whimsy are his designs: not only my drunken trees, which appeared on other pieces including some commodes at the Metropolitan Museum by him, but other whimsical inlays that appear on Cooper-Hewitt's tables. These include urns sitting on upside-down bellflowers, and a motif that is a cross between a honeysuckle and  a rather puffy and loopy anthemion that has little to do with the palm trees on which the ancients based this decorative motif.  Both of these motifs are visible in the friezes of these tables.  In fact the frieze on these tables is the same design as the frieze of both the Duke of Portland’s commode and another at the Victoria and Albert Museum.  The inlay of the Cooper-Hewitt table tops has asymmetrical flowing ribbon-ties amidst trailing flowers and shamrocks that look as if the wind had blown them, but they are anchored by a fan shape that may reflect the decoration of what was probably a mirror above. I really enjoy that these pieces have such a breezy interpretation of what is a formal style.

Asia Week  is in full swing!

An annual event in New York City, Asia Week began last Friday, March 15^th and runs through this Saturday, March 23^rd . In an effort to support and celebrate Asian art both in the city and across the nation, galleries, auction houses, museums and cultural institutions in New York  host sales, exhibitions, lectures and other special events.

In keeping with this citywide focus on the long-standing influence of Asian art is today’s object, a Chinese rank badge. Both visually striking and culturally significant, this badge is dated to 1391-1527, situating it within the Ming Dynasty, which was extant from 1398-1644. Though the tradition is said to have originated even earlier, it was during this time when the practice of identifying the ranks of Chinese government and military officials with badges worn on the front and back of robes was standardized. These badges were conferred only by the emperor and earned through the rigorous study of Confucian classics. Individuals could only progress through the ranks by examination making each successive rank all the more noble.[1]

The symbolism woven into this badge tells us it would have been worn by a civilian of the first and highest rank. Traditionally there are two sets of ranks: military and civilian. Military ranks are represented by mythological and real animals symbolizing courage, while the nine civilian ranks are represented by birds, which in Chinese culture are traditionally aligned with literary enlightenment and scholarship.[2] This badge features a pair of cranes with their wings spread, floating across a metallic golden sky punctuated with multicolored, modeled clouds of various shades of green, blue, red and yellow. In both the Ming and the Qing (1644-1911) Dynasties, the first rank was signaled by the crane or xianhe, identifiable here by their red crowns. The crane came to symbolize immortality, longevity and wisdom because Chinese mythology held that they could live thousands of years. Cranes also have physical attributes associated with longevity such as white feathers, and long tails and necks. In addition to alluding to heaven, the swirling clouds that serve as a background of the badge are also symbols of longevity.[3] This auspicious imagery makes the badge an apt marker for a high-ranking scholar and civil official.

The theme of longevity recurs in Chinese culture and art, as well as in other Asian cultures, signaling a shared reverence for wisdom and pursuit of a long, fruitful life. This reverence, as well as the longevity of Asian art traditions themselves, lives on thanks to Asia Week New York. Check out the rest of this year’s Asia Week events here!

I grew up next to a large church whose expansive grounds and cemetery became a wonderland in my imagination. However, searching for ghosts and playing a variety of elaborate games of make-believe had nothing on what would happen to the walls of the church at night. Standing outside, the light burst through the stained glass windows, displaying intricate stories in bright colors. As a child, my friends and I would spend what felt like hours making up tales of heroism and basking in the rays of colored lights illuminating the ground around us.

Steven Holl's design for the Chapel of St. Ignatius at Seattle University in Seattle, Washington, took this play of light and color to tell a story and lead the congregation in meditation a step further. Integrating what is described on concept sketches as “seven different bottles of light in a stone box” with Jesuit spiritual exercises, colored windows in the undulating roof funnel light into the interior. Each color corresponds with a different aspect of Catholic worship: the processional area, the narthex, choir, east and west naves, blessed sacrament chapel, and reconciliation chapel. During the day, the colors wash their perspective spaces, bathing the interior in color. At night, the light from the church radiates outward, acting as a beacon of colored lights.

Of the space, Steven Holl and Associates has stated: “...[T]the metaphor of light is shaped in different volumes emerging from the roof whose irregularities aim at different qualities of light: East facing, South facing, West and North facing, all gathered together for one united ceremony. Each of the light volumes corresponds to a part of the program of Jesuit Catholic worship. The south-facing light corresponds to the procession, a fundamental part of the mass. The city-facing north light corresponds to the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament and to the mission of outreach to the community. The main worship space has a volume of east and west light.”

The planning around the full meditative experience is what creates the beauty of Chapel of St. Ignatius. From the reflective pool in front of the chapel to the color-washed interior concrete walls, Steven Holl and Associates created an integrated experience, beginning with the watercolor concept sketches. In a time of computer drafting and Illustrator, the details created by hand in the concept sketches are telling of the kind of care and consideration that firm took in creating the place of worship, and have become artworks in and of themselves. This concept sketch owned by the Cooper-Hewitt shows the exterior of the building from the side and front view. The intricate planning earned Holl an award from the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

Weaver and textile designer Dorothy Liebes had twin obsessions: texture and color, both exemplified by this sample from the museum’s collection.

Liebes’ textiles were known for her innovative use of yarns of different materials and weights to create textured surfaces. She also employed inventive weave structures to create texture, as seen in this sample, where the woven, raised pile squares create a soft, sculptural surface to the fabric. The staggered rows of pile also constitute an integral part of the lively design. The use of looped pile was a staple in Liebes’ design repertoire. She used it a multitude of ways both in her custom handwoven upholstery and curtain fabrics as well as her designs for commercial applications such as bedspreads.

For Liebes, color was a “universal language.”  She was well known for her sharp and daring, yet effective use of bold colors. Growing up in San Francisco, she was inspired by the bright colors, especially reds, she saw in Chinese and Mexican art and garments. An intense red is the focal point in the museum’s sample. The red pile squares stand out against the predominantly dark blue background. At the same time, the contrast is softened as the red pile is fully integrated into the fabric through the use of the same red in the ground weave. As Liebes said, color “speaks best in combination.”

Liebes believed “we are born with a love of color, [but] not color taste!”  Thus it was up to the designer, “the purveyor and creator of ideas” to find ways to use color successfully. Good design for Liebes was an effective synthesis of color, form, pattern, and texture.   The museum’s sample is a superb illustration of what this meant in practice.

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

Robert John Thornton (1768-1837) was a British physician and botanic enthusiast who published perhaps the most famous florilegium, or treatise on flowers, as a tribute to the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778).  It was aimed at wealthy amateur flower fanciers rather than scientists. The most ambitious part of this work was the third part, called the Temple of Flora (1799-1807), and described as “Picturesque botanical plates, illustrative of the sexual system of Carolus von Linnaeus.”  It included thirty-three folio-size plates of exotic flowers set in evocative backgrounds.   The color plates were designed by “all the most eminent British artists” and were engraved in aquatint, stipple and line, and hand-finished in color.  They represent a romantic notion of flower portraits set in what Thornton called “scenery appropriate to the subject,” but which was sometimes mystical and moody.   Link to the entire volume http://archive.org/details/mobot31753003125132

Each plate is accompanied by commentary on the flower portrayed that is often more romantic and poetic  than scientific.  The “Maggot-bearing Stapelia” above depicts in the foreground the stapelia hirsute , a species of succulent plant with hairy and odorous flowers, that has attracted an insect and a snake, against a picturesque background of a mountain, pine trees and a stream.  Thornton’s describes the “something of an animal appearance” of the hairy flower and the horror of the scene.

Originally intended as a much larger work of 70 proposed plates, the publication ran into financial difficulties and was never completed.   Thornton depleted his fortune to publish the work and died destitute.  The images in the Temple of Flora continue to intrigue and have been popularized in several  facsimile editions and exhibitions.  http://exhibitions.nypl.org/treasures/items/show/143

This blueprint in the Cooper-Hewitt collection depicts architect William Lescaze's radical and trendsetting four-story townhouse at 211 East 48th Street, New York. Little, if any, changes were made between this design—or between a sketch, also in the museum's collection—and the final structure, built in 1933–34. Lescaze's townhouse, which he used as his home and office, re-imagined the standard row house and introduced the first modernist-style townhouse in New York, and possibly in the US.

In the 1930s, and even today, most residential urban blocks were filled with highly ornamented nineteenth-century townhouses—single-family structures in a series of houses connected by a common side wall—of brownstone, brick, and limestone. Lescaze's, instead, has a flat facade, large, horizontal windows of glass brick, and stucco walls. As a modernist architect, Lescaze did not believe in adding ornament to a building; he chose materials with function in mind, and any decorative effects created were simply happy accidents.

The Swiss-born designer followed European examples with the choice of glass bricks, seen on all four stories, but was one of the first architects in the US to use this material. A note, perhaps affixed to the blueprint by a curator in 1937 when the print was acquired, is telling: "Sketch by William Lescaze / for the first house with glass in New York, September, 1933." He was making history, but history-making was not necessarily his goal: designing a functional residence was. The glass bricks allow light to enter the interior while retaining privacy and blocking an uninteresting view of a brownstone across the street. Anyone who has lived in a city knows plate-glass windows require blinds to avoid public observation or to avoid observing the public, which results in limited natural light. In this structure, Lescaze solved one of city residents' constant annoyances.

Soon after the building's construction and throughout the 1930s, glass bricks became a symbol of high-style modernism. The townhouse, which was named a landmark in 1976 and still stands today, inspired and influenced other architects to reinvent the nineteenth-century residence. The 1930s through 1950s saw the construction of at least seven other modernist-style structures without ornamentation, flat facades, and horizontal windows, and additionally, Lescaze was commissioned to design two similar structures for Upper East Side clients.

Today, architects continue to reinvent the townhouse, with varying degrees of acceptance from their neighbors or the design community. But when wandering around city streets and passing row houses with glass brick or horizontal windows, or even those that resemble nothing the city has ever seen before—Matthew Baird's Greenwich Village Townhouse, for one—it is worth remembering Lescaze, who set the groundwork for reinventing the New York townhouse.

“The trip was … one of risk … no one is allowed to sketch alive there … an artist who ventured there was shot while attempting a sketch … I flung open my sketchbook and drew the scene roughly … we then dashed down the path and seized another view and so on sketching and running...”[1] Frederic Edwin Church thus describes snatching a sketch in Petra.  The perils of plein-air painting have long been admired—a 19th century version of the photo-journalist in the trenches.  This oil sketch, probably a studio distillation of a scene painted outdoors on Goat Island, Niagara Falls, shows hasty hand- and brushwork, a feature of Church’s work less celebrated in his time than his more “finished” paintings.  The latter were esteemed for their uniform surfaces: devoid of the artist’s mark, they purportedly revealed only  “true,” “objective” nature. By contrast, his sketches reveal the artist’s initial impulse, his chosen focus, his process, and his thinking.

Viewing Church’s icy perch at Niagara’s edge reminds me of my own experiences painting outdoors in winter by frozen water, speedily brushing the sun’s cast colors onto canvas as they change before my eyes, my numbing hands producing decisive, unpredictable brush strokes. I can appreciate the gleeful challenge of capturing water, ice and mist in paint under duress.

In Church’s sketch the tower acts as an anchor against the rush of waves, ice, wind and air. Here, in this lull in the awe-inspiring onslaught of the Falls, diagonal streaks of orange-red move through the vapors, background and foreground collapsing in diagonal slashes.

Church and his friend and teacher Thomas Cole and others (collectively, “The Hudson River School”) isolated “pure” nature amidst a rising industrial American landscape. Omitting signs of modern life, they believed that in “pure” nature God’s presence unfolds. Adventuring to paint America’s natural wonders, the Hudson River painters enhanced the allure of increasingly touristic sites, resulting in commerce and industry that de-enhanced the very bucolic views the artists propagated.

The ephemeral quality of Church’s sketches is closer to modern taste than his “finished” paintings.  An exhibit, Through American Eyes: Frederic Church and the Landscape Oil Sketch, through April 28, at the National Gallery in London, includes some Niagara sketches from the Cooper-Hewitt collection.