The cityscape is a natural subject for textile design—grid-based, repetitive and boldly geometric-- well, at least Manhattan after the skyscraper boom of the 1920s and 30s. The Museum has numerous designs with the city as inspiration, including designs by Philip Johnson, Alexander Girard, Lydia Bush Brown, and Arthur Sanderson & Sons. (If you have a piece of Manhattan by Ruth Reeves you’d like to donate, we’d love to hear from you!)

Clayton Knight’s version was part of Stehli Silk’s Americana Prints collection, produced between 1925 and 1927. Art director Kneeland “Ruzzie” Green commissioned artists and illustrators, cartoonists and celebrities, including photographer Edward Steichen and tennis pro Helen Wallis, to create designs that captured something both distinctly American and utterly of the moment: “The skyscraper, jazz, and other modern notes of energetic America will be reflected in the designs,” (“Artists Localize Our Silk Designs,” New York Times, November 1, 1925). The article also declared Knight’s Manhattan to be the most successful design of the series, noting that “it is so modern that it suggests a view of all our skyscrapers piled up together, seen from an elevated train rounding a sharp curve.”

While most of the cityscape designs employ elongated rectangles or grids of squares reminiscent of lighted office windows at night, this example makes strong use of diagonals, as though floodlights were glancing off the facades of the buildings. The effect may show the influence of Knight’s “day job” as an illustrator of books on aviation, as well as adventure novels for boys. Active as a pilot in both World Wars, the excitement of air travel infused his work.

So, realistically, what were the chances that an important decorative art drawing, executed by perhaps the most important artist of the Italian Renaissance, would be discovered in the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum?  Well, as it turned out, pretty likely. It was no accident that in the spring of 2002, Sir Timothy Clifford, then Director of the National Museum of Scotland, began a two month project to survey the substantial collection of Italian drawings here at the museum. Rich in drawings for architecture, jewelry, textiles, and especially gold and silver metal work, the Cooper-Hewitt collection has an international reputation for housing many treasures.

Every day for weeks “Sir Tim” (as we fondly called him) examined hundreds of drawings.  Finally, as he examined the contents of a box that contained drawings for lighting fixtures, he stood up and waved me over excitedly. “Do you know what you have here?” he said with a smile on his face.  I said, “it is cataloged as a sixteenth-century Italian drawing for metalwork.”  Sir Tim responded, “This is a drawing by the greatest draftsman of the Renaissance – it is by Michelangelo.”  Later in an interview with the New York Times he remarked that he knew instantly that it was by Michelangelo as soon as he laid eyes on it. As he described his reaction, ''It was just as I recognize a friend in the street or my wife across the breakfast table.”

This charming textile depicting a Seder was made in the late 1930s by A. Nedby, a ten-year old student at the Educational Alliance Art School on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

The Educational Alliance was founded in 1889 to help Eastern European Jewish immigrants assimilate to life in America. In addition to vocational training and English language classes, art, which would “morally uplift the students through developing their aesthetic standards,” was a part of the curriculum.[1]

During the Great Depression, the Educational Alliance received funding to expand its art programs from the Federal Art Project (FAP) of FDR’s 1935 Works Progress Administration. The FAP, best known for the works of art made by the artists it employed, also supported local visual arts programs to help revitalize communities hard hit by the Depression.

The Educational Alliance textile curriculum was unique among FAP programs. Children of all ages participated and drew designs on paper or muslin. They were encouraged to draw what they knew – thus fostering creative expression as well as an interest in their community and visual environment. The finished textiles were sold to help fund the studio and given to the children to take home to use with their families.

 At the Passover Seder, it is the youngest person who asks the question, “Why is tonight different from all other nights?” We imagine ten-year old A. Nedby asking that question at his or her family’s Seder and later memorializing that special night, with its distinctive foods and ritual, in his or her textile. The perspective may be awkward and the design not well suited for a textile repeat, but the composition is rich in details – the fringed rug, the Seder plate, the vase of flowers, the girl’s dress (A. Nedby herself?). It is a fresh artistic view of life seen through a child’s eyes.

If you know or knew A. Nedby or any of the other Educational Alliance textile students, we would love to hear from you.

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.

Just before joining Cooper-Hewitt (C-H) I clocked a lot of time on its newly revealed collections portion of its website. Searching the database of more than 115,000 objects using the "random" search function became my favorite method of choice. I felt as if I were mining for treasure, with each attempt sure to land on a prize.  The random function gives the user the thrill similar to say, throwing dice at a craps table, but better--there is an unknown, an element of surprise, and there's always a pay off. (I'm not a gambler but can appreciate the allure.) 

The random button, however, has been recently trumped. Our C-H systems-master Aaron, developed an equally as exciting and satisfying tool. Color. If you haven’t already tried it, stop everything and give it a go—I guarantee you’ll be hooked. http://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/colors/. Aaron explains the method to his process,


“Objects with images now have up to five representative colors attached to them. The colors have been selected by our robotic eye machines who scour each image in small chunks to create color averages. These have then been harvested and “snapped” to the grid of 115 different colors — derived from the CSS3 palette and naming conventions."

It's like having you own interactive, luscious color chip book.  I was curious about whether others were as quickly sucked in as I was by color browsing. Checking our metrics I found that for the month of February, searching by color was a very popular pastime. What were the most popular colors searched? Here is the top ten list in ascending order:


10.
 Cobalt Blue

9. Hot Pink

8. Turquiose


Sometimes this happens!


7. Jade Green

6. Green-Blue


5.
 Corally-Red


4.
 Orange


3.
 Yellow


2.
 Bright Orange


1.
 And the most search color hue in February was . . . Shocking Red

This search-by-color capability is dazzling—one of the things I adore is the cross-departmental selection. As you see, the results “randomly” group drawings, textiles, furniture, posters, handbags, matchsafes, statues, wallpapers, boxes, and more. Got to admit, search-by-color does provide a new way of seeing. The color sort ends up telling stories about our collection different than those historical bits living in the objects’ metadata. Searching in ways other than by designer, geography, and so on is tremendously cool because it not only encourages viewing the collection but gives C-H's archive a super alive and ever-changing essence.

America 1957.  Eisenhower was the President. Elvis was the King. And Ford Motor Company introduced its new 1957 automobiles, a “new kind of Ford with a touch of tomorrow.”  The new Fords were wider, longer, lower, and zippier.

Under the hood, the “inner Ford” has been re-engineered: that’s “what put the magic in the new kind of Ford.”  To ensure that the visual appearance of the vehicles measured up to their mechanical performance, the cars had been restyled. In addition to snazzy new “sculptured-in-steel” exteriors, Ford offered dazzling new interior trim packages, including this glamorous “Gold Ripplewave” upholstery fabric, a special luxury interior option on the Fairlane 500 Club and Town Victoria.  The Gold Ripplewave, with its complex weave pattern, was unique among Ford’s 1957 upholstery options and was offered only in this distinctive yellow and black color combination.

Designing handsome, durable automobile fabrics required an understanding of weave structures, synthetic fibers, and power loom production in addition to a sense of style.  Ford interior fabrics, like the Gold Ripplewave, not only looked great but were rigorously tested to “prove tensile strength, resistance to wear, resistance to fading, and color ‘fastness’".

The Gold Ripplewave Fabric was manufactured for Ford by the Chatham Manufacturing Company. While the individual designer has not been definitively identified, the Gold Ripplewave pattern is attributed to Marianne Strengell, one of the luminaries of textile design working for the American automobile industry in the 1950s. According to a contemporary magazine account, in 1956 Strengell worked for Chatham, and a large percentage of the automotive fabrics chosen by Ford for its 1957 automobiles were “Strengell-designed and Chatham-woven.”  The Gold Ripplewave was likely among them.

In 1900, at the l’Exposition Universelle, Siegfried Bing coordinated the display of works by many of the most well known artists and designers of the Art Nouveau movement including, Hector Guimard and Louis Comfort Tiffany.  Though already popular, one designer in particular, René Lalique, would benefit from the Exposition.  On display in Lalique’s infamous installation was the realized object from this design for a corsage ornament, or chest brooch, beneath a decorative canopy of stars and bats.  From then on, Lalique became known as the designer of the finest Art Nouveau jewelry, and his skill and design genius continued to bring him fame for his iconic Art Deco glass works of the 1920s and 30s. 

This particular design, which predates the Exposition, is in the Art Nouveau style. Its sinuous female nudes, striking colors, and attention to detail were all prevalent elements of Lalique’s designs.  Like Bing and his contemporaries, Lalique was influenced by the use of nature in Japanese design.  He frequently incorporated natural motifs in his work such as dragonflies, fish, bats, flowers, and beetles.  The melting, molten, lines of the nudes on each end of this design reflect the lithe nature of similar corsages designed by Lalique.  Often, the centers of each are tapered while the ends blossom out into plaques, as seen here, wings, foliage, or scarabs.  In the design, the nudes are personifications of night, each helping to create the Milky Way as they throw sapphires into an arrangement of diamond stars.  Lalique's designs often displayed luxurious materials: diamonds, pearls, gold, silver, and sapphires.  But, similar to his contemporary Fabergé, Lalique also popularized humble gemstones and materials such as enamel, jasper, ivory, coral, and glass. These pieces were sought after by some of the most affluent and famous members of the early twentieth century, including actress Sarah Bernhardt.

Beginning in the 1910s, Lalique focused his energy on Art Deco glass work.  Now, instead of implementing a fluid line and a variety of materials, he introduced geometric patterning into his designs by practicing a new type of glass sculpture called cire perdue, or lost wax.  He designed numerous perfume bottles, vases, clocks, sculptures, and bowls.  It is hard to say if Lalique is best known for his jewelry or the glass work of his later career, but it is safe to say that he was a remarkably prolific and multi-faceted designer.  

Today’s luxury designers sometimes find unique ways to brand their products without a label—Christian Louboutin’s red sole, Bottega Veneta’s woven purse—while others create logo-patterns, as Louis Vuitton has done. Many mid-range product lines, like those of Apple or Starbucks, proclaim their name loudly with simple, meaningful logos. While it may seem that logos and brand identities today are most concerned with profits, the bottom line was not always the reason behind marking one’s goods.

Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century designer Koloman “Kolo” Moser and his Viennese contemporaries used maker’s marks as a way to credit everyone involved in an object’s construction, not just the name of one company or workshop, as is common today. Moser co-founded, with Josef Hoffmann, [http://collection.cooperhewitt.org/people/18046353/objects/] the Wiener Werkstätte, [http://www.architonic.com/dcobj/wiener-werksttte-1903-1932/4650005/2/1] in 1903. The organization aimed to forge art and handicraft practitioners into one collaborative group that created functional products suitable to their materials, and brought good-quality art and design to ordinary people. While material costs and artists’ near-free hand in design caused price escalation, an elitist slant, and financial instability—thereby not meeting the latter goal—the Werkstätte did certainly create beautiful products.

Moser designed this box, [http://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18767197/] constructed of silver-plated brass sheets, now in the Cooper-Hewitt’s collection, while a member of the Werkstätte (he left in 1907 due to financial and creative disagreements). The architectural form with stylized, geometric design is emblematic of the group’s aesthetic and focus on high-quality craftsmanship. And the five stamped marks on its base demonstrate the importance Moser put on a craftsman’s execution as much as he did on his own design.

The first mark, the Rose Mark, was registered in June 1903 and symbolizes the Wiener Werkstätte; it is perhaps the most commonly seen symbol on Werkstätte silver. It is followed by the WW monogram and two of Moser’s personal marks that incorporate his initials into different forms. The final mark includes a “T” enclosed in a “Q,” which most likely identifies the craftsman who executed the work. These marks proclaim that the workshop, Moser, and craftsman TQ all had a hand in creating this work. No one claims sole ownership over it, nor did they attempt to do so.

Aside from giving credit to the box’s makers in the early 1900s, these marks serve another purpose: today, they help curators easily and accurately date the object and its creators.  For instance, the WW monogram was only seen in an oval, as it is here, between 1903 and 1905. Later on the mark took a rectangular shape. Additionally, they are simple, straightforward, and beautiful examples of graphic design in their own right. The Rose and WW marks in particular are emblems of Werkstätte standards, and for this silver box, are permanently embedded into the object.

One can’t help but wonder what tomorrow’s curators will think of the marks we see every day, printed on clothes, coffee cups, and music players that identify only a large corporation. Even if we do not know anything about TQ besides his initials, and even if the Wiener Werkstätte was too idealistic to survive, Moser and Hoffmann had a nice thought—give credit where credit is due, and proudly mark your work with your own unique graphic emblem.

On a long ago walking tour of downtown New York, I was charmed and mystified to see people pulling refrigerator magnets or little alphabet letters out of their pockets and having them cling to the deceptively ordinary front of a building! They stuck! This is the test of a cast iron building. The Library has in its collection a rare, original copy of Daniel Badger’s 1865 “Illustrations of Iron Architecture made by The Architectural Iron Works of the City of New York.” They were a leading foundry in New York City during the 1850’s and ‘60’s, and this catalogue was produced to display buildings constructed by the company as examples of what it could manufacture for potential customers, and to demonstrate the diversity of iron architecture to architects. High-quality, monochromatically-colored lithographs depict buildings and examples of their details, such as window arches, columns, capitals and cornices. 

The majority of the illustrations depict the popular cast-iron facades that were used as storefronts. Cast-iron facades were very attractive to New York business owners and architects for several reasons. They were flame-resistant; they could be assembled very quickly - the fast construction made possible by prefabricated cast-iron parts was unprecedented. The strength of cast-iron meant that it could support large windows, a real asset in workrooms before electricity and in displaying goods for sale. 

The decorative elements of the facades were as attractive to customers as they were to business owners. During the Victorian era, elaborate ornament and historic revival styles were very popular, and iron facades could provide fashionable decoration at a lesser cost that hand-carved stonework.

The highest concentration of cast-iron buildings in the United States is in downtown New York City, where historic preservation efforts have saved many important buildings. A walk around the SoHo Cast Iron District demonstrates this important part of New York’s architectural history

A digital edition of the 1865 catalogue is available. Notably, the first-floor façade of the Cooper Union building on Astor Place, where this museum originated, was produced by the Architectural Iron Works, you can see it in the online edition.  The decline of cast-iron architecture around the turn of the century was due to the new technology of steel construction, which allowed for taller, more cheaply constructed buildings. Though cast-iron construction influenced the development of the steel-frame skyscraper, cast-iron architecture did not evolve with twentieth-century architectural styles, and has remained a testament to the intricacies of Victorian architecture. 

Between 1909 and 1948, the Grand Palais near the Champs-Elysées in Paris featured  remarkable decorative interiors which housed automotive, aeronautical and many other types of trade shows. For the buildings and other structures of the Paris Colonial Exposition of 1931, decorative lighting helped create a unity among the diverse architectures. The splendor of these temporary sets was a direct expression of a gloriously progressive Paris married with the work of the French architect André Granet (1881-1974).The mastermind behind many of these temporary installations was the French architect André Granét (1881-1974). In 1948, Granet's work was documented in a large-format book, which has long been out of print and is now available again here as a stunning facsimile reprint. In 1948, he documented this work in Decors, part of the Special Collections of the Cooper-Hewitt Library.

The preface states that“Thanks to the advent of modern technology, new mediums have replaced [them} in the creation of quest for beauty and artistic expression. There is no better example of this than the recent innovation of Art de la Lumière, inspired by scientific discoveries in the field of technical lighting…. the development of incandescent lamps, electric arcs, mercury vapor arcs, tubes illuminated by neon and other rare gasses.”

(l:) The Pont d'Eau,  a bridge composed entirely of water –was made by jets of water from water from a lake. This was the first fountain made entirely of water. (r:)  The illuminated fountain Totem, Paris Colonial Exposition of 1931.

    The Colonial Exposition was one of the most extraordinary spectacles ever conceived. 

 Built in the Bois de Vincennes, it brought  together the wonders of the unique architecture of very  diverse civilizations.  Lighting devices were placed throughout the Exhibition to harmonize with the surrounding architecture. Granet designed many  illuminated fountains for the Exhibition, which were mirrored in the lakes they were built on. The exhibition opened in the spring of 1931, among the trees and flowers for a most surreal assemblage of palaces.

In the foreword to Decors, Granet explains that “What follows are reproductions of lighting, fountains and fireworks (designs involving the interplay  of light and water) … It goes without saying that no matter how much care was put into choosing the photographs, these (2-dimensional ) reproductions could never really accurately capture works which depend on movement, color and all kinds of reflections. I can only hope that the reader will be able to use his imagination to complete the picture. “-A.G.

The transient nature of these spectacles for temporary exhibitions lends to the excitement and a sense of enjoying art and light in the here and now, but at the same time, it the experience of these fantastic sigths can only live in the memories of those who were there to see it.  Luckily, we have the photographs in this book to show what no one will ever see again. Wow! I wish I could have been there! Elizabeth Broman

Protests take on a variety of forms, from petitions to sit-ins and sign-wielding on the streets. In 1983, over a million people assembled in New York City's Central Park for the largest anti-nuclear war protest to date. Beginning the same year, and continuing until 1989, protesters in Seattle showed their opposition to nuclear weapons in a less traditional manner—they hosted a dance-off.

Originally begun as an anti-arms 10k race called "Legs Against Arms," organizers quickly realized that dancing would be a unusual and fun way of gaining support. The idea was simple: teams gained monetary support for the cause and then assembled in the Seattle Center House where they danced for 24 hours straight. The movement caught national attention, even receiving a national media award, and brought in an estimated 50 to 80 thousand dollars a year in ad revenue alone. Locally, over a thousand people turned out each year in support of the fundraiser.

Art Chantry's posters for the event, the most recognized being his poster, Give Peace a Dance, from 1986, captured the idea of dancing as a means of protest. The poster, created from newspaper clippings overlaid with type, doodles, and splashes of color, is a visually overwhelming—yet catchy—graphic. His use of a large, bold sans-serif font makes a clear statement that doesn't get lost amid the busy image.

Although Give Peace a Dance is an interesting piece owned by institutions such as MoMA and our very own Cooper-Hewitt, it is Chantry's approach to creating graphics that is the most important quality for new and aspiring designers to consider. In a time when a majority of designs are created using the computer, Chantry advocates a hands-on approach, preferring darkroom clippings and printing presses to computer processors and Photoshop. Largely self-taught, Chantry believes that learning with your hands is what separates a designer from a decorator.

Physical human interaction with a design work provides opportunities for happy accidents, the unintended results of a shaky hand or incorrectly processed film. It seems to me that the precision of the computer takes away the aspects that are inherently human with a simple ctrl-z. Would Give Peace a Dance still have the visual punch if the doodles were perfectly smooth arcs and the lines were created on a Macintosh or if the colors had been chosen through a digitized color palette? It is the ruggedness of human interaction that creates the appeal of this graphic. No doubt, computer generated graphics have an appeal of their own, but what types of playfulness and innovation could be created if we designers stepped away from the computer for a moment and used our hands?

This fashion plate from Les Robes De Paul Poiret (1908) is one of eleven illustrations often credited with liberating women from the body constricting corsets popular during the Victorian and Edwardian eras (1837-1910). Dress reformers had advocated for classical-style high waistlines as early as the 1880s, but it was Poiret’s beautifully commissioned album that most successfully promoted this idea, inspiring a revolution in fashion. Designing free-flowing silhouettes that hearkened the neo-classical style of late 18th century France and using innovative fabric draping techniques, his designs conformed more to natural body shapes which continue to characterize fashion to this day.  

Illustrated by artist Paul Iribe using the labor-intensive hand-stenciling technique of pochoir, this book was expensive to produce and only 250 copies were published. Poiret distributed them for free to select clients as unique marketing tools. The Library’s copy is inscribed by Poiret and reads,  “A Monsieur Max Meyer, un Américain bien pausière, qui aime et comprené touts les belles choses. Paul Poiret." This Max Meyer was likely the later fashion industry leader and president of New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, who would have been a young designer at the time of Poiret's gift, working for high-end American womenswear companies like A. Beller and Co.

This album was so successful that it was followed in 1911 by Les choses de Paul Poiret, illustrated by Georges Lepape and considered by some to be even more beautifully executed than the first!

I sold an almost complete set of chartreuse curry colored American Modern dinnerware two summers ago. It was one of the first items the antique dealers bought when we were clearing out the attic in anticipation of a move. I loathed parting with it because it represented a unique time in American domestic life when Russel Wright was trailblazing “good design for everyone.”

Designed in 1937 by Wright, one of the most influential industrial designers of the past century, this iconic dinnerware with its fluid form, thick glazes and startling colors heralded a new time in the United States with an informal design for “easier living.” Wright’s products eschewed formality and earlier Edwardian tastes to embrace an American version of the Bauhaus angular functional “modern” aesthetic––one more sensual and organic.

American Modern glazed earthenware was the most popular mass-produced tableware ever sold with more than 80 million produced between 1939 and 1959. Affordable even for post-depression families, the mix and match tableware––designed for informal dining––performed multiple functions. Serving pieces could go direct from oven to table, cups and plates stacked to save space, and pitchers served water, tea or wine. American Modern's introduction of the “starter set,” reducing the number of dishes needed to begin a household, was innovative at the time in encouraging a simpler and more practical domestic life.

Wright’s career spanned 30 years of product design, from furniture, fabrics, ceramic dinnerware, metal ware and glassware to musical instruments, radios, lamps and appliances; along with interiors and exhibitions for a World’s Fair. His designs embodied the “unique informality of modern American living” he championed during the mid-twentieth century in the United States. There is much we can learn from his blending of craft, industry and natural beauty today.  His populist approach continues to inspire with an optimism that transcends physical borders––reminding us that good design is for everyone.

Russel Wright's American Modern ceramics are available at shop.cooperhewitt.org

Today is Russel Wright's birthday.

Rhythm (1972) is like a visual representation of the movement of sound—the pulsation of music or a heartbeat on an electrocardiogram. In fact, it is the designers’ graphic interpretation of a meandering stream, inspired by the Indiana woodland. This feeling of movement is a product of the design concept promoted by Elenhank Designers, Inc. called the “mural print.” Because the designers engineered the placement of the printed design, the constrictions of standard fabric widths was no longer an issue. By meeting and matching inverted panels, the design could run continuously over a 16-foot-wide span. While Rhythm was also used as a flat wall treatment, Elenhank Designers, Inc. carefully considered how it would perform as a curtain—when gathered, the pattern is foreshortened but the visual flow is not lost. They were mindful that the drapery would not be static, but that it moved well physically and visually.

Promotional material available to interior designers illustrating how to install Rhythm mural print. Courtesy of Cooper Hewitt study collection, Elenhank design file.

Elenhank Designers, Inc. was founded by the husband and wife duo of architect Henry Kluck and artist Eleanor Kluck from Chicago, with the company name originating as a combination of the designers’ nicknames. The pair began creating textiles in 1946, using linoleum blocks designed by Eleanor to print fabric for their own curtains. They started filling custom orders for clients out of their Chicago home, announcing in a 1948 issue of American Fabrics, “We are concerned with meeting the fabric and design requirements of contemporary architects and interior designers, and with introducing a new vocabulary of fabric expressions.” They incorporated in 1956 and by 1958 moved production to a commercial facility in Riverside, Illinois. The pair transitioned from block printing to experiments with screen printing and continued to design textiles for 33 years. Their designs won many awards, including a Good Design award in 1953 for their Buttony fabric. Cooper Hewitt, along with Metropolitan Museum of Art and Art Institute of Chicago, were offered numerous examples of Elenhank’s designs including both  block prints and screen prints.

Rhythm installed as a wallpaper. Courtesy of Cooper Hewitt study collection, Elenhank design file.

How can you not love that glove? It takes up nearly half the image, so bold yet enigmatic. The gloved hand and the face of the exuberant young woman are likely separate images, brought together—brought into meaning with each other—purely by their adjacency. The photomontage does not quite read as a coherent image, but as a set of concentric ideas, an image more potent than a single photograph of both objects could capture. Without explicitly showing any particular activity, the poster evokes modern technology, natural beauty and winter fun, linking them all to an idea of Switzerland.  

This is an early work by the Swiss modernist designer Herbert Matter, done when he was in his late 20s. After a brief stint working as a designer in Paris, Matter was commissioned by the Swiss Tourist Office to design a series of travel posters, from which this poster comes. All the posters in the series use photomontages of black-and-white images colorized with limited palettes.

Englelberg, in central Switzerland, was Matter's home town. The word "Engelberg" in a blocky sans-serif typeface, bisected by color, recalls the red and white of the Swiss flag. Beneath this is "Trubsee" a mountain lake not far from the town, and the base of a cable car run coming down from Gerschnialp mountain. The cable car, constructed about ten years earlier, was a great tourist attraction—its gondola lift appears on other Matter travel posters—and the converging lines of its cables draw the eye down from the word "Engelberg" to the young woman's beaming face. 

We're told of the cold waters of the Trubsee and the vertiginous panoramas from the cable car without being shown them. Instead, Matter gives us the young woman's joyous face, lightly freckled with snow, and that great gloved hand, with all the happy associations of good, wooly yarn on a cold day. The design gives the knit pattern the center stage. It’s a style that was very popular in the 1930s, derived from the traditional black and white mittens knit in Selbu, Norway—the central motif of the eight-pointed snowflake shape is known as a Selbu rose.

At once familiar and mysterious, the back of the gloved hand covers part of the woman's face, as if she's playing a grown-up game of peek-a-boo with us. The composition recalls avant-garde photomontages, especially Herbert Bayer's Lonely Metropolitan (1932), a surrealist image of two large hands, with eyes superimposed, floating against an urban apartment block. Yet nothing of Bayer's disquieting, hallucinatory claustrophobia appears in Matter's travel poster. Whether because of its folksy knit pattern, its casual cuff at the bottom or its pure insouciance, the glove seems only to hint at a promise of winter fun. Matter has digested the visual experiments of the avant-garde and domesticated them.

With its sinuous curving line, asymmetrical composition, and integration of colors, forms, and lettering, this poster by the Belgian industrial designer, Hendrikus Van de Velde, ranks among the icons of the Art Nouveau movement.  In 1898, the General Manager of the Tropon firm, manufacturers of a health supplement developed from egg whites, commissioned Van de Velde to design posters, packaging and other graphic design pieces for the company.  Rather than illustrate people consuming the food additive, Van de Velde enticed viewers’ attention by showing egg whites separating from the yokes and pouring down around the words “est L’Aliment le plus Concentré [Tropon is the most powerful food supplement], in a highly original abstract composition. Van de Velde, influenced by the recently published Paleolithic cave paintings at Altimira in the second decade of the twentieth century, wrote a manuscript on aesthetic theory.  He argued that line rather than geometry was the basic component of all art because it was the instinctive way humans made images.  The Tropon poster illustrates the designer’s belief in line as the creative force and the carrier of human energy.   The swirling line that flows down and then upward, embracing all of the forms, lettering, and ornament,  creates a striking and harmonious work of design.

As an undergraduate at Oxford University, Irish antiquarian Lord Kingsborough (1795-1837) became fascinated by the Bodleian Library’s collection of Mesoamerican codices. These vividly illustrated manuscripts painted on animal hide or tree bark were created in the 15^th and early 16^th by the scribes and priests of Mexico and Central America chronicling the histories, religious beliefs, and scientific knowledge of their ancient civilizations. Most of these documents, which filled the temples and libraries of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, were destroyed during the Spanish Conquest. The few that survived were sent back to Europe during the colonial period and wound up in various national libraries and royal collections.

Kingsborough became convinced that these codices substantiated his fervent belief that the indigenous Mexicans were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. Intent on proving his theory, he spent most of his life and all of his fortune researching and compiling the nine-volume Antiquities of Mexico which includes several pre-Columbian codices, as well as a number of drawings dating from the first two decades following the Conquest . Kingsborough commissioned artist,  Agostino Aglio, to travel throughout Europe copying (and later lithographing) all the known Mesoamerican codices, including those in The Vatican, The Berlin Library and the Bodleian.

Producing his masterpiece was a monumental and, ultimately ruinous, financial undertaking. In 1837, Kingsborough succumbed to typhus fever while in a Dublin debtor’s prison for lack of payment to a paper supplier. He was just 42. Although Kingsborough will certainly not be remembered for having discovered the lost tribes of Israel, his Antiquities of Mexico, is among the first published documentation of the early cultures of Mesoamerica. Kingsborough secured his legacy by making these rare manuscripts available to a wider audience and opening up a new field of scholarship. These amazing volumes give us a glimpse of pre-conquest social life unmediated by Spanish influence.  Comparing the pre and post conquest drawings also allows us to see the overlaying of pre-Columbian style with Europeanized visual forms.

Born on today’s date in 1901, Jean Prouvé was among the most well-known French designers and architects of the mid-twentieth century. He was the son of Victor Prouvé, one of the founders of l’Ecole de Nancy—an Art Nouveau artist collective. This early exposure instilled in Prouvé the idea that art and industry were inherently linked, a concept he sought to express throughout his career.

This poster, designed by Siegfried Odermatt for an exhibition of Prouvé’s work at the Museum für Gestaltung (Museum of Applied Arts), Zürich, in 1978, expresses Prouvé’s industrial aesthetic. Using a photograph of Prouvé’s design for the Rotterdam Medical School of Erasmus University, Odermatt subtly references Prouvé’s preference for prefabricated industrial materials. The use of photography is characteristic of Odermatt’s style, since he was trained as a photographer. In addition, Odermatt reduces the color scheme of the poster to only three colors: black, white, and blue. By reducing the building to a gradient of blue, Odermatt is able to make the text of his poster stand out against the simplified background. He also weds the title of the exhibition, which shares Prouvé’s name, to the architecture of the building; both the text and the image draw the viewer’s eye up through the design.

Together with his partner, Rosmarie Tissi, Siegfried Odermatt runs one of the most prominent Swiss design firms, Odermatt & Tissi. The pair is known for their striking designs that convey a sense of effortless clarity. Odermatt & Tissi are also known for the importance they place on communicating information as clearly as possible. Thus, through his own aesthetic and preference for simple, straightforward design, Odermatt was able to evoke the style of Prouvé.

Jean Prouvé's Coupe-Papier Letter Opener is available at shop.cooperhewitt.org

Today is Jean Prouvé's birthday!

Tadanori Yokoo is a celebrated Japanese artist for his work in graphic design. Yokoo’s posters constitute a unique style of graphic design that is firmly rooted in Japanese tradition while incorporating Western elements that speak to the increasing globalization of Japanese society in the 1960s and 70s.

Yokoo’s approach to poster design draws upon the Japanese tradition of ukiyo-e, a woodblock printing dating from the late 17^th century. Ukiyo-e prints were both commercial advertisements and art objects, characterized by their subject matter – including landscapes and figural illustrations of kabuki, geisha and courtesans – and their flat areas of color. Yokoo’s posters re-imagine this aesthetic, collaging recognizable photographic images onto areas of flat, bright color. Yokoo pulls symbolically loaded images from both Eastern and Western traditions.

Yokoo’s poster advertising Takeda Cosmetics for Men is representative of the artist’s highly original approach to commercial design. The advertising element of the work is not immediately evident; the only clue to the product that is being advertised is located within the arabesque patterns, at the bottom of the poster, where “Takeda for Men” is inscribed on a small label on top of a basket of oil bottles. Hints of what the product itself might be are evident in the repeated form of oil bottles and cosmetics jars throughout the image. Yokoo has collaged the circle of this central image onto an array of arabesque patterns that resemble a carpet. This juxtaposition of Islamic decorative motifs and icons of the Western canon is both a reference to the arabesque patterns that are prevalent in the original painting on which this work is based and an example of Yokoo’s signature coupling of Western and Eastern visual cultures..

Takeda Cosmetics for Men, Takeda Chemical Industry lifts nine figures from Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ masterpiece The Turkish Bath in which they lounge in a Turkish bathhouse, and places them in an entirely new setting – outside on a rocky shore. Because the figures were originally depicted indoors, the interplay of light on the women’s bodies is radically different from that of the rocks and water. The process of lithography has allowed the artist to seamlessly transpose the figures into a setting defined by entirely different light and space. The jarring effect of this displacement is amplified by the grafting of an UFO above the heads of the women, which adds a psychedelic element to the already strange image.

The natural world is inspiration for British textile designer, Jennifer Robertson, whose jacquard woven Silk Banksia, displays the vibrant color and luminosity of the Australian wildflower, banksia.  As the designer states: “The design is an exploration of the poetic language between silk, flora, and human sensorial experience with interior space and the natural environment.” 

Robertson admits being drawn to the rich artistic and technical historical periods of 13th-18th century European woven textiles. In fact, she designed Silk Banksia while studying Jacquard design and weaving at the renowned Fondazione Lisio Arte della Seta  (Lisio Foundation) in Florence, Italy in 2005. The Foundation is dedicated to the preservation of Renaissance textile processes and offers classes and residencies for making silk Jacquard, damask, brocade and velvet on ancient looms.

Few textile workshops or studios other than the Lisio Foundation could replicate this unusually fine weaving which comprises over 16,000 silk warp ends in a 150 cm width achieving a density of 110 ends per centimeter. After Robertson made a prototype at the Foundation in 2007, the Bianchi Company in Como, Italy wove the textile.  By reducing the number of colors in the textile to only five, she creates restraint without losing detail.  The surface effect is electric, and the copper glow of the textile mimics the actual flower when light grazes the textile’s surface at just the right angle.

Detail of Silk Banksia

Jennifer Robertson is a lecturer in the Textiles Workshop, School of Art, Australian National University.  Born in England, she studied at the Royal College of Art and moved to Australia in 1986 where she established a studio practice with her husband producing wearable and furnishing textiles.

The internet looooves silly cats. This we all know.

The Walker Art Center even had a film festival last year celebrating cat videos, which it dubbed "one of the internet’s most popular phenomena."

Stalking cat has 38 million views.

Perhaps it's not just people on the internet who love silly cats, but people in general. All people. Even pre-internet people—vid and img deprived societies of yore.

With that in mind, check out this figurine of a big cat spanking a little cat with a stick. It's in the collection of Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Yup. America's design museum.

Around the office at the Digital & Emerging Media Department at the Museum, we love looking at this thing. In meetings, when we're talking about this or that project/interface/video/exhibition featuring collection objects, Spanking Cat is often suggested for use as a demonstration item. When I draw wireframes, Spanking Cat is right in there as my placeholder image. Et cetera.

One particularly punchy day, we indulged in a few YouTube vids of people actually spanking their cats. Apparently this is a thing. I had no idea.

After said silliness subsided, a serious question arose: what is the design function of Spanking Cat?

Now that we've learned how much cats actually love to be spanked—seriously—perhaps the miniature was intended as a reminder to a cat owner to spank his cats once in a while to make them happy. While little is known about this figurine, it may represent the anthropomorphizing of animals common in the Victorian era, which depicted animals as mannered beings that followed social and moral codes. I think the statue is a whimsical allegory for human parenting.

The Museum database tells us that this statue was chosen by IDEO when the firm did a "Collections Selects" exhibition in 2007 (Collections Selects exhibitions allow renowned people and/or organizations to hand-pick a few collection objects from over 200,000 for public display). It was suggested that it must be a database mistake—why would an esteemed firm such as IDEO choose such a weird tchotchke for their exhibition? I am sure that they chose it for kitsch appeal. 

Historical mysteries aside, Spanking Cat's teachable moment is that humans have always loved weird cats, even before the internet.