Anni Albers used her art to introduce order and clarity into an otherwise unstable and chaotic world.  She grew up in Berlin during World War I and in 1933 was forced to leave Germany for the US after the Nazis came to power and closed the Bauhaus where she and her husband, Josef Albers, were teaching. She had joined the Bauhaus as a student in 1922. There she studied weaving and is best known for her woven art, produced over a weaving career of almost fifty years.  

It was not until 1963 that Albers, after accompanying Josef to a lithography workshop, began working in graphic arts. She gave up weaving entirely in 1970 to focus her creative energy on printmaking. The pattern repeat for this printed Knoll fabric is based on Albers’s screenprint and photo-offset work, PO II (1973).

The pattern evidences Anni Albers’ mastery of the language of modular, geometric forms, a language she came to understand from studying with Paul Klee, one of her Bauhaus instructors, and used to great effect in her woven art. Éclat is a French word meaning sparkle or radiance but it also means sliver or shard. The pattern is a sparkling scattering of bright orange shards against an off-white ground.  But importantly, there is nothing random about it.  The abstract shapes are sharp, precise, and carefully chosen: Albers uses only isosceles trapezoids and parallelograms, in a finite number of sizes.  These forms are carefully arranged according to subtle principles of repetition and rotation into elegantly interlocking groups. We sense these principles even if we cannot identify them precisely. No two groupings (within each of the fabric’s repeats) are exactly the same and the boundaries of the groups are deliberately ambiguous.

So while Albers sought to organize the world, she also sought to preserve some of its mystery.  Her work was animated by what she called “a concern for order in a not too obvious way, an order puzzling to the onlooker, so that he will return again and again.” And with Éclat, with only two colors and a limited number of elements, she has clearly succeeded in creating a timeless pattern of great complexity that continually challenges the viewer.

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.

In the hands of Viennese glass firm J. & L. Lobmeyr, drinking a glass of water becomes a sensual ritual. Josephine is a sinuous, refined bedside bottle and drinking glass designed by POLKA for Lobmeyr. Imagine gingerly lifting the drinking glass, inverted to sit inside the carafe like a stopper, delicately pouring a glass of water, and putting the thin, mouth-blown crystal to your lips to take a sip. As with so many of Lobmeyr’s designs, Josephine encourages its user to become more graceful and intentional in their interaction with the object.

The design’s delicacy is both inspired by and revealed in its production process. The elegant form, resembling a voluptuous figurine, is made of muslin glass (so named in honor of the finely woven French fabric) blown to only .7 – 1.1 mm thick. Despite its fine structure, muslin glass is still quite resilient, owing to its inner elasticity and formal construction. The short stem and circular foot, mirrored in the carafe and glass, are joined free-hand by a master. Handpolishing softens the rims. It is a simple and clearly rigorous design, for which POLKA worked through a series of sketches and prototypes to arrive at the precise calculation for the form and fit of the carafe and glass. (The design firm borrowed the idea of the drinking glass as fitted stopper in its Drinking Set no. 280, also for Lobmeyr and in the Museum’s collection.) Josephine makes a luxury of the quotidian. Drinking a glass of water may never be as pleasurable.

This is a scenic wallpaper designed for your bathroom. Called Sea Beauties, this was lithograph printed in Germany around 1930. The lithograph printing gives it a very soft look, almost like a watercolor, and because it is printed with oils is water resistant. Washable wallpapers as we know them today were not developed until 1934 and lithograph prints were one of the early wipeable papers. This set is composed of three panels, each 40 inches wide by over five feet high. The printing on the third panel lines up with the first so this underwater scene could continue uninterrupted around your bathroom. Up into the 1950s the majority of wallpapers designed for bathrooms contained water themes such as mermaids, seashells or fish, or printed imitations of ceramic tiles. This paper takes the water theme to a whole new level and I imagine it would transform your bathing experience.Transform

Over the last fifteen years I have been fortunate enough to visit Japan a number of times and usually with the goal of researching and finding textiles for exhibitions.  There have been many textile discoveries, but more important has been my privilege to meet the extraordinary textile makers.  These encounters with the artists and designers at their studios, factories or homes have helped me to understand the context for their work and to appreciate what inspires them and why they chose textiles as their medium of choice.

Hiroyuki Shindo lives about forty miles outside of Kyoto in the hills of Miyama– a beautiful village filled with 200-year-old thatched-roof houses and where life revolves around the natural environment.  This is where Shindo grows his indigo, laboriously processing it according to traditional methods.  In his workshop ceramic dye pots are sunk into the earthen floor and dried indigo leaves are combined with lye, lime, wheat bran, sake, and a microorganism. The fermentation of this mixture takes seven to ten days, and the indigo dyestuff must be stirred regularly. The pots are heated with charcoal to maintain a temperature of 20°C (68°F). After the indigo is ready,  Shindo begins the dyeing process and with indigo, the full intensity of the color is achieved by repeated dipping and subsequent oxidization rather than how long the fabric is submerged in the dye. Shindo is considered one of the master indigo dyers in Japan and has helped resuscitate this ancient dyeing technique.  In fact he is so closely associated with the craft that his work and name have morphed into the word, Shindigo.    

In Space Panel No. 5, Shindo not only uses indigo, but also a  type of shibori or tie-dyeing called okkochi which means “the eastern wind”, and when spoken also suggests “to let fall.” It describes a kind of dyeing technique developed in Arimatsu about 300 years ago during the Edo period. The story of the origin of shibori claims that a wind from the east blew just a corner of kimono fabric into a vat of indigo. From this incident, a new kind of shaped dyeing was born that was less methodical than traditional shibori  tie-dye resist and more reflective of the patterns of nature. In Shindo’s okkochi interpretation, he makes a wooden trough about four centimeters deep and scatters small stones and pebbles on the bottom and at the edges. Laying the cloth in this shallow trough he carefully pushes it into the concave shapes between the stones. Dye is ladled many times into the depressions of the fabric, and he constantly changes the boundary of the well and the depth of the stones to make gradations of color. The final panel has a composition that results from the dyeing process, making a beautiful tribute to the color blue.  

This view of Niagara Falls is one scene from the scenic wallpaper Views of North America first produced by the French firm Zuber et Cie in 1834. This scenic contains 32 panels and shows some of the natural wonders of the continent: New York bay, Boston harbor, West Point, & the natural bridge of Virginia. Scenic wallpapers were introduced around 1804 and remained popular with new designs being introduced until 1865. Zuber is still printing a number of these early designs today, using the original woodblocks. Scenic papers were the epitome of block printing: they usually contained 20-32 panels, and each set could require thousands of wood blocks to print. There was no repeat within a set, and the last panel lines up with the first so multiple sets could be used in a room for a continuous view. The length of this set is 15 m, is printed in 223 colors and requires 1690 wood blocks to print.

The power and awe of the falls has been skillfully captured by Zuber in this scene composed of six panels. Long a source of wonder tourism began to flourish around Niagara Falls at the beginning of the 18th century, and by mid-century had become the region’s main source of revenue. Along with tourists the falls also attracted a number of daredevils, feeling challenged to test their skills against the power of nature. In 1859 a French acrobat made his first tightrope walk over the falls, and in 1901 a Michigan schoolteacher was the first to go over the falls in a barrel. Several days prior to her departure the teacher sent her housecat over the falls in this same barrel for a trial run.

As a member of the Dutch cooperative Droog (Dry) Design, contemporary Dutch designer, Marcel Wanders, shared the group's predilection for simplicity and wit, often creating visually spare and modest designs.  His early works are distinguished by their use of ordinary materials or things---string, sponges, eggs, lamp shades---employed in new and often surprisingly delightful ways.  Because of this, many of Wanders' designs evoke a sense of familiarity, like his Knotted Chair which is reminiscent of a time-worn hammock, but with a contemporary twist.

Like several other Droog designs, this chair represents a craft-based approach to new substances, synthesizing traditional techniques, in this case, macramé, with advanced materials to create a new form. Knotted Chair is made of high-tech rope: braided aramid fibers wrapped around a carbon core, knotted into the shape of a chair. Aramid is a strong heat-resistant synthetic fiber frequently used in aerospace and military applications. The ropes that make up the Knotted Chair are first hand-knotted into a chair shape; the limp shape is soaked in an epoxy resin and then suspended in a frame to let gravity pull the chair until it sags into its final form. In the last step, the suspended chair is dried at a high temperature, about 176° F, at which point the form becomes rigid and sturdy enough to support a person in its airy, lattice-like framework.

Droog introduced this Wanders design in 1996. Italian manufacturer Cappellini began distributing the chair in 1997, and continues to do so today.  Knotted Chair was an outgrowth of a collaboration between the Droog Design Foundation and the Laboratory for Structures and Materials at the Faculty of Aviation and Aerospace of the University of Technology in Delft.  The result was this new durable chair design that achieves lightness and delicacy, both physically and visually.

Today is Marcel Wanders’ birthday.

For years people have bought souvenirs as reminders of their journeys. They are an echo of the places visited and of the sights seen. Collecting souvenirs was an important part of the overall travel experience for the 19th-century tourist. To be seen as a person of the world was a status symbol, and was important to members of “high society.” By the early 19th-century, Italy had become a popular destination for well-to-do Europeans and Americans. Unique micro-mosaic parures (suites of jewelry) made in Italy were a favorite souvenir for people to bring home at a time when cameras were not yet available. Micro-mosaics captured the bella vistas of Italy’s cities and county side, as well as the antiquities and artistic highlights of the Grand Tour.

Most often designed for women, a parure traditionally consisted of a necklace with matching bracelets, earrings and a broach or pin, although some also included accessories like hair ornaments and tiaras. Italian micro-mosaic parures reflected the love many Europeans had of all things classical. The mosaics featured Italy’s famed ancient ruins, architecture, and pastoral scenes. This particular parure contains a necklace, a pair of earrings, two bracelets, a pendant/slide and two brooches. The pieces show different ancient ruins, including the Pantheon, the Coliseum, the Temple of Vesta, and St. Peter’s Basilica, which is officially named the Basilica Papale di San Pietro in Vaticano.

The process of making micro-mosaic jewelry was extremely labor intensive, precise work. They were made from hundreds of colored tesserae—the small glass or stone used to create a mosaic. A craftsman using tweezers delicately arranged the tesserae on a panel of glass. Any gaps were filled with a colored wax and the pieces were then carefully polished. The tesserae in this parure were mounted on gold filigree and ringed with a rich cobalt blue border, giving the jewelry an air of sophistication and elegance, which is exactly what the wearer wanted to project to the world.

Views of the American War of Independence was first printed by Zuber in 1852. This paper illustrates the American Revolution in four scenes using the background imagery from an earlier scenic wallpaper called Views of North America first printed by Zuber in 1834. All of the scenes for North America were modifications of original drawings by naturalist painter J. Milbert in 1828, whose drawings illustrate the new practice of showing realistic renderings of landscapes rather than one composed in a studio. Views of North America was composed of four scenes: the bay of New York, West Point, the Port of Boston, and the Natural Bridge of Virginia and Niagara Falls.
 

The four scenes shown in the Views of the American War of Independence include the capture of a British stronghold on Weehawk Hill by American forces, printed over the Bay of New York scene; the surrender of British General Cornwallis at Yorktown, printed on the scene of West Point; the triumphal entry of General Washington into Boston, printed over the Port of Boston imagery; and two battle episodes printed over the scenes for the Natural Bridge and Niagara Falls.
 

Wood blocks were expensive and labor intensive to produce, especially when you’re talking the thousands necessary to print a scenic paper. So to introduce a new scenic without the cost and labor necessary to carve all new blocks, this design reuses the background landscapes from Views of North America, but changes the foreground to show scenes of the Revolution. In this scene showing Washington’s arrival in Boston, Washington’s entourage replacing a bustling harbor scene. And the ships are now flying American flags, as is the State House. The American Revolution scenic, with the new foreground imagery, is printed in 360 colors and requires an extra 600 woodblocks to print, for a total of 2300 blocks.

As a new member of the Digital + Emerging Media team here at the Cooper-Hewitt, I've been spending a lot of time learning about our various projects in process. One of the most enthralling resources I've encountered so far is the collections database. Try it out, if you haven't already; you'll see why it's so satisfying to explore.

Here's an example. I started browsing with the "random" link and it brought me to this collage for a textile by one Alexander Hayden Girard.

Ok, so the collections database has lots of pretty pictures...but so what? Well, the great thing about the collections database is that it exposes relationships and allows you to make connections. Rather than seeing the Girard collage as an isolated object, I can see it in a variety of contexts. For example, if I click on "Alexander Hayden Girard," I am taken to a page that gives me information not only about Girard, but also people and organizations he has collaborated with and other objects he is connected to. Here is where it gets interesting. I can see the collage in context by viewing it alongside the other objects designed by Girard within the collection, and I can start to answer questions like "is this piece typical of Girard's style and work?"

Or, instead of looking at other objects designed by Girard, I can take a broader view by clicking on the link in the Period field. In the case of Girard's "Design for Textile-Quatrefoil," the period is Postwar. Here I can begin to understand what else was going on in the world of design when Girard made this piece.

I see a lot of objects in the postwar period were designed by Tommi Parzinger, who is he? Repeat, repeat, repeat…

No man is an island, and no design is created in a vacuum. The collections database has a long way to go but it is making huge steps towards revealing context and connections between the objects in our collection.

Energy-efficient lighting technologies have seen growing consumer interest, given increased focus on the world’s environmental problems and new U.S. lighting standards that went into effect in 2012. CFLs (compact fluorescent lights) are a low-energy solution that have been on the market for some time, but arguably have not been the most attractive to consumers. Case in point: how many CFLs can you count in your home? It is not for lack of market exposure—the CFL is actually rooted in a 19th-century technology that was first patented by Peter Cooper Hewitt (brother of Amy, Eleanor, and Sarah Hewitt, the Museum’s founders). Today, CFLs are widely available to consumers at a relatively low cost. But they have traditionally been nothing more than a strictly utilitarian tube or spiral bulb meant to hide in a fixture, emitting a harsh, cold white light. 

The Plumen 001, released to the market in 2010, is a rethinking of what the CFL can be. Designed by Samuel Wilkinson and Hulger, the bulb is composed of two looping CFL tubes that create a sculptural, organic form. Wilkinson explains he “wanted a shape that had an organized complexity… something that can first appear quite random, then as you move around it becomes more rational, and recognizable.”

Plumen 001 bulbs. Image from http://ukshop.plumen.com/products/plumen-001-bayonet-fitting. 

A yellow tint mutes the harsh white light of the CFL, and the bulb boasts an 80% reduction in energy compared to a traditional incandescent, lasting 8 times longer. But its impact lies in that the Plumen is designed to be revealed, not hidden by a fixture or shade. It is a celebration of the bulb, almost appearing as if the designers scrawled in the air with light. And it encourages use—not due to moral obligation, but because finally, the CFL has been given some aesthetic kick.

Playwright Jacques Deval once wrote, “God loved the birds and made trees. Man loved the birds and made cages.” I am much more content watching birds soaring and swooping. Still I can’t help but admire this finely designed piece of art. When I first saw this birdcage in the form of a church the word that came to mind was “amazing.” 

This birdcage was handcrafted in the mid-nineteenth century. During this time a renewed interest in Gothic architecture swept through Europe and America. The windows that curve to a point and the vaulted ceiling mirror traditional Gothic-style. Made from mahogany, cherry and pine the subtle changes in the color of the wood lend it a weathered look, as if it spent years braving the elements. The bell tower is one of the birdcage’s most notable features—it includes three hand-painted clock faces; the two visible in this photograph show the hands at 3:00 and 4:00 respectively. The door frame in the shape of an inverted heart may signify our love of music and need for beauty. The designer thought not only of beauty but also of functionality. A small knob on the left side of the cage aided in the easy removal of the tray for cleaning. The discrete brass loop on the top of the peaked roof acts as a handle, or might have allowed a bird lover to hang the cage.

It’s interesting to note that this birdcage, made in the United States, was said to be a replica of a church that once stood in Flushing, New York.

The design industry in the US flourished in the decade following World War II.  In textiles, small designer-led entrepreneurial firms drove the creative awakening, with an emphasis on innovative printed textiles that took their cues from modern art and architecture. Large established textile producers remained on the sidelines, wedded to the traditional brocades and satins favored by more conservative interior designers.

This energetic abstract print, Van Dyke Squares, evidences some of the trends that characterized this vibrant period in American textile design. Producer Arundell Clarke was an English interior designer who came to the US and managed Knoll Textiles’ first showroom in 1947. He then operated his own small design showroom, contracting with independent artists, architects, and designers to create custom fabrics. In 1949, when Van Dyke Squares was introduced, designer Philip Johnson was Director of the Department of Architecture and Design at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art and was in the early years of his career as an architect. In fact, that same year, he completed one of his very first and still most celebrated projects, his home – and ode to Mies van der Rohe –  The Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut.

As far as we know, Van Dyke Squares may have been the only textile design by the iconic Johnson. Like many other textile designs of the post-war decade, Johnson’s abstract pattern was inspired by an eclectic source. A contemporary article in the New York Times reported that the “random composition of small square blotches” was “suggested by a peculiar defect […] on a Van Dyke print of an architectural plan.”[1] Van Dyke printing was a wet-process reprographic technique used in the early 20^th century for making intermediary prints and copies of architectural plans with white lines on a dark brown ground. Johnson chose to render the “squares” in his textile design in pure white on a deep blue background, a dramatic color scheme reminiscent of more familiar architectural blueprints.

The impact of this pattern is hard to appreciate from a photo. The repeat is almost 30 inches high, creating a bold large-scale composition that would have been a striking feature in a stark Modernist interior. As Johnson said of his architecture, “effect before everything.”[2]

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.

“Dreams and restless thoughts came flowing to him from the river… When Siddhartha awoke, the pale river shimmered past the door…The broad sheet of water glimmered pink in the light of the morning…’Yes’, said the ferryman, ‘it is a very beautiful river…I have often listened to it, gazed at it... One can learn much from a river’.”[1]

Siddhartha’s life in Herman Hesse’s novel flows like a river, its essence captured in Alvin Lustig’s book jacket design.  Siddhartha’s spiritual quest leads him to the Samanas, “lean jackals in the face of men,”[2]2 who practice extreme self-sacrifice to become one with the universe.   Unable to achieve complete self-forgetting with the Samanas, Siddhartha next tries worldly pleasures.  Yearning still, he traverses a river, its gurgling becoming distinct voices, as familiar faces appear in the water. When Siddhartha despairs, the river beckons him to death.   Ultimately, however, he finds “Om-perfection” in the river, “…surrendering himself to the stream, belonging to the unity of all things.”[3] The river thus becomes a figure for Siddhartha’s spiritual quest, guiding him to the perfection of the present moment: “…the river is everywhere at the same time… at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and…the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future.”[4]

Within this movement, in both novel and book jacket image, there is a counter-rhythm, figured as the black weight of a stone dropping into water: “When you throw a stone into the water, it finds the quickest way to the bottom... It is the same when Siddhartha has an aim, a goal…he is drawn and lets himself fall… everyone can reach his goal, if he can wait, can think, can fast.”[5]5 Lustig’s image captures the forces of flow and interruption through the aerially-viewed horizontal river and the vertical stone. White letters further impel the black form downwards. 

Here, as in Lustig’s other book jacket designs, he responds abstractly to the text, not embracing literal depiction. Embodying a river’s essence, the image suggests alternate readings too, including an eye with contours of energy emanating along the curves of a face.  As a painter of transitory reflections in water and glass, and of faces too, I am transfixed by Lustig’s image, and lulled towards new insight into Hesse’s text.

There are many ways to celebrate an anniversary.  To commemorate a decade of working together as the design duo Non-Format, Kjell Ekhorn and Jon Forss did not opt for the traditional gifting of tin, pewter, or aluminum.  Instead, they pooled their creative energies towards a personal project that drew upon their shared love of David Bowie. 

Founded when Kjell and Jon were both living in England, Non-Format is a creative direction and design firm.  The name Non-Format was derived from an article in the popular design magazine Emigre about the future demise of the DVD and the impending “mythical non-format” that would replace it.  The team shares both a personal and professional passion for music.    

For their 10^th anniversary, Non-Format decided to create a limited-edition set of two posters examining David Bowie’s discography.   As any die-hard fan of Bowie’s 1977-79 Berlin Trilogy of albums will know, one of the pop icon’s closest collaborators in the late 1970s was the legendary musician, composer and record producer Brian Eno.  In a famous excerpt from his diary, Eno muses about the possibilities of looking at something on a spectrum of two extremes. He refers to this as axis thinking.  Axis thinking, he explains, can apply to both the lighthearted and the serious.  A haircut, for example, is rarely “neat” or “shaggy,” but somewhere between the two.  After the Berlin Wall fell, Eno argues, the polarities of communism and capitalism were “revealed to conceal a host of possible hybrids.”

For Eno, axis thinking was a method that could be used in the music studio, but Non-Format chose to use the system to retrospectively examine Bowie’s musical output.  To do so, Kjell and Jon collaborated as they have for much of their partnership, with the aid of the internet, as Kjell now lives in Norway and Jon lives in Minnesota.  They began by categorizing each of Bowie’s albums against pairs of extremes.  The album Scary Monsters, in their estimation, is more Bridge than Tunnel and more Scissors than Rock, and the album Station to Station is more Fight than Flight and more Heart than Head.  To illustrate this categorization, Non-Format then designed a simple series of mixers and sliders, echoing the equipment that Eno might have used in the recording studio to “describe each Bowie album within Non-Format’s own framework of extremes.” 

Non-Format designed a custom typeface to feature David Bowie’s name at the bottom of each poster.  Like the polarities that frame each axis, the letterforms suggest another balance of extremes, with razor-thin lines morphing into full geometric forms within each individual character.

The poster above covers the albums from 1976-84.

This poster is part of the exhibition Graphic Design: Now in Production, co-organized by Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and Walker Art Center.  The exhibition will be traveling to the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, Texas, opening this month.  You can find the exhibition catalogue at shop.cooperhewitt.org

Upon hearing the words modern, modernism, or modernist design, what are your first thoughts? “Form follows function,” universal, structured, machines, red, yellow, blue, black, white, tubular steel, leather, Cubism, geometry, straight lines, circles, squares, triangles? What about knotted carpeting, irregular shapes and patterns, whimsy, a denial of the machine aesthetic, comfortable, cozy, eclectic, personal, humanistic, lilac, burnt orange, green, tan? How about a little of each?

In a 1927 essay entitled “Fassade und Interieur” published in Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration 31 (June 1928, p. 187), Josef Frank, a Viennese architect and furniture and textile designer who would be 128 on the 15^th (b. July 15, 1885; d. January 8, 1967), offered up an argument for the aesthetics of feeling over both the importance of “‘appearance’” and the Functionalism that characterized early Modernism. Frank said, “[t]he goal…in designing an interior…is not to make it as luxurious as possible or as simple as possible, but rather to make it as comfortable as possible…The most comfortable interiors have always been those that the occupant himself has put together over the course of time which betray no sense of intention or plan.”[1] Frank suggests that a sort of personal, individualized eclecticism can bring unity and warmth to a space through a sense of shared form. This sort of “new” and “styleless” eclecticism pulling from both modern and historical forms was meant to “undermine the Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) ideal that [his contemporaries] Hoffman, Olbrich, and the other Secessionists had long championed.”[2] And, it can be seen on full display in the 1932 interior view (below) from Innen-Dekoration 44 (1933), which depicts Frank’s designs for Haus & Garten, a home furnishing business co-founded by Frank and Oskar Wlach loosely modeled after the Wiener Werkstatte which was characterized by the unity of art, design and production. [3]

"Bedroom, house for A.S.F., Vienna, ca. 1932. From Innen-Dekoration 44 (1933).”From Josef Frank Architect and Designer, Nina Stritzler-Levine, ed.

If we look to the ground in the image above, we see the plush predecessor of today’s object peeking out amidst an array of items drawing influence from all over the globe and across time. Today’s object from the collection is Frank’s Bows, a length of printed linen and cotton dated to ca. 1960. This later textile finds its origin in this pre-war Haus & Garten carpet design from 1929 produced by the Swedish textile firm Almedahl’s (the original design is in the Backhausen Achives in Vienna). [4] Unlike Frank’s other printed and early textiles, which draw both their emphasis on pattern and their inspiration from more natural forms from textiles of the Arts & Crafts Movement, Wiener Werkstatte, and textiles born out of the Austrian concept of the total work of art, this pattern is highly geometricized and more typically “Modern” [5]. In his acknowledgement of eclecticism and the mixing of styles, Frank’s work shows us just how flexible and personal Modernism can be. His work also highlights the ways in which movements in art and design are reciprocal, and how Modernism boasts styles that celebrate geometry and the machine, styles that reject it, and some that fall somewhere in between.

Looking at the design below from 1933 and the carpet in situ, we see how colors and shapes work together dynamically to create patterns within the confines of the carpet itself, as well as how the carpet activates its surroundings. The design plays with our eye, tempting us to perceive depth and a pictorial, representative scene, but when the pattern is repeated, as is the case in the Museum’s example of Bows, we again become lost in its artful patterning. The textile is light-hearted, fun and unexpected, but not undisciplined. In a way, due especially to their shared influence of the Arts & Crafts Movement, the tenets of which are “truth to materials, honesty of construction, joy in labor, and the dialectic relationship of beauty and utility,” Frank’s interiors can be related to interior of the home of Charles and Ray Eames and its “functional decoration,” which is comprised of “carefully composed arrangements of disparate objects…within interior spaces. The aesthetic [is] one of addition, juxtaposition, composition, changing scales, and ‘extra-cultural surprise.’” [6] All of these elements can be identified in Frank’s Haus & Garten interior. Not unlike Frank’s interior, the Eames’ interior elements seem to belie the sense of Modernism’s functionality, transmitting a narrative about livability, comfort, warmth, charm and real-ness. In Frank’s work and in looking at Bows we are made aware of a larger design narrative imbued with the human spirit and nature melded with geometry and pattern, the result of which is a unique, eclectic Modernism, but Modernism, none the less. This textile suggests a Modernist space touched by humanism and by Functionalism. In Frank’s own words, “The home must not be a mere effective machine. It must offer comfort, first, and coziness (soothing to the eye, stimulating to the soul)…” [7]

“Carpet Design for Haus & Garten, c. 1933. Sammlung, Universitat fur angewandte Kunst, Vienna.” From Josef Frank: Life and Work by Christopher Long

Works Cited:
[1] Nina Stritzler-Levine, ed., Josef Frank Architect and Designer: An Alternative Vision of the Modern Home (New Haven: Bard & Yale, 1996): p. 51.
[2 & 3] Ibid., p. 47-48 and p. 51. 
[4] Object record. The Museum System.
[5] Nina Stritzler-Levine, ed., Josef Frank Architect and Designer, p. 51.
[6] Pat Kirkham, Charles and Ray Eames (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1996): p. 143 and 164.
[7] Charlotte and Peter Fiell, Scandinavian Design (Koln: Taschen, 2002): p. 67.

Additional Sources:
Long, Christopher. Josef Frank: Life and Work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
Wangberg-Eriksson, Kristina. Josef Frank: Textile Designs. Lund: Signum, 1999.

I read Buckminster Fuller’s “Critical Path” early in my studies and was always struck by how his formative education and life circumstances informed his work over the years.  Failure confronted Fuller after he left the Navy, heading him on his “lifelong experiment” with an aim of finding out “what, if anything,” one individual could do “on behalf of all humanity.” 

As early as 1927 “when a human first flew alone across an ocean in one day” R. Buckminster Fuller realized a globally connected world with limited resources would need radically new design solutions. The same year, one of his first publication’s cover, “4-D,” proclaimed “Two billion new homes will be required by humanity in the next eighty years,” Fuller commenced work on a series of factory built housing projects he called the Dymaxion Exploration.  His “4-D Time Lock” essay compared automobile to traditional construction industries, proposing a “new era home” could be assembled in one day as portable commodity, similar to a car.

This hand-colored print of “The Ten Deck House” describes Fuller’s early concept for a mass-produced modular ten-story aluminum structure. Rendered on a mimeographed print, it was not uncharacteristic for Fuller to replicate his drawn ideas using this economical printing process.  Influenced by time in the U.S. Navy and aeronautics the entire building, light weight in construction, would be transported by zeppelin and lowered into a crater first created with a small explosion. Though never realized, it was designed around a central mast, each deck is supported by a cable with four levels for living, a separate floor for servants, along with a nursery, library, gym, pool, power station and sky promenade. The suspended building frees the ground level for a car or airplane.

Not diminished by his losses this visionary designer’s work spanned the fields of architecture, science and technology. His experimentation with pre-fabricated structures continued, including the 4D House re-branded the Dymaxion House, a Dymaxion Deployment Unit and the Geodesic Dome.

Ely Jacques Kahn (1884-1972), a commercial architect active throughout the 1920s and 30s, worked to define the New York aesthetic through his Art Deco skyscrapers. “The industrial structure,” he once commented, “sails merrily into experiment.” Kahn’s observation exemplified the architect’s dual pragmatism and creativity, his ability to meld a practical understanding of the architectural program with innovative form and decoration. Unlike his Beaux-Arts peers, Kahn recognized the inherently commercial nature of New York City and regarded the commercial structure as an opportune venue for architectural invention. Commissioned by large real-estate firms, as well as luxury stores such as Bergdorf-Goodman, Kahn’s architecture definitively altered the New York landscape. 

Kahn’s “Design for a Skyscraper,” drawn while in partnership with Albert Buchman, offers a perspective view for a high rise tower. Kahn arranges squat masses around a vertical shaft, which tapers off into a domed peak. Kahn emphasizes the tower’s height with a series of emphatic, vertical lines. The tapering masses, terminating in the curved peak, further emphasize the structure’s height, leading the eye from the massive foundation upwards. Kahn’s work, as exemplified by this drawing, came to be defined by clean, blocky, geometric masses, as well as a rich polychromatic palette. Kahn was influenced by non-Western sources, including Moorish and Persian design. Many of his structures, including the Cooper-Hewitt’s drawing, recall ancient ziggurats with their stepped facades. This proposed skyscraper, though never realized, is notable for its domed peak, a feature that departed from the strictly rectilinear profile of Kahn’s work.

Kahn’s design relates to Hugh Ferriss’ 1916 Zoning Code studies, another set of drawings in the Cooper-Hewitt collection.

Drawing: Study for Maximum Mass Permitted by the 1916 New York Zoning Law, Stage 3, 1922. Designed by Hugh Ferriss.Gift of Mrs. Hugh Ferriss. 1969-137-3.

The 1916 zoning code, which set limits for structural masses at certain heights, was enacted to restrict skyscrapers from blocking light and air throughout the city. The new zoning law obliged architects such as Kahn to stack masses as a building grew taller. Kahn took ownership of this stacked profile, integrating it into his design aesthetic. Kahn’s graphite rendering, with its atmospheric shadowing and its isolated form, further demonstrates the power of the architectural drawing as an advertising tool, an alluring image that suggests the futuristic and other-worldly quality of Kahn’s proposed design.

This is an example of wallpaper used as propaganda. This is a paper produced during the French Revolution, woodblock-printed ca. 1792. The citizens of France felt that the Revolution could not be won just by fighting in political circles or on the battlefield. They felt it needed to be reinforced on the domestic front as well and had to occur in the ordinary citizen’s everyday life. It was believed that symbols had a powerful effect on the spirit and could strengthen the validity of the new principles. The domestic nature of wallpaper as well its repetitive aspect made it an ideal medium for portraying such motifs, and bringing these ideals into the home. This paper contains numerous symbols of the Revolution including the red Phrygian cap, cockade, tri-color ribbons, and a banner with the words liberty and equality, which are all combined in this rather beautiful format. Unlike posters or flyers used today for the spread of information, these are block-printed wallpapers, made by some of the top French manufacturers. The Museum contains about a dozen different versions of wallpapers expressing this theme, in both sidewalls and borders, suggesting they were widely used and were being produced by a number of different manufacturers.

With its overlapping pattern of abstracted florals and its animated orange circular motif, this exhibition poster designed by artist Johan Thorn Prikker (b.1868-1932) is a true icon of the Nieuwe Kunst (Art Nouveau) style in Holland.  Created for an exhibition of Dutch art at the Kaiser-Wilhelm museum in Krefeld, Germany, Thorn Prikker employed several signifiers of Dutch nationalism to advertise the event, most notably the orange (for the House of Orange-Nassau), the tulip, and Indonesian batik.

Batik textiles were a major source of pride to the Dutch nation in Thorn Prikker’s time and represented the cross-cultural exchange with their Indonesian colonies, most importantly Java. This eastern form of textile design breathed new energy and vitality into western applied arts. Johan Thorn Prikker and his contemporaries re-appropriated batik designs by applying them to upholstery, apparel, wall-coverings and posters, enabling batik to become the primary aesthetic ingredient in the Nieuwe Kunst.

Johan Thorn Prikker, a major contributor to the Symbolist movement in the Netherlands, gained recognition early in his career for his paintings and drawings.  However by the turn of the century, Thorn Prikker soon became an ardent exponent of the applied arts, contributing to a wide range of other media, from book covers and stained glass to furniture, mosaics and carpets.  In the Krefeld poster, we clearly see Thorn Prikker’s skills in both batik and stained glass, where he harnesses line, color, light and dark to a beautiful effect.   In his essay, Feast ofDiversity: Nieuwe Kunst Book Design, Alston Purvis noted that Dutch Art Nouveau graphics were unique from their contemporaries’. He states, “the Netherlands version was far more playful and provocative, reflecting the complexity and diversity of Dutch society.” When looking at Thorn Prikker’s poster, this statement rings true.  Where the patriotic orange and the Javanese ornament come together - the diverse and playful style of Dutch Nieuwe Kunst is found.

Winslow Homer’s 1873 oil painting titled, Sunlight and Shadow—In the Hammock, depicts an idyllic scene of tranquil bourgeois leisure in a pastoral setting.  The scene portrays a young middle-to-upper class woman, indicated by her well-maintained white dress and refined shoes, reading peacefully in a hammock. Stretching from one end of the canvas to the other, the woven hammock and its sitter appear to be floating amongst the varied green leaves and black branches. Her face is softly defined and relaxed; as her body and dangling skirt hem swing amongst light dappled trees. Critic Holland Cotter has said that Homer’s “apple scented mid-1870s images of upstate New York farms and schools…reflect a mood of national nostalgia as the country’s Centennial approached.”[1]

This painting has a special place in my heart, not only because of its impressionistic rendering of light and social symbolism, but because it was featured in Cooper Hewitt’s 2006 exhibition, Frederic Church, Winslow Homer & Thomas Moran: Tourism and the American Landscape. This was the first exhibition in which I toured as a docent for the museum, and it was an impressionable one for me in that so many of the works on display by Homer, Church and Moran were part of the museum’s original collection. From 1912-1920, Charles Savage Homer Jr., Winslow Homer’s brother, and his wife donated a remarkable collection of over 300 paintings, watercolors, and drawings by the artist, constituting the largest collection of Homer material in any museum. It is the museum’s good fortune to have this Homer painting as one of its treasures.