When paging through interior design magazines, classic toiles of red or blue on white are used to create a relaxed, yet refined country house look. A room decorated using toile, for a wallpapered accent wall or for a carefully upholstered suite of sofa and chairs, often projects a lady-like atmosphere and is intentionally nostalgic for a time past. The toiles that we are familiar with today originated in the second half of the eighteenth century in France.[1] During this period it was a popular pastime for the aristocracy to recreate what they imagined to be the quaint pleasures of peasant life. Watteau and Fragonard capture this recreational trend in their paintings of romantic and blissful scenes of well dressed ladies and gentlemen lounging among the bounty of nature and relishing the simple joy of gliding on a swing. The popularity of this eighteenth-century version of “slumming” inspired textile manufactures to capitalize on the aristocracy’s fascination with country folk and the perceived recreations of outdoor laborers.[2] The toiles that were developed during this period still remain popular today and continue to depict the idealized version of eighteenth-century farm and peasant living. Instead of showing a woman sweating and dishevled as she milks a cow, the cow stands behind the woman as she plays with her child in a dress that shows little wear and tear. In most scenarios the people illustrated aren’t working, but can be identified as peasants by what they're wearing, straw hats and unembellished clothes with bare feet and exposed lower legs. Other toiles were patterned with what was understood during that period as Asian motifs, pagodas and men wearing jackets with mandarin collars and frog closures. It is important to remember that toiles captured romanticized images of peasants and exotic lands that were based on fantasy.

Knowing that traditional toiles often depict projections and idealizations of farm workers and foreign lands allows for a deeper appreciation of London Toile. Designed by Timorous Beasties, the Scottish team of Alistair MacAuley and Paul Simmons who met during their studies at the Glasgow School of Art, London Toile challenges and plays with the notion of traditional toiles. Instead of the bucolic scenes of happy peasants sitting in the grass under a tree, Timorous Beasties selected raw scenes that counter the notion of fantasy with less than glamorous images of everyday scenarios in a gritty urban landscape including: a man with a backpack talking on a cell phone passing a homeless man with a cart and a dog, two men who are collecting garbage or cleaning the street near a traffic light, a person being held up at gunpoint, and three men standing near some railing with a police car and housing project in the background. Rather than signifiers of open country landscapes like trees, dirt paths, and rustic wooden fences, London Toile uses architectural landmarks to help the viewer identify the city: the London Eye (Millennium Wheel), Tower Bridge, 30 St. Mary Axe (informally known as “The Gherkin”), and St. Paul’s Cathedral. The blending of old and new buildings from the London landscape further bring the design into the present day, making the design contemporary and relatable. In an article where Simmons discusses their toile collection (which now includes toiles for Glasgow and New York City) he states, “I love the idea of an upper middle-class fabric depicting the underbelly of urban chaos.”[3] Although London Toile is thematically the antithesis of traditional toile using raw and realistic imagery that is seen in the present day, there is one toile characteristic that Timorous Beasties have not changed: the format and presentation of their images. From afar, London Toile looks like any other. 

If a traditional toile was replaced by the Timorous Beasties' design in an interior design magazine spread, the switch would likely go unnoticed. However, if one takes the time to examine the images presented, it is only then that the, perhaps too realistic, scenes of urban life can be recognized. This quality - from afar giving off the feel and look of traditional toile and up close unsettling the viewer with the unexpected - is what makes London Toile a clever reimagining of a traditional textile that also serves as commentary on present-day culture. London Toile hopes to engage the viewer, challenging our dwindling attention spans. It toys with the person who quickly processes and moves on, not taking the time to look, inspect, or appreciate detail. In fact, London Toile has been purchased in stores and then abruptly returned after customers realized that unconventional scenes are shown.[4] Timorous Beasties have an unexpected and refreshing approach to a textile type that is romanticized through associations with aristocratic country houses and fantasy. This approach reminds us and invites us to take a closer look at our surroundings.

Megan Elevado is a Brooklyn native who is fascinated by East German and Soviet culture and design. She earned her BA at New York University and completed her MA in the History of Decorative Arts and Design at Parsons The New School for Design in May 2013.

Tokujin Yoshioka’s ToFU lamp is magical. The spare form—a perfectly symmetrical square delicately cut from clear methacrylate resin—conducts light only around its edges, stemming from a single halogen bulb. It is as though light itself is harnessed in the design, caught within and released by the material in a minimal, sensual gesture. The glowing, jewel-like form speaks as much to light as to the void it seemingly creates.

The ToFU lamp is a beautiful evocation of contemporary Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka’s work. Poetic, inventive, conceptual, and sensual, his work often starts with an exploration into a new material or process. Here, Yoshioka fully maximizes the light-conducting property of methacrylate resin, or PMMA, a transparent thermoplastic. When turned on, the light is transmitted through the material to illuminate only the edges. The material itself seems to recede, resulting in the simple glowing square form. Yoshioka has said that in his approach to design he attempts to “stimulate one’s consciousness—to set the user’s senses free.” In the lamp’s seemingly otherworldliness, Yoshioka has also set our expectations—of material performance and what a light can be—free.

Yoshioka graduated from the Kuwasawa Design School in 1986 and, after working for major twentieth-century Japanese designers Shiro Kuramata and Issey Miyake, established his own design firm in 2000. His practice typifies the structural simplicity and beauty of contemporary Japanese design, while maintaining a conceptual and material rigor. Another of his designs in Cooper-Hewitt’s collection, the Honey-Pop chair, exemplifies this idea.

Made of layers of glassine honeycomb paper (commonly used in Chinese lamps) that are laid flat, stacked, and cut following a single curve, the chair’s form is created when it is fanned out and a user sits in it. The contours are customized by the user’s body upon sitting, compressed and imprinted in the surface. In his constant explorations and simple solutions of how a material can perform, Yoshioka pushes our expectations and elicits, as he states, design that is “less about an object’s physicality and more about its sensual excitement.”

Tie-dye wallpaper shows the influence of pop culture on the decorative arts. Designed and produced by Barbara White in 1958, this handmade paper was produced using only rice paper and Higgins inks. These designs were created by manipulating the ink with added moisture. The paper was placed on a glass surface, then moistened. The colors were applied with a brush, then the paper was strategically folded over onto itself, then squeezed to spread and blend the colors. It was then unfolded and left to dry. These were also created in matched sets of wallpapers and borders.

White traveled to Japan to study the art of paper folding and dying, and after mastering these techniques created a wide range of patterns using these skills. All of her designs were produced on single sheets of paper. White tie-dye wallpapers were created for and sold through the Karl Mann wallpaper company. Along with tie-dye papers she also created a line of molded papers, where the paper pulp was mixed in a variety of shades, then melded together into interesting patterns and color combinations.

The technique of tie dye dates back to ancient times, but didn’t reach its peak in the West until the 1960s and 70s with the beatnik and hippie movements. Tie dye appealed to this generation as it allowed them to be very expressive, and was easy and inexpensive to do.

Introduced by Finnish furniture manufacturer Asko Oy in 1968, Eero Aarnio's "Pastilli" rocking chair—sometimes called the “Gyro” or "Rock 'N' Roll" chair—epitomizes the turbulent, unconventional era of the late Sixties. The world at that time was changing dramatically, and Aarnio's designs broke away from the square furniture shapes and mid-century curves of the previous decade to help re-define how people socialized and sat in their living spaces.  His designs were both non-conformist and futuristic and were often used on sets for science fiction films.  The "Rock 'N' Roll" chair was made of fiberglass-reinforced polyester and came in a variety of pop colors. This example in the Cooper-Hewitt's collection is a bright lime green that is electric to the eye. The chair’s form is as compelling as the color, consisting of a flattened spherical shape with half the top part scooped out for the sitter.

While I have always been fascinated by the counter-culture of the 1960s and the dramatic political and social change that occurred during that time, I can appreciate this chair, not just for its innovative design, but for the pleasure of knowing what its like to sit in it. I grew up just a few miles from the Allentown Public library and in their children’s section were quite a few white, yellow, and orange “Rock ‘N’ Roll” chairs. I didn’t know anything about the design of these chairs at the time, or how they ended up there, but they were exciting and joyful to sit in and were so unlike the rigid upright chairs to which I was accustomed. Like a futuristic, plastic capsule that would rock and roll at every angle and easily spin on the carpet due to its rounded smooth base, this chair embodies its name in both form and function and allows its user to rebel like a 1960s rock star, even if they are stuck in a library.

This framed landscape paper dates to the mid-19th Century. The production of this design involves a number of different techniques. The background is combed or dragged in a wood grain pattern resembling oak; the landscape scene is hand painted, and the oval picture frame is woodblock-printed. Papers with a printed frieze, or ornament, such as this, that would repeat horizontally but not vertically were usually printed in eight to twelve foot lengths, which allowed some flexibility to accommodate different ceiling heights. These would be installed with multiple panels in a room, with the frames installed about eye level, the same as a real framed painting, and these landscape panels would alternate with plain wood-grained panels. They would be spread out around the room and would negate the need to hang additional artwork. The Cooper-Hewitt has a set of 4 of these medallions that are identical except that each frame contains a different hand painted scene. Three of the landscapes contain images of birds while the fourth contains a family of deer.

From phonographs to record turntables to cassette decks to digital music players, Americans’ interest in personal audio players throughout the twentieth century and today has remained constant. We want to load up a tune. We want to be the DJ.

While personal stereo systems today often consist of nothing more than a digital audio player and small speakers, earlier forms of music technology necessitated more substantial stereo systems. General Electric Company’s SC 7300 stereo system, dated to 1973, accommodates both records and 8-track cartridge tapes in an elegant, white enamel pedestal base. The system is intended for residential use, but there is an implied portability in its design, which was a growing trend in music listening during the period. The freestanding system, designed by the in-house design department at GE, takes cues from a portable, modular object. The separable speakers can be removed and placed at various distances from the unit, or neatly tucked into the pedestal base to create a more compact system. While the record turntable was a stationary listening technology (records are not an easily transportable form of music, afterall), the 8-track tape player in the main console was an innovation in portable audio technology during the period. It enclosed the magnetic tape of clunky reel-to-reel tape players in a small box-like case, making 8-tracks an easier and more compact form for music storage.

The 8-track gained popularity in the mid-1960s when automakers offered the technology as an option in cars, owing to the format’s convenience and portability. Home versions of the 8-track tape player soon followed, enabling consumers to share tapes between their home and car stereo systems. The use of 8-track cartridge tapes peaked in the mid-1970s, when the SC 3700 was offered. In fact, GE released the stereo system as part of its push into the tape and audio market during the period. While consumers may have started to think of 8-track tapes as a viable alternative to vinyl records, the inclusion of both formats in the SC 3700 demonstrates that manufacturers—and their buying public—were not yet wholly convinced. (Of course, the 8-track format was discontinued in the early 1980s.) It may be difficult to imagine with the advent of MP3 files and the dissolution of physical music formats that something as seemingly cumbersome as the 8-track could be considered portable. Nevertheless, the SC 3700 marks this particular moment in consumer audio technology with a strikingly elegant, streamlined design offered by a major American manufacturer.

“Femme à Marguerite” or “Woman with a Daisy” was designed by Alphonse Maria Mucha, a fin-de-siecle artist perhaps most famous for his works on paper. Mucha was born in Moravia in 1860 and died in Czechoslovakia in 1939, however like a majority of his works, this fabric was designed in France around the turn of the 19^th century at the height of his career and the height of the Art Nouveau period. Serving as an excellent example of this French style, the textile also boasts many hallmarks of Mucha’s personal vocabulary and a subject matter that found a home in many of commercial works. From subject to material, and from the lyrical, organic forms, to the pervasive coupling of nature and the female form, an indicator of the era’s “Femme Nouvelle,” as well as her medieval dress, this textile oozes the sinewy sensuality that is Art Nouveau.[i]

Not unlike Mucha’s unforgettable poster designs, this textiles depicts a typically Art Nouveau maiden ensconced in nature, coyly looking out towards the viewer, inviting them in. This design is not only visually alluring, but also tactilely enticing, printed on velveteen. Though Mucha made other designs that were printed on cloth as well, this was the only design sold in only in the cloth version and not as prints or posters.[ii] It was produced in at least three different colorways and in two sizes; it was intended to be used as screen panels and cushion covers[iii]

This is significant because much like Belgian Art Nouveau artist and designer Henry van de Velde, who designed many interior spaces, Mucha was known to have created a cohesive Art Nouveau interior for Georges Fouquet’s boutique on the rue Royale in Paris (with whom he also collaborated on many pieces of jewelry).[iv] Though it does not appear that this textile was conceived as part of any particular interior, knowing this I am tempted to ask - could you stop at just one Mucha throw pillow or do you have to commit to finishing out the entire room, fixtures and all? Can you imagine such an overwhelmingly fantastic place? What if your living room was designed by none other than Alphonse Mucha - filled with sweeping whiplash lines and crescent forms, punctuated by his sultry young women, the equivalent of the Art Nouveau pin-up? At once this very commercial style would be expressed in an intimate, somewhat private space, and fantasy would overtake reality. It is through the imaginative, wandering forms of Mucha borne out in prints, in jewelry and on fabric, that we see how the innovative and widely applied style of Art Nouveau was able to permeate both the public and the private sphere, integrating modernity and fantasy.

The French painter Raoul Dufy is best known for his colorful scenes of Parisian life, and the light, urbane feeling that characterizes his paintings carries through to his woven silk designs. But his block-printed linen textiles show a different set of influences. The depiction of the cutting blade on this combine, as well as the propeller-like feeling of the sheaves of wheat, may have been inspired by the Italian futurists, with their interest in speed and motion. And Soviet propaganda textiles of about the same period, with their focus on the humble agricultural worker, may have been as much of an influence as the pastoral toiles de Jouy with which Dufy’s designs are often compared.

Dufy learned the woodcut technique in the studio of Léon Bonnat, and early in his career spent a productive few years creating woodcut illustrations for Guillaume Apollinaire’s Bestiaire. Through that connection, he met fashion designer Paul Poiret; the two worked together continuously over their careers. First Poiret set up La Petite Usine, a design studio modeled on the Wiener Werkstatte, to produce Dufy’s designs. Later Dufy designs were produced by the firm Bianchini Ferier, but he continued to create exclusive textiles for Poiret’s fashions.

Many people say “Chippendale” when they see a chair with a carved and pierced back.  While it is true that Thomas Chippendale designed such chairs and his workshop produced similar models, the reason such chairs bear his name is because of the book of designs he published, The Gentleman and Cabinetmaker’s Director the first edition of which was in 1754. The book was aimed at both the patrons so they could select styles they liked and to cabinetmakers to show them good designs of what was fashionable.   None of Chippendale’s designs have the hairy paw feet that this chair does. The chair’s pierced back was already in fashion when Chippendale’s Director first appeared, so this chair may well date from before Chippendale’s design book. His name is associated with the style because of the popularity of the book-well known on both sides of the Atlantic.

Chippendale was not the only one to publish rococo designs. Robert Manwaring, about whom less is known as he did not have a thriving cabinet shop, also published designs in the 1760’s that more closely resemble this chair than Chippendale’s. In fact, the deep rococo carving on the crest rail, on the knees and the hairy paws was especially popular in Ireland and, to a lesser extent, in Scotland.  These chairs may have been made for a patron in either place, even if the maker and/or the design source was from London.  Further complicating the story is the fact that London-trained furniture makers like Scottish-born Thomas Affleck, emigrated to Philadelphia where they too found a market for hairy paw chairs with pierced backs.
This chair is made of red walnut, a densely grained walnut that can look a lot like mahogany. Both woods were imported to England, the walnut often from Virginia. It was used for furniture-making after natural disasters such as a walnut blight and over use had exhausted  first the English, then French walnut supply by about 1730.  Mahogany from the Caribbean came to England in significant amounts starting in the 1720’s and was found especially desirable for carving, so walnut imports receded.

With wood imports and style that traveled via pattern books common, neither wood type nor design is a clue as to who made this chair. The style of carving is left as the factor to help determine authorship.  Since so few pieces of British furniture were marked with a name, few makers are known by their style the way a painting might be-or stamped pieces of French furniture.

This maker did more than study pattern books; he-or someone he hired- knew how to do unusually fine carving. He also studied form--the chair is comfortable to sit in while providing decent posture in either a dining room or a living room setting of a grand house. Dining chairs in the mid-18th century were not left drawn up to the table but returned to a place along the wall when not in use. Such lavish knees and feet would be wasted under the table!

When I first stumbled across this object in the Museum’s collection, I had absolutely no idea what I was looking at. Its form hints subtly at a creature living in the sea or the sky, and I did not understand the small buttons adhered to its body. “Prototype, Wrist Computer,” the object information stated. I still was not clear. Upon researching a bit further, however, it is an absolutely fascinating object that is a surprising concept model for the future, delivered from the past. It is, effectively, a smartphone.

Created in 1988 by American designer Lisa Krohn, the Wrist Computer Regional Information and Communication Port is a concept model for a device that combines telephony and computing. While the idea for such devices dates back to the early 1970s, the first prototype of an actual cellular phone that incorporated computing features wasn’t introduced until 1992. Krohn’s Wrist Computer predates this by four years and, rather than following the archetype of the telephone, she rethinks the possibilities of what the technology can be in relation to the human body.

Krohn’s Wrist Computer is made of malleable silicon rubber, designed to be worn around the wrist and secured with a button. Its intended functions include a phone, compass, clock, and regional information guide, and according to the designer, it “is capable of detecting its geographic location via satellite link.” A flap holding a speaker that activates the phone function of the device can be wrapped around the middle finger, mimicking the position used when holding a telephone. When not in use it buttons back onto the wrist, partially covering the keyboard and small screen.

Image from http://www.krohndesign.com/wristcomputer.html. 

With her design, Krohn embraces new technology while exploring its relationship to the human body. For one, the device’s proposed power source is not only the sun, but its user’s body heat. Second, the design, to be worn on the body rather than placed in a pocket or bag, places user-interface technology directly in line with its original reference point—the body. In the designer’s words, “the appearance and texture of the Regional Port is inspired by both anatomy and an idealized interpretation of technology. It is meant to provoke thought as to how to intimate we really want to be with high technology, and how aware we want to be of its physical presence.” Given the saturation of technology today and its growing integration with the body, these are startlingly prescient words from the past.

That knitted caps enjoyed great popularity in eighteenth-century Spain can be seen in the many extent examples located in museums in the United States and Europe. Cooper-Hewitt has a very fine cap that was acquired in 1951 as a gift from the generous donor, Richard C. Greenleaf. Knitted in dark red silk, the cap is primarily patterned with diagonal ribs while the very top has a geometric arrangement of diamond-shapes and triangles. The dramatic tassel, at nearly twenty-three inches in length, is formed from two twisted skeins of yarn that have rings of knotted silk and tufted chenille attached. There is ample evidence showing that men and women wore knitted caps on celebratory occasions. They were an important accessory of native dress in Spain, and no artist expressed this innate “Spanishness” better than Francisco Goya (1746–1828), who painted a lively scene set alongside a river in Picnic on the Banks of the Manzanares that depicted knitted caps and other forms of Spanish dress.

Fan, mid-19th century, Bequest of Sarah Cooper Hewitt, 1931-6-141.

Red knitted caps also make an appearance on a Cooper-Hewitt nineteenth century painted fan showing a large group on an country excursion seemingly interrupted by a bullfight. The women wear mantillas over their colorful dresses while the men are shown in a variety of costume. The bicorne hat, breeches, waistcoat, and coat suggest French influence while Spanish costume is signified by embellished short jackets and breeches worn with sashes and red knitted caps. Most visible on the left side are the bullfighter and another man kneeling on a log by a stream. Both wear red knitted caps with elongated tassels, evidence that forms of dress from an earlier period continued to influence romantic and stereotypical images of Spanish costume and culture.

Andy Warhol, born in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, was formerly trained as a commercial illustrator which was grounded in Advertising. Deriving from the 1960s, his illustrations and representations of contemporary culture formed the visual arts movement, Pop Art. He used painting, printmaking, sculpture and film to comment on the culture’s relationship to mass media.

Printmaking was perhaps the most compelling way to exemplify his purposes of creating art or allowing society to become the art. Through repetition, he could create a series, one image transforming into a narrative and he could manipulate the images to change each time. Media controlled the culture’s consumers, telling people what to think and when to think it, as it still does today, more than fifty years later. 

His archetypal printed images of American icons like the Campbell Soup Can, Brillo Boxes, and celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Elvis Presley characterized not only what was already in the newspapers, television and radio programs but they portrayed what the consumers of this time period were consumed in, the objects and people that mark the time period they were living in. His entire oeuvre is an overarching question of “what is Art and who makes that decision?”

What does any of this have to do with cows? In 1966, art dealer and friend of Warhol, Ivan Karp said: “The only thing that no one deals with now these days is pastorals. My favorite subject is cows.” In 1966, Warhol silk screened this cow, twice, to actual size on a rectangular piece of wallpaper which was first exhibited at the famous Leo Castelli Gallery, in New York. He was removing the cow from its original landscape and placing it into the gallery, again imposing that art and life are synonymous.  Some critics have noted that this work commented on the treatment of cows in 19th century landscape painting or American folk art, another theory could be that he was creating another American emblem. The cow as a symbol of nourishment, economic independence, nostalgia, earth and domesticity.  

He has used this print of the cow in multiple installations from full wallpapered rooms to a singular printed cow, printed in various palettes. This silk screen of two cows is printed in three layers. The first layer is a dark steel blue; the next layer is an Indian red, silhouetting the shape of the cows head, finally black is settled on surface to prescribe detail to the facial features. The artist gave this wallpaper to the Cooper-Hewitt as a gift and was exhibited here in 2004, which exhibited wallpapers designed by artists. This piece not only typifies Warhol, Pop Art and the process of silk screening but it depicts all of American culture.

With its dancing roll of printing ribbon, diving between a checkerboard game of multi-colored squares and symbols, this ad for Olivetti’s Divisumma adding machine makes simple mathematics look like anything but just another day at the office.  Like the poster, Olivetti’s products imbibed a similar pop aesthetic, embracing bold colors and simple forms.  Their typewriters, calculators and other small office electronics were offered in various colors and models and were often portable.  Catering to those with a flair for the individual, an Olivetti product encapsulated the spirit of mid-century Italian design.

In 1953, Olivetti commissioned Herbert Bayer to create this advertisement for their new line of calculators.  An early member of the Bauhaus school, Herbert Bayer was a graphic designer, typographer, photographer, painter, and exhibition designer.  His sans-serif, all lower-case typeface Universal, created in 1925, is a benchmark of European Modernism and established Bayer as one of the period’s most influential designers.

Bayer’s contribution to the American modern-design landscape began with MoMA’s pivotal Bauhaus exhibition in 1938.  With László Moholy-Nagy’s and Walter Gropius’s endorsement, Bayer immigrated to the US to become the exhibition’s designer, distilling his Bauhaus aesthetic to an American audience.  Many corporations took note of the minimal, functionalist products on display and applied these new design styles to their business models.  Consequently, Walter P. Paepcke, head of The Container Corporation of America (CCA) hired Bayer as the company’s chief corporate designer, fostering Bayer’s career in America.  Throughout the 1940s Bayer designed posters, info graphics and brand manuals for CCA, the most iconic being the World Geographic Atlas and Great Ideas of Modern Man campaign.  Both Paepcke and Bayer strongly believed in the power of info graphics as well as socially conscious design.  Bayer’s designs became a conduit for Paepcke’s philosophies, promoting the corporate image in a progressive, thoughtful way.

Like Walter Paepcke, Camillo Olivetti and his son Adriano also prescribed to a high standard of excellence in corporate appearance and identity.  In hiring Bayer, they invested in his reputation as a pioneer in brand identity and communication design.  This poster appears early in the Olivetti canon, and is Bayer’s only known commission for the brand.  Its exuberant style  ushered in a number of posters designed by Olivetti’s  in-house graphic designer, Giovanni Pintori as well as commissions from artists such as Leo Lionni and Milton Glaser.

On first glance, this necklace by the Norwegian jeweler and metalwork artist Tone Vigeland, appears to be a luxurious collar made of delicate, lustrous blue-black feathers. It is actually an intricate tour de force in metals, composed of hundreds of steel nails that Vigeland flattened and forged by hand, then meticulously attached one by one to a silver chainmail backing, and embellished with a ring of gold pod-like beads and a simple rose-colored mother-of-pearl clasp. The result of Vigeland’s experimentation with metals and precise construction, this necklace is a very sensual piece in an unlikely combination of materials.

Tone Vigeland was born to a family of artists, including her father, a painter, and her great uncle, the internationally recognized sculptor Gustav Vigeland. She studied metalwork at the Norwegian Art College, and the Oslo Technical School for Jewelers, reaching master status in 1962. She also apprenticed at the Plus Center for Arts and Crafts in Fredrikstad, Norway, where she created jewelry for commercial production, in the Scandinavian Modern style—simple, bold and elegant forms without applied decoration. But by 1961, she established her own studio to create unique works, and over the next three decades explored ways to achieve flexibility in her jewelry that would correspond to movement of the body. She studied the intricate joining of Indian jewelry, and experimented with linking tiny silver rings to form pliant mesh, making reference to both chainmail and lace. Developing a uniquely personal style, she also began to incorporate found pieces of weathered iron and other metals, mixing humble and precious materials to achieve new textures and surface effects. “The way I got the idea for the feather series was pure luck. A friend…came to me with a set of black iron nails. I found that when I hammered them flat, they had a lovely character—almost like black feathers. So in this case, first I discovered the material, and then I found the design to suit it.”[1]

Having had the pleasure of studying Cooper-Hewitt's necklace and preparing it for display several times, I can appreciate that it is far more than a small sculpture. Although the whole is somewhat heavy, it moves with a supple fluidity, almost like a garment. It is easy to imagine this piece resting gracefully on a wearer’s neck and shoulders; the individual “feathers” and hollow “pods” combed into place when still, yet responding to each movement, shifting with a soft, low clink. Vigeland's jewelry does not just decorate the body, but is meant to interact with it.

1. Asman, David. “Bringing Drama to Jewelry.” Scanorama, the Magazine of SAS, July-August, 1983, p. 82

From computers to cellphones, Twitter to Facebook, the typed word dominates our daily life. With the increasing proliferation of digital technologies, access to writing has become almost universal.  In the 17^th century, however, writing was a skill reserved for an educated subset within the European population. Calligraphy, referred to as the “Tenth Muse,” was considered an art form, and its practitioners were often trained schoolmasters. Jan Van de Velde’s 1605 book Spieghel der Schrifkonste (Mirror of the Art of Writing) was published at a pivotal moment in the evolution of Dutch calligraphy. The book displays not only Van de Velde’s renowned penmanship, but also provides insight into the historical evolution of writing as a learned skill. This text secured Van de Velde’s reputation as a master calligrapher.

Dutch calligraphers, including Van de Velde, were educated in the south and migrated to the Northern Netherlands to teach at “French schools.”[i] Van de Velde was born in Antwerp in 1569, and relocated his trade to Rotterdam in 1592 where he served as writing master at the local Latin School. Like many of his peers, Van de Velde supplemented his teaching by publishing writing manuals and copybooks.[ii] Writing manuals taught practitioners how to construct individual letters and words, while copybooks, such as Spieghel, reproduced larger passages as textual models for copying.[iii]  Dutch calligraphers, and in particular Van de Velde, developed a reputation throughout Europe for these copybooks. Van de Velde’s Spieghel reproduces examples of hands throughout Europe, and offers a powerful argument in favor of the running “Italian Hand,” a serpentine, flowing type of script.[iv]

Van de Velde collaborated with the engraver Simon Frisius to publish Spieghel. The book is divided into three parts, the first with examples of Dutch, French, German, and English hands, the second part with cursive hands in Latin, Italian, and Spanish, and the third part with his Fondement-Boeck (Book of Fundamentals). This final section offers Van de Velde’s treaty on the art of handwriting, an effort to “conform to a distinctive, yet universal standard of imitation.”[v]Spieghel illustrates Van de Velde’s particular skill for pennetrekken, or pen flourishes, apparent in Cooper-Hewitt’s print. These flourishes extend from the text in serpentine loops that evolve into images or designs, often of animals, flowers, or mythological creatures. Pennetrekken was an opportunity for the calligrapher to further display his mastery, and Van de Velde was particularly celebrated for his flourishes.[vi] Cooper-Hewitt’s print displays a text in French and features an eagle drawing constructed from Van de Velde’s looping lines and topped with a crown. Spieghel, published in 1605, was followed by a great number of Dutch writing manuals, though none achieved the same reputation as Van de Velde’s book.

I chanced upon this biomorphic beauty one day on collections.cooperhewitt.org.

Naturally, being part of the nerd department here at the Museum, I immediately showed it around. After a collective wave of "wooooah, dude," we generally agreed that it was very awesome that our collection indeed contains the alien-space-slug-older-sister to the slick young whippersnapper in the wearable computing family—Google Glass.

This nerdtastically sci-fi-looking design is officially known as the Cyberdesk concept model for a wearable computer. The Cyberdesk was designed by Lisa Krohn. Those four blue dots dangling below the collarbone are a four-key keyboard. The fifth blue button over the throat (kinda creepy, eh?) is a small trackball. Hovering near the mouth is a small microphone. Over the wearer's right eyeball is a glowing yellow tube meant to represent a virtual retinal scanner. Even more sci-fi than Google Glass (which projects visuals into a teeny glass prism that floats in front of the eye) the virtual retinal scanner actually projects a laser beam through the wearer's pupil onto the retina, feeding visual information directly into the eye. Ahh!

Lisa Krohn's website says this about the piece:

"It is counter to our survival to shut out our senses completely and trade in for an artificial world. Instead, why not overlap the real and the virtual? This personal information port is a pliable, high-tech garment which extends its user's senses."

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art also has a Cyberdesk model in their collection, which looks like ours, but their version is white. 

This isn't Lisa Krohn's only stroke of interaction design (IxD) clairvoyance represented in our collection. Krohn also anticipated today's smart wristwatch phenomenon with the similarly playful and biomorphic prototype for a wrist computer she designed in 1988. Another interesting and prescient design by Krohn in our collection is a prototype for a desktop phone called The Phonebook, which Krohn designed during an internship at Smart Design while she was studying at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Designed in collaboration with industrial designer Tucker Viemeister, The Phonebook aimed to simplify complicated interactions by creating a visual and functional analogy to the then-familiar fil-o-fax personal organizer. The design won attention and awards in its day for its innovative interaction design and forward-thinking good looks. Squeezing tons of interactivity into a phone that relies on skeuomorphic metaphors to familiar analog maneuvers sounds very familiar, no?

I wonder how Lisa Krohn's work in the 1980's would have looked if she had access to 2013's tools: Arduino, augmented reality software, tiny displays and sensors, and the whole Sparkfun catalog. Lilypad Arduino is a prototyping tool that is synonymous with wearable computing today. I noticed that the twee/homesteader aesthetic of today's wearble computing prototypes (presumably taking a cue from the maker movement) is very different from the Eva Hesse-meets-Terminator look of Krohn's designs. 

If today's tools had been available in 1993, The Cyberdesk could have been a working prototype for a few hundred dollars! It's a chicken and egg discussion, of course, because I don't think today's tools would have been developed without pioneering designers like Lisa Krohn, who illustrated that affordable prototyping tools were needed in the emerging discipline of interaction design.

This small object has no real comparable in current life, even though we still like sweets.  While small lovely pillboxes might count, those have their own counterparts in the eighteenth century.  We do not normally carry around little boxes of candies in luxurious containers today, even if we are thrilled with special chocolates brought to us at home.  The bonbonnière belongs to a type of object often called an “object of vertu” in which the word vertu means virtuosity. The basic function of the object was really secondary to the display of craftsmanship and, in many cases, luxurious materials that served to indicate that the user and/or giver was a person of refinement, taste and wealth. 
Many such small boxes were for snuff. Like snuff, bonbons, or small candies were luxury items.  The bonbonnière would have been meant mostly for women, unlike the snuffbox.  Sweet foods have long been associated with temptation and being perhaps sinfully good.  They represent pure pleasure, not beneficial and more serious nutrition. So, it is appropriate that this one is rococo in design, a style associated with pleasure palaces and light heartedness. 
The chased gold scrolls asymmetrically wrap themselves over a core of agate, opening on a button in the enameled gold band around the two pieces of agate. The saying in the enamel is “Eloignez (sic) de vous, rien n’est agréable" (separated from you, nothing is agreeable) has a mistake in the French. This could be because the piece was made in England in the French taste and because French style of the Louis XV period  highlighted the pleasures of the rococo era and was considered the height of fashion in England. However, the word "eloignez" does not reveal whether the donor is masculine or feminine, which would have been necessary had the right form-“eloigné(e)” (the extra 'e' for a woman)- been used. Perhaps this was from a lover –and  one could say it was from a female friend if caught-or perhaps it was just fractured French.  The object inspires the imagination to think of liasons dangereuses or at least seductive liasons.

Embroidery has an unfairly old-fashioned image, probably because of the pious verses of the 19^th century associating needlework with womanly virtue. So when we were developing the exhibition Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance, we were especially excited to find this embroidered implant. It may look like a doily, but it is a serious piece of biomedical engineering. Manufactured by Pearsall’s Ltd.  in conjunction with Ellis Developments, the device was a collaboration between physicians and embroidery designers, combining textile engineering with the life sciences. The patient had a large tumor in his shoulder, and needed to have his humerus, the large bone which runs from shoulder to elbow, replaced with steel. This device was designed to attach the new bone to the shoulder girdle while still allowing full range of motion.

The technique of machine embroidery on a dissolvable substrate has existed since the 19^th century and was originally used to make so-called “chemical lace,” a cheaper imitation of hand-made needle laces. Here, the open, lacey structure promotes tissue in-growth after surgery. A CAD program (commonly used to quickly create new embroidery designs like monograms and sports logos) is used in conjunction with advanced medical imaging technologies to create customized implants. The freedom of the embroidery technique allows the creation of “structurally biocompatible” devices forms which mimic natural fibrous arrays like ligaments, and which have integrated eyelets for the insertion of screws. This device is manufactured in the form of a snowflake, with eight short and eight long projections for attachment to the shoulder, and a center ring to accommodate the knobby end of the humerus.  

The Savoy vase (ca. 1936-37) by Finnish architect and designer, Alvar Aalto (b.1898-d.1976), is a unique, organic shape in glass, that exemplifies the designer’s vision of Finnish modernity and has become a national symbol for the nature and culture of modern Finland.  Beginning in the early 1930s, Aalto turned his focus away from architecture and devoted considerable effort as a glass designer. He was motivated by the desire to offer people everyday objects that were both derived from nature and accommodated a human sensibility.

In the autumn of 1936, the Karhula Iittala glassworks announced a new glass design competition for the World’s Fair exhibition in Paris in 1937. Alvar Aalto submitted an entry titled, “Eskimåerindens skinnbuxa” (The Eskimo woman’s leather breeches), which showed five designs for vases, roughly drawn on colored bits of cardboard and sketch paper. The sketches superbly described the glass object’s distinctive free form and its serpentine, sinuous contours. Aalto was awarded the entry first prize[1].  Working closely with Aalto, the Karhula-Iittala glassworks developed a way to make these challenging designs by blowing the glass into wooden molds that gradually burned away. The following year, the prototypes were ordered by a new luxury restaurant in Helsinki called the Savoy, which helped coin the vase’s name.

The form of the “Savoy” vase demonstrates Aalto’s quest in his work of the 1930s for the natural and organic, and also reflects the morphologies of his Finnish homeland’s forests and lakes[2].  Like nature’s random arrangement, the vase’s wave-like, often uneven edges force flowers or the like placed inside to adapt, by either falling against an inward contour or by resting within its undulating form. The oblong expansions of the vase’s shape relate to the profile of Finland’s lakes and bodies of water, while the rippling effect on the sides recalls the lines of trees in the expansive Finnish forests.

Cooper Hewitt’s “Savoy” vase is an early example of the design, however the product is now mass-produced by Iittala glassworks and can be purchased in various sizes and colors from design and department stores. While its modern shape and material makes the vase amenable to any interior anywhere in the world, each person that owns this vase brings Aalto’s symbolic expression of the Finnish identity and culture into their own environment.

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[1] Schildt, Goran. Aalvar Aalto: The Complete Catalogue of Architecture, Design and Art. New York: Rizzoli, 1994, p. 268.

[2] Reed, Peter, ed. Alvar Aalto: Between Humanism and Materialism. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1998, p. 30.
 

Without much thought or effort, I’ve been reading images inspired by Otto Neurath’s International Picture Language for most of my life.  No doubt you too have encountered derivatives of these informative symbols which can be found across the globe and online, from airport signage to The Noun Project.  Considered an early pioneer of infographics, Neurath translated complicated data into easily readable pictograms. 

What is less obvious from these simplified yet functional pictures is Neurath’s deep-rooted philosophical ambitions to democratize knowledge and inspire participatory urban planning.  Recognized primarily for his contributions to the history of philosophy, to the Vienna Circle, and the Unity of Science movement, Neurath worked his entire life to synthesize community and modernity.  By using symbols and graphs rather than words to communicate socio-economic conditions, he hoped to enlist the masses in social and political reform.

By 1918 Neurath became interested in museum education and exhibition design, allowing him to reach broader audiences.  As director of the German Museum of War Economy in Leipzig and later the Museum of Society and Economy in Vienna, he believed that creating a visual vocabulary and a system of metaphors could inspire viewers with a sense of solidarity and belonging.  The pictorial language he developed, working with graphic artist Gerd Arntz,  became known as the Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics, which was renamed in 1935 to ISOTYPE (International System of TYpographic Picture Education).

The ISOTYPES above from Neurath’s International Picture Language offered a new alternative for representing the different human races.  Below he demonstrates how these symbols can be used to create a chart representing world populations at a glance. 

Neurath’s system of graphic representation made statistical data legible and accessible to mass audiences, enabling them to understand the world around them better.  Today, as we face the challenges of managing massive data sets, Neurath’s achievements seem particularly relevant in helping us find new data visualization techniques.