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The Doris and Henry Dreyfuss Study Center Library and Archive

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum’s library is a branch of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries and contains more than 70,000 volumes, including books, periodicals, catalogs, and trade literature dating from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries.

Volumes cover American and European design and decorative arts with concentrations in architecture, graphic design, interior design, ornamental patterns, furniture, wallcoverings, textiles, metalwork, glass, ceramics, and jewelry. The Library’s Archive contains photographs, correspondence, promotional material, drawings, writings, and related resource items for more than 30 American designers, including Henry Dreyfuss and Donald Deskey.

Special strengths:

• a rare book collection containing more than 6,500 volumes
• a World’s Fair collection containing over 1,000 items (books, journals, guides, ephemera)
• a pop-up and movable books collection with more than 750 titles
• the M. Therese Bonney collection of 4,300 black and white photographs of architecture and design in Paris, 1925-39
• a resource collection of biographical material on contemporary Afro-American designers and one on contemporary Latino-Hispanic designers
• archives of industrial designers, interior and window display designers, graphic designers, and design firms and stores, including those of Henry Dreyfuss, Donald Deskey, and M&Co.

The Doris and Henry Dreyfuss Study Center Library and Archive, in the Carnegie Mansion, is open to visitors by advance appointment.

Phone: 212.849.8330
Fax: 212.849.8339

For additional information about Library services and collections: http://www.sil.si.edu/libraries/chm/

For the SIL online catalog: http://siris-libraries.si.edu

Archives

The National Design Museum’s Archives contain the papers, promotional materials, clippings, and photographs of designers and design firms including M&Co., Edward F. Caldwell, George Nathan Horwitt, Don Wallance, Donald Deskey, Henry Dreyfuss, and Ladislav Sutnar. Specialized resource archives on African-American and Latino-Hispanic designers are also available.

William Metzig Collection

Born in Hanover, Germany, in 1893, William Metzig abandoned his interest in becoming a painter and instead became a commercial artist. He retained a lifelong interest in historical emblems and heraldry, which influenced his logo designs and elegant calligraphic treatment. Before emigrating to the United States in 1939, Metzig was retained by the Pelikan Ink Company, then a prominent manufacturer of pens, inks, and other writing materials. His designs for their labels and signage are imaginative visual metaphors that link the name of a product with its function.

Michael Cipriano Collection

In the tradition of other pioneer industrial designers, Michael Cipriano applied his interest in art history, theater, and costume design to the design of window displays, creating dramatic sets to seduce, entice, or persuade the shopper. During the 1980s, a decade in which consumerism thrived, Cipriano created surreal and slightly outrageous window displays for Barney’s New York department store. As fashion and decorative arts grew into sensational commodities, capturing the attention of the press and the public alike, Cipriano was a forerunner in the art of staging the object.

Edward F. Caldwell Lighting Collection

13,000 drawings and more than 50,000 photographs contained in the Edward F. Caldwell Lighting Collection clearly document taste and style in the United States in the affluent 1890s. During this period, when European models defined what was beautiful or tasteful, Edward F. Caldwell and Victor F. von Lossberg founded Caldwell & Company, designers of custom lighting fixtures in New York. The company created lighting and decorative ironwork for many private homes and prominent buildings in New York City, including Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and the Waldorf-Astoria. With his friend Stanford White, who helped him establish his successful career, Caldwell catered to the most privileged people, creating lighting for the Andrew Carnegie mansion (now the home of the National Design Museum) and the 1902 Taft White House. The company became the foundry for Tiffany & Company.

Donald Deskey Collection

Donald Deskey is an important figure in mid-twentieth-century industrial design. He began his professional career as a graphic designer in Chicago. In 1925, he visited Paris and was strongly influenced by the works exhibited at the Exposition Internationale des Art Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes. In the 1930s, along with Henry Dreyfuss, Walter Dorwin Teague, Norman Bel Geddes, Russel Wright, and Raymond Loewy, Deskey was a pioneer in the industrial design profession in the United States. He brought a new, modernist look to furniture and interiors, including that of Radio City Music Hall, as well as package designs for Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson. His designs for Tide laundry detergent, Prell shampoo, Crest toothpaste, and other packaged goods are now firmly embedded in American consumer culture and serve as models of the role that design plays in everyday life.

Henry Dreyfuss Collection

Prior to starting his own practice, Henry Dreyfuss studied stage design with Norman Bel Geddes. Along with Geddes, Walter Dorwin Teague, and Raymond Loewy, Dreyfuss was on of the “Big Four” whose work dominated the 1939-1940 World’s Fair in New York. Commissioned to envision the “city of tomorrow,” his exhibition filled the Perisphere with a massive diorama of “Democracity” and introduced his audience to “The World of Tomorrow,” the fair’s theme. Dreyfuss was the first industrial designer to harness the use of anthropometrics, the study of human measurements and capabilities, in his work. In the 1950s, his charts of “typical” Americans, whom he called Joe and Josephine, became critical tools for industrial designers. The Doris and Henry Dreyfuss Memorial Study Center at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum was endowed by this remarkable figure and his wife prior to their deaths in 1972.

The Dreyfuss archive was featured in the recent exhibition Henry Dreyfuss: Directing Design in 1996-97.

Nathan Horwitt Collection

A Russian emigré, Nathan George Horwitt had a New York-based industrial design practice that was grounded on form and function as well as on the phenomena of new visual experiences. In the 1930s, Horwitt was the first to experiment with the digital clock, reinventing at once a form of measurement and communication. He also developed the “Braquette,” a system of mounting pictures and paintings without the traditional decorative picture frame, which was then used by the Museum of Modern Art. One of his most noted designs is the black and gold numberlesss timepiece produced by Movado in 1958, which remains a familiar and dramatic modern icon.

Gilbert Rohde Collection

Born in New York in 1894, Gilbert Rohde was an innovative interior designer. Inspired by the modern movements in design, including De Stijl and Art Deco, he began in 1929 applying modernist principles to the design and manufacture of furniture for Herman Miller, Kroehler, Heywood-Wakefield, and Troy Scrimshade. Pioneering the use of Bakelite, Plexiglas, and chrome, Rohde is also noted for his design based on a modular system. The archive consists of more than a thousand photographs and periodical articles, many by Rohde, who published consistently in the interior design journals of his day. His furniture designs were included in important exhibitions, such as Design for the Machine, in 1932, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Machine Art, in 1934, at the Museum of Modern Art. He died in 1944.

The Latino-Hispanic Archive

This archive documents the work of contemporary designers of Latino and Hispanic descent, with a focus on those working in the United States and the Caribbean; South American and Central America are also represented. The designers and architects included demonstrate a level of expertise and achievement that warrants recognition by the research and professional design communities. The archive consists of photographs, exhibition catalogs, reviews, promotional materials, and periodical and newspaper articles. The work of such notable designers as Miguel Baltierra, Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz, and Jose Rugueiro is the archive.

The African-American Archive

The African-American Design Archive documents the work of contemporary designers of African-American descent and encourages interest in and research on their contributions to design and the applied arts in the United States. Created in 1991, the archive contains photographs, exhibition catalogs, exhibition reviews, promotional materials, and periodical and newspaper articles that chronicle the work of African-American designers. The work of such notable designers as architect Jack Travis, industrial designer David Rice, and graphic designer Fo Wilson is represented, as well as jewelry, ceramic, and textile designers.

For information and inquiries regarding the African-American archive, or the Latino-Hispanic Archive, email afrolatarch@si.edu.

The Library and Archives are open to the public by appointment. For information, call 212.849.8330.

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