With her butterfly wings, this artfully draped female figure would seem more at home decorating a theater than ornamenting U.S. currency. Yet the designer, Walter Shirlaw, clearly labeled his drawing “Bank Note Design.” Shirlaw left school at the age of twelve and apprenticed himself to a bank note engraving company, believing that it would help...
Saara Hopea (later Saara Hopea-Untracht) began her career as a furniture and lamp designer, but started designing glassware in about 1952, at a time when Finnish design was gaining prominence on the world stage for its strong attention to materials and sense of organic form in a modern idiom. Kaj Frank, Hopea’s former teacher at...
DESIGNING THE SUBLIME: MECHANISM, RISK, AND WONDER World-renowned antiquarian horologist Brittany Nicole Cox explores the diverse utilization of the machine in design through a selection of objects drawn from the collections of Cooper Hewitt and other Smithsonian museums. Examples range from a nineteenth-century singing bird box to the world’s first tuning fork watch. Cox makes...
This Constructivist-inspired textile likely was produced in the United States during the mid-to-late 1920s. The designer is presently unknown, but presumably was an individual familiar with Russian Constructivist design principles, which took inspiration from the industrial world. Printed in dark yellow and black on creamy off-white silk satin, the textile has an overall design of...
Cooper Hewitt, in collaboration with the DesignSingapore Council present an evening of conversation.
I wanted to share this unusual trompe l’oeil drapery wallpaper, where a length of fabric swags slightly then twists around another fabric swag, creating a diaper or trellis-like pattern. The fabric is adorned with a lace trim and tassels made of strung pearls. The bottom section of this panel is a wide border that shows...
Known for her bold engagement with popular culture and mass communication, American conceptual artist Barbara Kruger provokes and entices the viewer with her cover design for the May 1992 issue of Esquire. Featuring a close-up, black and white photograph of the controversial shock-jock Howard Stern, the superimposed text obscures significant portions of his face, excluding...
Danish architect and designer Poul Henningsen’s interest in light and lighting started at a young age when as a child in the 1900s, he observed the sharp glare from fixtures housing bare electric bulbs in his family home. Electric lighting was new, and older lighting devices, such as candlesticks or gas lamps, were being adapted...
As part of Eileen Fisher’s numerous sustainability efforts, the company committed to taking back used Eileen Fisher garments from its customers. Since 2009, with almost no promotion of the initiative, over 600,000 garments were returned. About 40% are still usable; they are cleaned and repaired in the company’s recycling centers in Irvington, NY and Seattle...
