Industrial-grade cardboard. Probably not the first material you would associate with the voluptuous ribbon like curves and thick, luxurious looking cushion of architect Frank O. Gehry’s Bubbles chaise longue. Known for his deconstructivist buildings, Canadian-born Gehry experimented with furniture design as early as the late 1960s. He was introduced to furniture design while serving...
This innovative stacking chair is arguably Danish designer Verner Panton’s best known work. While not the first cantilevered chair—Dutch designer Gerrit Rietveld’s 1934 wooden Zig-Zag chair is an earlier example—the Panton chair was the first cantilevered chair made from a single piece of injection-molded plastic. Its fluid organic shape is made to fit the human...
Models and prototypes are an important part of Cooper-Hewitt’s collection. They represent a step in the design process and a way of showing the story of an object from concept to final product. In the 1920s, Colonel Howard Marmon, founder of the Marmon Motor Car Company, commissioned Walter Dorwin Teague, one of the first industrial...
This chest, by twentieth-century American designer/craftsman Wendell Castle is an outstanding example of the American studio furniture movement. Commissioned as a stereo cabinet, it is a variant of a blanket chest he crafted in 1968 that is now housed in the collection of the Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York. Castle’s work is...
Murano, an island located just north of Venice, Italy, in the Laguna Veneta, has been a glass-making center since the late 13th century. This cheerfully colorful pezzato (dappled) vase was produced by the Venini Glassworks of Murano. Founded by Paulo Venini in 1925, the firm retained the great technical traditions of Venetian glass-working methods while developing a new...
From the Object of the Day archives, the history of a Donald Deskey end table, an important example of the American modernist's tubular metal furniture.
Designer Eva Zeisel, born on this date in 1906, passed away at the age of 105 last December. A major figure in 20th-century industrial design, she is perhaps best known for her contributions to mid-20th century American modernist ceramics. Her career, however, spanned more than 80 years, and we are fortunate to have some of her early...
The ubiquitous Swatch watch is manufactured by the Swatch Group, a Swiss conglomerate whose name is a contraction of the words second and watch. The company introduced its first watches in 1983, at a time when digital timepieces were enjoying wide popularity. Intending to re-popularize the analog watch (which first appeared in the 17th century)...
Although I never had the pleasure of meeting designer William Stumpf, who passed away shortly before winning the 2006 National Design Award for Product Design, I feel that he knew me. At work I sit in an Aeron chair, one of the most comfortable task chairs I have ever used and, arguably, Mr. Stumpf’s best-known design. The...
Red! Here I Am! Red-hot! In 2009, I first noticed this electric space heater prototype, designed in 1973 by Bill Moggridge, from across an exhibition gallery. The form immediately grabbed my attention with its startling—yet pleasing—tone of vibrant red. A departure from the black- or beige-box modernism of many industrial design objects of the period, this...
