Utilitarian object? Small-scale abstract sculpture? Both. When I first had the opportunity to investigate this lamp close up, I was struck by the way it’s form, composed of the simplest geometric shapes—circle, sphere, cylinder, cube, seemed to articulate a perfect balance between the functional and the artistic. The lamp was designed by Dutch architect Jacobus...
A fascinating confluence of design, technology, utility, and social influences is embodied in the Radio Nurse, part of a wireless microphone and speaker system introduced in 1938 by the Zenith Radio Corporation, conceived as a baby monitor and aid for home or hospital. The system consisted of a sculptural transmitter called the Radio Nurse, designed...
If you grew up in America in the mid-1950s-70s, you no doubt encountered the Model 500 telephone or one of its variants in almost every home or workplace you entered. The model 500 became the standard desk-style phone in the U.S., with over 93 million units produced for homes and offices between 1949 and the...
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.
