cooper hewitt blog
This stylishly and supremely practical day bed reflects a collaboration between Frederick Kiesler and Marguerita Mergentime. It was created for Mergentime’s NYC apartment in the mid-1930s, and is Kiesler’s only known residential commission. Containing three storage compartments, a bookshelf, a swing-out bed tray for reading or eating, and an attached lamp, the bed is really...
Matilda McQuiad discusses this ombré textile by prominent Austrian designer Dagobert Peche.
Sarah D. Coffin and Cynthia Trope discuss this lavish yet modern sharkskin desk, now on view in The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s.
Elizabeth Broman discusses the 1920s trade catalogue The Master Silk Printer.
Gail Davidson discusses modernist designer Ilonka Karasz's geometric iterations for tableware.
Tissu simultané no. 46, a bold geometric design of blue, yellow, and black lines on a white ground, has the hallmark characteristics of Sonia Delaunay’s textiles from the 1920s: contrasting colors with abstract, geometric, or rounded patterns that are block-printed on cotton or silk fabric. In fact, she often printed the same pattern and colorway...
Jennifer Cohlman Bracchi discusses this Caldwell lighting fixture, created for Rockefeller Center in 1932.
Elizabeth Broman discusses the work of influential Jazz-Age photojournalist Thérèse Bonney.
In the 1920s, the New York department store was an early promoter and exhibitor of European modernism and a distiller of these new styles for the American consumer. Good Furniture magazine reported in 1928 that “Lord and Taylor has taken a very definite step forward toward the actual placing of modern furniture in American homes.”[1]...
Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Library librarian Elizabeth Broman discusses a 1929 American wordless novel.
In this fabric, designer Jean Beaumont uses a lush pattern of oversized exotic florals and foliage, interspersed with stylized animal and human figures, to call forth an idyllic scene of paradise on earth. This, however, is a fleeting paradise, as the female figure (Eve) hands the forbidden fruit to the male (Adam). This sophisticated evocation...
Sarah D. Coffin discusses the technical excellence of this Lobmeyr Ambassador vase, now on view in The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s.
Caitlin Condell discusses this Russian movie poster that utilizes themes of modernity, Constructivism, urban imagery, and the avant-garde found in The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s.
This textile pattern features Diana, Roman goddess of the hunt, bow in hand, accompanied by her hunting dogs and surrounding by her prey—antelopes or gazelles. Diana—as a metaphor for commerce and the hunt for profits—was a popular theme in the 1920s. This highly stylized rendering of the huntress surrounded by prancing animals may have been...
Join curator Sarah Coffin for a Facebook Live tour of The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s.
