cooper hewitt blog
Author: Carolyn Herrera-Perez With changes in digital technology occurring so rapidly, the discreet design of this wearable fitness tracker may well be forgotten in the coming years. In production from only 2011 to 2014, the Jawbone UP tracked the wearer’s steps, workouts, and sleep rhythms. An innovative product, it was the first fitness tracker styled...
The Reverend William Bradford traveled with his sketchbook. Not much else is known about Bradford, who served as a British Army chaplain in Spain and Portugal during the Peninsular War (1807 – 1814). In that conflict, British troops joined Spanish forces in their resistance to Napoleon. As Reverend Bradford accompanied his fellow British soldiers across...
A colorful design to brighten your day! Kinetics is a mural design from the Kaleidoscope collection of murals and supergraphics by James Seeman. Resembling a colorized barcode, the design may have been inspired by this emerging technology. Patented in the United States in 1951, it took about twenty years for the barcode to become commercially...
Suzushi Stripe is part of a series Nuno made from kibiso and raw silk. (The kibiso is the white coarse stripe in the textile.) The combination of these two materials reveals a very rich texture, structure, and surface design. Kibiso, an industrial waste product, is the protective outer layer of the silk cocoon that is “wiped off”...
Millions of Americans wanted a drink when Prohibition was repealed at the end of 1933. Perhaps it might be better to say a legal drink? Alcohol consumption for the thirteen years after the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment had by no means stopped. In basements of brownstones and behind backroom doors, a generation of Americans...
This blog post was originally published on November 30, 2012. This perspective tour de force dazzles the eye with the complexities of its illusionistic architecture. The story behind the work is equally compelling. When the magnificent Church of Saint Ignatius Loyola was constructed in Rome during the late 16th-century Counter Reformation, the newly founded Jesuit order...
The clean-lined geometric forms of these salt and pepper shakers show American modernism’s affinity for simplicity. During the 1930s the emergence of chromed metal, steel, and aluminum tableware coincided with the rise of modernist designs for everyday objects. These simple metal cubes were created with cost-effective manufacturing techniques, stamping and piercing, to create utilitarian and...
Bloomcraft Fabrics, a New York-based producer of woven textiles that collaborated with artists ranging from Rockwell Kent to Gloria Vanderbilt, released the Picasso Collection in 1963. As announced by an advertisement in American Fabrics: “This unusual collection links the work of the world’s greatest living painter and the world of interior design through a series...
The Golden Age is a delightful wallpaper designed by Walter Crane in 1887 and printed by Jeffrey & Co. in London as part of their Victorian Wall-Paper collection. The design contains two winged putti, standing on a large foliate swag, supporting or carrying a large basket of fruit. There are two large birds, maybe cockatoos,...
