cooper hewitt blog
As part of the African-Caribbean diaspora of the mid-twentieth century, textile designer Althea McNish had a lasting impact on British design over the course of her career . Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, she studied painting and worked as a cartographer and illustrator for the British government there. [1] In 1951, she and her mother left the island to...
A version of this post was originally published on June 2, 2016. Two rare Art Deco period catalogues in the collection of the Cooper Hewitt Design Library include illustrations with accompanying specifications and prices for more than 100 glass lighting fixtures manufactured in about 1930, by Meissner Glasraffinerie of Dresden, Germany. The factory was located...
Clad in copper, this odd, angular table was designed by the American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. It was part of a suite of furniture and built-in features Wright created in 1956 for Price Tower, a skyscraper the architect built in the small town of Bartlesville, Oklahoma.[1] The building was commissioned by Harold C. Price to...
This post was originally published on June 1, 2016. Charles Burchfield is one of the best known American watercolorists of the twentieth century, painting urban street scenes as well as more rural landscapes in a rather sullen fashion. It is less well known that he designed wallpaper, working for the M. H. Birge and Sons...
“One of the most promising newcomers in the highly competitive field of fabric design is a youthful, multi-talented New Yorker, Joel Robinson,” Ebony magazine proclaimed in 1952.[1] Robinson’s printed fabric Ovals had been shown that winter in The Museum of Modern Art’s 1951 Good Design exhibition, making him the first African American to be included...
The UAM Catalogue is one of many period resources in the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library that chronicle French Art Deco and the shift into modernism in the twentieth century. The UAM (Union des Artistes Modernes) was founded in May, 1929, by a group of French designers, decorators, and architects, led by Robert Mallet-Stevens, who were...
“A lamp… [is] always part of an environment…. When working on… public building[s], I noticed that such furnishings and appliances were necessary to create the right unity, and then I designed them. The fact that later on they can also fit in another environment is another story.”[1] Lighting had become a significant part of Alvar...
On September 23rd, 1758, an aspiring architect named Robert Mylne (1733 – 1811) wrote to his younger brother William (1734 – 1790) with astonishing news. At twenty-four years old, Robert had just become the first Briton awarded top prize in the Concorso Clementino, a famous architecture competition held every three years in Rome.[1] This drawing...
Milton Glaser (1929–2020) was a giant figure in the history of graphic design. Born in the Bronx to immigrants from Hungary, Glaser graduated in 1951 from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, where he and other students received full-tuition scholarships from the endowment established by Peter Cooper. Glaser also studied in...
In celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride Month, June Object of the Week posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection. Bright-faced youths peer back at you from a vibrant web of floral foliage. But this wallpaper, titled Bullies, strikes a scornful tone. Multi-disciplinary artist Virgil Marti sourced the portraits seen in the wallpaper from his...
A note: This article was co-written by Angela Perrone, Katherine Miller, and Rachel Ginsberg before the events of the past few weeks, in a world that feels yet again very different. Rather than rewriting, we’ve decided to publish as is. We stand in solidarity with those organizing against institutionalized racism and discrimination in all forms,...
In celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride Month, June Object of the Week posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection. Nature has a way of informing us—however we engage, we learn from its resilient processes. Nature also has a way of amusing, perplexing and delighting us with its complex and idiosyncratic forms. This edifying and...
On June 19, 1865, Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, with the news that the more than 250,000 enslaved black people in the state were free by executive decree. This day came to be known as “Juneteenth” by the newly freed people in Texas. In recognition of Juneteenth, we are sharing this post originally...
On the occasion of the exhibition Willi Smith: Street Couture, Cooper Hewitt hosted a virtual discussion on the role of memory in recording and reflecting upon history. Moderated by Eric Darnell Pritchard, author and Associate Professor of English at the University at Buffalo, the panel featured Steven G. Fullwood, Archivist and Co-founder of the Nomadic...
Cooper Hewitt’s Design at Home activity book was developed to increase educational equity in communities with less access to digital tools and platforms. Geared towards a multi-generational audience, it includes open-ended design prompts, hands-on activities, and coloring pages.
