Throughout March, Object of the Week celebrates Women’s History Month. Each Monday a new post will highlight women designers in the collection. Does capturing the malevolent and mysterious quality of Rodarte’s fashions in contract fabrics sound like the impossible brief? Then extra credit is due to this collaboration among former National Design Award winners Rodarte...
Throughout March, Object of the Week celebrates Women’s History Month. Each Monday a new post will highlight women designers in the collection. In the tumultuous years following the 1917 Russian Revolution, a vibrant flourishing of avant-garde art emerged. Artists and designers embraced the most utopian hopes of the revolutionary spirit. They searched for new aesthetic...
Throughout March, Object of the Week celebrates Women’s History Month. Each Monday a new post will highlight women designers in the collection. This unfinished angelic figure was likely a design for stained glass. Louise Howland King Cox designed windows for Louis Comfort Tiffany in the 1890s. However, there are few extant records about her work...
Welcome to the Object of the Week blog. This March, in celebration of Women’s History Month, each Monday a new post will highlight women designers in the collection. This wallpaper called Transportation traces the history of the railroad from 1830 to about 1938. The designer, Mary Louise Leake, was inspired to create this design after...
This 1905 furniture trade catalog in the Cooper Hewitt Design Library is from the renowned Japanese art and antiques firm of Yamanaka & Co. Covered in silk brocade and bound with silk threads according to the ancient Japanese bookbinding technique of Yotsume Toji or stab-binding, it contains 36 photographic plates of elaborately carved, gilded,...
For the past couple days, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a French scholar doing research on the Parisian wallpaper manufacturer Jules Desfosse and later, Desfosse & Karth. We went through the museum holdings of wallpapers by this design firm and saw some really beautiful pieces. Jardin d’Hiver stands out as one of the...
At moments of dramatic social and cultural change a reflection on the past, or, better put, a past reimagined and romanticized, often offers a path of cathartic escape. Such was the case as Great Britain was transforming rapidly under the effects of modernization during the nineteenth century. The expansion of global communications and transportation, acceleration...
This woven textile by Pacific Mills serves as a commemorative of the 1876 US Centennial while also promoting the textile manufacturer from Lawrence, Massachusetts – one of the largest textile producers in the Western Hemisphere during the nineteenth century. Woven in black and cream, the unusual composition has a bold graphic quality and depicts a...
One of the greatest challenges in designing commercial textiles has been creating durable, cleanable, affordable, and aesthetically pleasing fabrics for highly trafficked and 24/7 environments like healthcare facilities, theaters and airports. In addition, there is more demand for textiles with sustainable manufacturing practices, and companies like Designtex are taking on this responsibility and producing some...
In the mid-2000s, designers (and brothers) Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, came up with the concept of a chair that would “sprout up like a plant…with its branches gently curving up to form the seat and back.” They also took inspiration from historical seating, such as English cast iron garden benches, American chairs in the rustic...
Herbert Bayer first became involved with Container Corporation of America (CCA) when Walter Paepcke, at the suggestion of his wife Elizabeth, began commissioning advertisements from avant-garde artists and designers, advocating for a collaborative relationship between art and industry. After completing several innovative advertisements, Bayer designed an exhibition for CCA in 1945 titled “Modern Art in...
This post was originally published on August 16, 2014. The Curwen Press got its start in east London in 1863 as a music publisher. The scope of the business expanded and in 1920 began including book publishing and artist prints. It was at this time that the Curwen Press made contact with the Royal College...
This post was originally published on July 26, 2018. Stevengraphs are small woven pictures that depict famous buildings, historical events, iconic scenes, and prominent public figures such as members of royal families, politicians and athletes. They were produced by Thomas Stevens (English, 1828–1888), a Coventry weaver who customized the jacquard loom to produce small detailed...
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...
