Ilonka Karasz
ABOUT ILONKA KARASZ
Ilonka Karasz (Hungarian, 1896–1981) studied art at the Royal Academy of Arts and Crafts in Budapest, Hungary, where she was one of the first women to be admitted. After immigrating to the United States in 1913, she became an active member of the New York art scene. In 1914, she co-founded the European-American artists’ collective Society of Modern Art with Winold Reiss. She also taught textile design at the Modern Art School in New York City.
Karasz was the founding director of Design Group, Inc., a firm of industrial designers, craftspeople, and artists. She was considered a pioneer of textile designs requiring the use of the Jacquard loom. She worked with the DuPont-Rayon Company on improving the texture and feel of rayon. Her work for F. Schumacher & Company was used in a Fokker airplane.
In designing wallcoverings, Karasz was known for experimenting with different methods of transferring and layering images. She worked with the aluminum manufacturer Alcoa to experiment with the use of aluminum in wallcoverings. Beginning in the late 1940s she designed wallcoverings exclusively for Katzenbach & Warren, Inc. Cooper Hewitt currently holds a large collection of her wallcoverings, drawings, prints, and sample books.
As a furniture designer, she designed what may have been the first modern nursery in the United States. In the realm of illustration, she created 186 covers for The New Yorker magazine between 1924 and 1973. She also created advertising for Bonwit Teller, designed book covers, and illustrated children’s books.
COLLECTION HIGHLIGHTS
![Cover of The New Yorker featuring a drawing of a crowded trolley passing down a people-filled street lined with giant flags. Title text at the top of the image reads [The New Yorker] with smaller text on either side reading [Sept 2. 1939.] and [Price 15 cents].](https://www.cooperhewitt.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/88510_79c3486d67ee6911_b-150x150.jpg)
Arches is from the first collection of murals Ilonka Karasz designed in 1948 for Katzenbach & Warren, the New York wallpaper firm for whom she designed almost exclusively. Like the majority of her murals it was printed in the blueprint process, her favorite reproduction process for murals as it captured all the nuances of her...
This promotional brochure for the Trees mural designed by Ilonka Karasz in 1960 contains a lot of information packed in an attractive format. This is printed in the luxograph process which was the same technique used to print the full-size murals. This technique was a blueprint method introduced by Katzenbach & Warren in 1947 for...
Gail Davidson discusses modernist designer Ilonka Karasz's geometric iterations for tableware.
Opened in the early 1920s, when major museum exhibitions on contemporary American design were highlighting period revival styles, Frankl Galleries aimed to give direction to contemporary design in America, “particularly as it relates to industry.”[1][2] Showcasing an innovative selection of furniture, decorative arts and interior design, Frankl Galleries inaugurated a new wave of Modernism in America, one which...
In 1924, the US Secretary of State advised the French government that the United States would not participate in the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris, because American manufacturers had “little or nothing to display” that would meet the French admissibility requirements of new inspiration, and originality. Yet, America could...
Cinderella is one of the most beloved children’s stories of all time and has been illustrated on wallpaper by numerous designers. This rendition was created by Ilonka Karasz, designer, illustrator, and one of the premiere women industrial designers. Ilonka began designing wallpaper in 1948 and worked almost exclusively for Katzenbach & Warren. As seen in...
Who knew geometry could be so beautiful? This 1928 sugar bowl and creamer set epitomizes American modern design; yet, it is clearly influenced by the modern turn of European design from the same period, as evidenced by the Exposition internationale des Arts décoratifs et industriels modernes in Paris, 1925, as well as by Walter Gropius’...
In Line, a wallpaper designed by prolific illustrator Ilonka Karasz, appears here as pages from a 1948 sample book, which originally contained the work of forty leading contemporary designers. Square blocks, each composed of a creatively arranged, continuous zigzag line, are stacked up like Tetris tiles on a dark-eggplant colored ground. The blocks are rendered...
Arabian Nights is one mural from a collection of five produced in 1948. The mural is divided into three distinct views, the two ends showing building exteriors while the center view looks through a colonnade into a courtyard. Through this view one can see all manner of decorative fences, roof tops, a cupola, even a...
