This roll of embossed imitation leather wallpaper is a beautiful example of Art Nouveau design. The pattern is a repeating design of a single motif, a stylized ear of wheat or other grain, lined up in offset horizontal rows. The leaves have been delicately rendered with the tip ending in a scroll, while the top...

On this sidewall, strange enormous flowers drawn in blue are scattered on a green ground. Their tortuous curling stems are highlighted in bright orange and yellow. It is these bright highlights that catch our eyes first, so that our first thought is that what we are seeing is a purely abstract paper of swirling forms....

In the 1920s, architect Hector Guimard, a pioneer of the stylized natural forms and curving lines of late 19th century Art Nouveau, turned his attention to socially conscious design as France struggled to recover from the widespread devastation of the First World War. The impact of the “Great War” on French infrastructure, agriculture and housing...

Floating trees with foliage like red clouds form the dominant motifs of this unusual, slightly psychedelic early twentieth-century sidewall. This excellent example of an Art Nouveau-style paper was made by Benton, Heath, & Co. of Hoboken, New Jersey. American wallpaper producers first started making papers in the Art Nouveau style in the mid-1890s, after examples...

A snowy terrace, ebullient pink-tinged amaryllises, and a scarlet-coiffed maiden distinguish this winter-themed print by Eugène Samuel Grasset (Swiss, 1841-1917, active Paris, France, 1871-1917).  The print, which spells out “Décembre” in the upper left-hand corner, was a part of a set of calendar prints, organized by month.  Cooper Hewitt has eight of these prints in...

Louis Comfort Tiffany used exotic motifs, extraordinary color, and abstracted forms in his lamps and art glass to become one of the most instrumental figures in American design history. While the Tiffany Studios stopped producing goods almost a century ago, the meticulous craftsmanship that went into the making of the studio’s lamps and vases has...

The Smithsonian Libraries’ has an Adopt-a-Book Program that the Cooper Hewitt Library has participated in for several years. Your “adoption” donation allows the Smithsonian Libraries to continue to grow the collection, preserve it for future generations, and make materials available around the world through digitization. Every year there is an “Adoption” event, so far, held...

The entrances he designed for the Parisian Metro system in 1900 made Hector Guimard an icon of French design at the turn of the 20th century. Between the 1890s and 1930s, Guimard designed buildings and objects for the public and private spheres, both large and small in scale.  He is responsible for hundreds of decorative objects as well as over 50 buildings and interiors....

This wallpaper was one of the first produced by British wallpaper company Osborne and Little, founded in 1968 by designer Antony Little and businessman Sir Peter Osborne. The company was one of several that arose in the 1960s that promoted themselves as a source for unusual wallpaper patterns. Osborne and Little produced their designs in...

The Daum family name has been synonymous with art glass since the late 1800s when the family immigrated to Nancy, France. The patriarch Jean Daum and eldest son Auguste established a glasswork factory with their youngest son Antonin Daum who took the family industrial glass production in a new direction by introducing art glass. Antonin...

Louis Sullivan’s ornament can be appreciated on both a large scale—think Chicago’s Carson Pirie Scott building—and a small one—this cast iron doorplate. Having been removed from its original location during the mid-twentieth century, this doorplate is from Adler & Sullivan’s last commission, the Guaranty Building (now called the Prudential Building). The building became a National...

This wallpaper was once part of a showroom sample book that was unbound at some point and then later donated to the Cooper Hewitt. The samples are a nice group of art nouveau and Mission-style wallpapers. This paper is a good example of American art nouveau design with its large-scale floral motif filling the width...

This week’s entries are dedicated to objects featured in the exhibition Thom Browne Selects, currently on view at Cooper Hewitt through October 23, 2016. Hector Guimard, well known as a prolific French architect-designer, demonstrates a more refined style during Art Nouveau through his use of pearwood. It was of utmost importance to Guimard to emphasize...

The Belle Époque was an explosion of optimism and cultural innovation and artistic endeavours. The Belle Époque, lasting from the 1870s up to WWI, was at its height in Paris during the 1890s and 1900s. It was a great time for art and theatre, and they converged to great success at the Theatre de la...

Architect-designer Hector Guimard earned recognition for his architectural optimism but garnered additional acclaim for his designs intended to occupy the spaces that he created. Working during the end of the nineteenth and early twenteieth centuries in the organic language of Art Nouveau, Guimard approached his designs as part of a larger artistic whole, a Gesamtkunstwerk,...