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,...
Pewter, an alloy of tin and lead, used to bring to mind matte, anthracite-grey mugs, flasks, and tableware susceptible to serving up lead poisoning, in addition to whatever else the kitchen had to offer. In other words, anything but this lozenge-shaped, organic biscuit box, marked “KAYSERZINN”. This perception was changed when Engelbert Kayser created “KAYSERZINN”...
Bradley: His Book only had nine issues, but both it and its author made a lasting impact on American typography and graphic design. Will Bradley was a charter member of the Boston Arts and Crafts society, making him a key player in shaping the arts and crafts movement in America. Dedicated to handcrafting his printed...
Like a ballerina in a pirouette, this delicate vase stands with its handles raised and reaching for each other, like graceful, slender arms. The vase’s sculptural, elongated, and organic form epitomizes Art Nouveau. It is also one for which the Netherlandish Rozenburg Pottery and Porcelain Factory was particularly well known. Rozenburg produced these works of...
Recognized for an Art Nouveau style all his own, French architect Hector Guimard (1867-1942) designed over a hundred buildings during a prolific fifteen-year span: 1898-1913. He is perhaps best known for having devised the iconic Paris Metro entrance in 1907, a wide-spread scheme employing standardized components that recreate natural forms through the structural and sculptural...
The Cooper Hewitt Library has a number of linoleum catalogs. Carpettes Linoleum is our newest, and to date, earliest one. This flooring trade catalog from Lancaster, England was printed for distribution to French consumers, who like many other European and American buyers, liked the durability, versatility, cleanliness, and the variety of designs available in linoleum...
This roll of wallpaper sports a rather unusual look. The design is printed vertically but it is not a continuous pattern. Intended to be installed as a wide border or frieze running horizontally, each almost square repeat of this design would be cut apart with the sections installed side by side, as the floral and...
