In celebration of The Senses: Design Beyond Vision, this Object of the Day post takes a multisensory approach to an object in Cooper Hewitt’s permanent collection. This whimsical bracelet from Daniel Jocz’s Candy Wear series reminds us that one of the most important aspects of jewelry is the joy it brings to both the wearer...
In celebration of Women’s History Month, March Object of the Day posts highlight women designers in the collection. This necklace was made by Ramona Solberg in the early 1970s. It was in her private collection, and until her death she was its only owner. The pendant is a simple interpretation of reliquary jewelry which usually...
This “pin” brooch, made in 1992 by jeweler Beppe Kessler, was part of a larger collection of “pin” brooches, each piece one of a kind. The series itself was derived from an installation by Kessler, also in 1992, which involved hanging large rounded, pin cushions on a wall. The brooches are an outgrowth of this...
This brooch from Esther Knobel’s Immigrant series expresses the artist’s playful side. The brooch features colorful figures, a circus performer and an ancient emperor, both cut from tin boxes of Chinese tea that Knobel found in an old shop on Jaffe Street in Jerusalem. The figures themselves serve as a metaphor for an immigrant, arriving...
“Sharp, brilliant colors skillfully combined or used with neutral tones provide excitement in an extensive collection of textiles introduced by Herman Miller Company…” describes the New York Times writer Betty Pipes of Alexander Girard’s debut textile collection in 1952.[1] Girard was a European trained architect who came to prominence in Detroit, where he established an...
A series of wool fabrics in saturated, oversized plaid is Designtex’s most recent collaboration with Harriet Wallace-Jones and Emma Sewell of the British textile studio Wallace Sewell (already represented in Cooper Hewitt’s collection with a blanket). The large-repeat stripes and grids are inspired in part by Bauhaus textile artist Anni Albers and in part by...
In 1953, Dan Fuller, president of Fuller Fabrics, invited five of the 20th century’s most distinguished artists: Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Marc Chagall, Joan Miró, and Raoul Dufy, to collaborate on a line of textiles to be called the Modern Master Series. The concept was unique in that the artists were not commissioned to produce...
From the archives, an Object of the Day post on an example of iridescent design from the collection.
It isn’t every day that you can admire a piece in a museum and then use it to eat your dinner later that night. But the artist of this dinnerware set, Eddie Dominguez, strives for both artistry and functionality in his pieces. While these pieces look like a tromp l’oeil painting or a sculptural installation...
