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White Mocha
Now on view in The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s, this mocha pot by Ladislav Sutnar effortlessly combines functionality with modern design.
Lella Vignelli: A Look at a Design Legend
Versatile designer Lella Vignelli, who died on December 22nd, played a vital role in firmly establishing the clean lines and clarity of Modernism in twentieth century American design. Her designs were pertinent throughout the late twentieth century and remain so today. Vignelli was born into a family of architects in Udine, Italy in 1934. She...
Cold Wax
The Tillett Cold Wax System was one of the techniques Jack Lenor Larsen covered in detail in his 1969 book, The Dyer’s Art. Leslie Tillett explained, “I began serious research on a screen-printable resist material about three years after arriving in this country in 1947… I was after a formula or substance that would easily...
Dining with the Fishes
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...
Pleasures and Perils of the Tongue
“Death and life are in the power of the tongue,” warns a proverbial inscription on a knife blade imagined by Francesco Salviati. Knife handles further illustrate the tongue’s pleasures and perils, and these sensuous yet violent scenes seem to caution diners about to indulge. On one handle, a figure risks a snakebite to reach into...
Coming Together
Eva Zeisel’s Town and Country line for Minnesota’s Red Wing Potteries, Inc. is an icon of the twentieth-century table. Available in several colors, Town and Country reveals many things—from Zeisel’s unique biomorphic forms, to the emergence of informal dining during the 1940s, to foreshadowing the “atomic” look of tableware in the 1950s. These salt and...
Dining with a Triangle
Geometry has always been a friend of the dinner table. During the 18th century both the hexagon and octagon were part of the repertoire of shapes used for plates, teapots, and other dining accoutrements in Europe, as seen in these English Queen Anne style silver salts dating from 1717 and this Chinese export armorial plate...
Addition By Subtraction
2003 National Design Award winner Lella Vignelli passed away December 21, 2016. In honor of her memory, we are sharing an Object of the Day blog post from earlier this year dedicated to her design philosophy. Lella Vignelli has spent a lifetime as a designer examining the ongoing expressions of pure, modern form. Working in...
Bring it to the Table
The September 1934 issue of The Pottery Gazette and Glass Trade Review features a full-page color advertisement devoted to “Casino” by Royal Doulton. This modern shape debuted a few years earlier and came in three patterns: “Marquis,” “Radiance,” and “Envoy.” Pictured in the advertisement is the earthenware tureen seen here in the museum’s collection. Decorated...
A Piece of Cake
Covered with Franz von Zülow’s idiosyncratic decoration, this cake serving plate (part of a breakfast set in the Cooper Hewitt’s collection) demonstrates the Viennese artist and designer’s interest in fantasy and fairy tales. Knights on horseback move through a medieval village in the foreground, accompanied by a lively figure blowing a trumpet. The movement of...
Healey Sisters Strike Gold
In the early 1890s science teacher Emily Healey was working in her laboratory in Washington D.C. when she accidently dropped a certain uranium salt into some heavy oil. When she fired this compound onto a scrap of china, the effect was a brilliantly colored surface. Many experiments with the uranium followed and Emily determined that...
Modernism in a Milk Jug
Functionalism is the idea that form should follow function; objects should be designed simply, honestly, and directly. [1] It should be immediately clear to a viewer and a user what the object is and how to use it. Functionalist objects are primarily domestic objects, which makes this milk jug an example of Functionalism in inter-war...
Fork at top left with end of handle formed by female bust; an extended volute forms length of handle which connects to a satyr whose legs tranform into two fork tines. Spoon at top right has handle formed by satyr-herm whose lower half extends to connect to bowl of spoon with two opposing scrolls and a mask. Design for saltcellar and egg dish in center; figures of Leda and the swan at top of vessel upon a raised rectangular plinth; relief panel with two swans on front side of plinth; lower part of vessel is six-sided with round well for holding an egg on each end and projecting seashell to hold salt in center front; front panel displays figure of Venus reclining on the sea with one elbow resting on a dolphin and other hand holding reigns of two dolphins, ornamental curtain above the scene; dolphin heads on lower corners form the feet; guilloche ornament borders the lower edge; oval reserves with figures on angled sides. Plan of vessel at bottom, inscription located within the rectangle framing for the raised plinth and between the seashell shapes for the salt and round shapes for the eggs.
A Novel Way to Eat Your Eggs
Poached, fried, boiled, or roasted, eggs were an important part of the Italian Renaissance diet. In the sixteenth century, Italian chefs Bartolomeo Scappi and Cristoforo da Messisbugo each published cookbooks that detailed recipes and techniques for preparing banquets, and eggs were often on the menu. One of Scappi’s reoccurring recipes was for uovo da bere, or...
Eva Zeisel cutouts
Flatware Cutouts, Eva Zeisel
Born in Hungary in 1906, Eva Zeisel endured two world wars and the Soviet revolution. She spent sixteen months in a Russian prison and escaped Nazi persecution before emigrating to the U.S. in 1938. Best known for her ceramics, Zeisel called herself a modernist with a “little m.” She rejected doctrinaire geometries in favor of...
Tulip laid horizontally, with upper and lower portions of dish composed of full length petals.
Strewing Flowers on the Table
This tulip-form small tureen or covered dish must have appeared a wonderful bit of nature, as if fallen from a bouquet, on a dining table. Porcelain started to take the place of sugar sculptures on the most elegant tables of Europe in the eighteenth century. It came at a time when nature was being observed...