organic

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Image features a rectangular panel of wallpaper showing stylized branches and foliage interspersed with cubist motifs printed in green, black, burgundy, tan, yellow, gray and metallic gold on mottled tan ground. The paper is embossed with very fine horizontal wavy lines. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Charles Burchfield’s Modern Wallpaper
This post was originally published on June 1, 2016. Charles Burchfield is one of the best known American watercolorists of the twentieth century, painting urban street scenes as well as more rural landscapes in a rather sullen fashion. It is less well known that he designed wallpaper, working for the M. H. Birge and Sons...
Image features: Silk embroidery in pale colors on dark blue linen. A horizontally and vertically symmetrical floral pattern in the Morris style. Please scroll to read the blog post about this object.
The Titan’s Daughter
In celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride Month, June Object of the Week posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection. A version of this post was originally published on June 20, 2016. May Morris will forever be in the shadow of her famous father William Morris, the chief protagonist of the English Arts and Crafts movement,...
Image features a globular, clear colorless glass vase with a short, narrow cylindrical neck. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Ingeborg Lundin’s Renowned “Apple”
For the nearly thirty years between 1947 and 1971, that Ingeborg Lundin designed glassware for Sweden’s Orrefors glassworks, her designs were  prized for their originality, simplicity and grace. Founded in 1898, Orrefors originally manufactured bottles, window glass, and tableware. In 1914, the firm started to produce cut crystal, and by 1925 had become internationally renowned...
Image features a cylindrical vase of thick-walled clear glass with internal decoration of small translucent green discs, many topped by a small air bubble. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
A Panther with Leopard Spots
Saara Hopea (later Saara Hopea-Untracht) began her career as a furniture and lamp designer, but started designing glassware in about 1952, at a time when Finnish design was gaining prominence on the world stage for its strong attention to materials and sense of organic form in a modern idiom. Kaj Frank, Hopea’s former teacher at...
Image features basic circular form with raised shaped rim, indentations in rim; light brown glaze. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Organic Ashtray
In celebration of our new exhibition, The Senses: Design Beyond Vision, this Object of the Day post explores the multisensory experience of an object in Cooper Hewitt’s permanent collection. Traditionally formed by hand, ceramic vessels possess inherent organic characteristics. Their forms have often been influenced by or imitated the shapes of human bodies since the...
Image features brooch in butterfly shape made of thin gold wire, with face of woman and hair coiled into butterfly’s wings; small diamonds and emeralds throughout. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Two Creative Eras, One Design Aesthetic
This brooch, entitled Melusine, was designed by Marie-Claude Lalique and dates to about 1965. Made of thin gold wire, the brooch features the face of a woman whose hair swirls and coils into the wings of a butterfly. The piece is enhanced with a scattering of diamonds and emeralds. The date of 1965 may be...
an image of the Triad Chair designed by Wendell Castle.
Remembering Wendell Castle
The celebrated American designer Wendell Castle was known as the "father of the art furniture movement."
Living Jewelry
When a piece of jewelry is made of natural materials such as this neckpiece designed by Liv Blåvarp, it forges a special connection with the wearer. There is something about natural substances that bring out feelings of sensuality and an intimate connection on a deeply primal level. When Blåvarp began making jewelry in 1984, she sought to make...
Botanica
The honey-colored Botanica VI vase (Nepenthes Villosa) is composed of bois durci (sycamore wood and egg albumen), dewaxed shellac (a resin extracted from insect secretion), and beeswax. Part of the Botanica series, it represents a collection of vessels made from pre-industrial plastic that were created by Studio Formafantasma, a conceptual design practice known for its...
Image features: Silk embroidery in pale colors on dark blue linen. A horizontally and vertically symmetrical floral pattern in the Morris style. Please scroll to read the blog post about this object.
The Titan’s Daughter
May Morris will forever be in the shadow of her famous father William Morris, the chief protagonist of the English Arts and Crafts movement, and of her mother, the Pre-Raphaelite beauty Jane Burden. Yet she was an accomplished artist in her own right, a fact evidenced by the skillful design and craftsmanship of this cushion...
Image features a rectangular panel of wallpaper showing stylized branches and foliage interspersed with cubist motifs printed in green, black, burgundy, tan, yellow, gray and metallic gold on mottled tan ground. The paper is embossed with very fine horizontal wavy lines. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Charles Burchfield’s Modern Wallpaper
Charles Burchfield is one of the best known American watercolorists of the 20th century, painting urban street scenes as well as more rural landscapes in a rather sullen fashion. It is less well known that he designed wallpaper, working for the M. H. Birge and Sons company in Buffalo, New York, from 1921 until 1929,...
The Modern Chair. Redefined.
The Embryo Chair was designed in 1988 by Australian designer Marc Newson, and has come to be seen as a signature object of his organic style. The chair is not only stylish and provocative in appearance, its one-piece form and simple legs belie a sophisticated construction that is the result of Newson’s technical accomplishment early...
Under the Sea
In July of 1913, Arthur Sanders, a gaffer at Tiffany Studios, was sent on a dream of a business trip. He traveled to Hamilton, Bermuda to study marine life through a glass-bottomed boat. Sanders observed the beauty of the underwater world so that he could later reproduce it in glass when back in Corona, New...
Practical, Spiritual, Useful, and Beautiful…
In celebration of Women’s History Month, Cooper Hewitt is dedicating select Object of the Day entries to the work of women designers in our collection. “We use materials to satisfy our practical needs and our spiritual ones as well. We have useful things and beautiful things – equipment and works of art.” [1] Artist, weaver,...
Re-framing Life
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,...