It is not very often that a clock’s origins provide as much mystery as that of the Zephyr clock. Designed during the mid-30s, it was originally attributed to Kem Weber, a German émigré designer who created several iconic designs of the Streamline Moderne style until evidence arose via a 1938 Lawson Time brochure that Weber...

In a December 2016 visit to Cooper Hewitt, George R.Kravis II converted the Promised Gift of this teapot to a  gift, joining a large group of objects that helps tell the story of twentieth and twenty-first century design, much of which represents the best of design often for everyday use. It is the first piece...

The Patriot radio was designed by noted industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes and manufactured by the Emerson Radio and Phonograph Corporation in 1939. The radio is made from Opalon, a thermoplastic similar to Bakelite, which came into widespread use in the 1930s. The late 1930s saw the United States begin to emerge from the Great...

Informally known as the Bakelite telephone, the sculptural Ericsson DBH 1001 was a groundbreaking design that set the standard for the shape of the modern plastic telephone. The telephone was a collaborative project between the Electrisk Bureau of Oslo, Norway and the Swedish firm LM Ericsson and Televerket. In 1930 Ericsson hired engineer Christian Bjerknes...