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Mexican Design
Sun-drenched colors of burnt ochre and red ignite massive walls and bring stone-chinked surface patterns to life. Antique wooden doors punctuated with hand-forged iron clavos open to reveal cool, tiled salas with lofty, wood-beamed ceilings and rustic colonial furniture. Brightly-tiled kitchens beckon with well-worn tables, glazed ceramics and utilitarian objects in stone, wood and copper. Sparsley-furnished rooms display artful devotional displays alongside family heirlooms and local folk art. -
Mexican Design
For decades, the soulful nature and character-rich details of Mexican furniture, architectural elements and handcrafted accents have captivated us with their beauty and ingenuity. From painted tables and chip-carved benches to hand-hewn corbels and stone-carved columns, Mexican design elements are like mirrors reflecting a rich cultural history and the creativity of the hands that made them. -
Mexican Design
Beginning their lives in marketplaces, ranches and workshops as the cornerstones of cultural traditions, Mexican country elements have evolved gracefully over time and evoke the rhythms of rural life from which they originated. -
Mexican Design
We have connected to the strength and imagination of these handwrought objects and have relished living with them on a daily basis. Our exploration of Mexican design and living has spanned many years and regions, including the remote mountains of Mexico and the mesquite mesas of the American Southwest. -
The Industrial Revolution
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Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period of fundamental changes in agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, and social structure.
The introduction of steam powered machinery (fueled by coal) opened the door to dramatic increases in production, and in the manufacture of more machines. Conditions that promoted the Industrial Revolution were advances in agricultural techniques and practices resulting in an increased supply of food and raw materials. -
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The Industrial Revolution
It was a period of fundamental changes in agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, and social structure. Which Began in England, it was a true “revolution,” it destroyed the old manner of doing things. It was an economy based on manual labor and skilled artisans that was replaced by one dominated by industry, machinery, and mass production. -
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The Industrial Revolution
Energy was a major impetus for this conversion from an agricultural society to an industrial one. Animal and human power were the primary sources of energy until James Watt perfected the steam engine in 1775. -
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The Industrial Revolution
The introduction of steam-powered machinery opened the door to dramatic increases in production, and in the manufacture of machines. Changes in technology and industrial organization resulted in increased production, efficiency, and profits. The building of roads, canals, and eventually railways enabled expanded trade. Many of these conditions were so closely interrelated that increased activity in one spurred an increase in activity in another. -
The Automobile History
Leonardo da Vinci considered the idea of a self-propelled vehicle in the 15th century. In 1760 J.H. Genevois suggested mounting small windmills on a cartlike vehicle, their power to be used to wind springs that would move the road wheel. Two-masted wind carriages were running in the Netherlands in 1600. The first recorded suggestion of wind use was probably Robert Valturio’s unrealized plan (1472) for a cart powered by windmills geared to the wheels. -
The Automobile History
There were several body styles: -Touring car
-Roadstar
-Roadstar pickup
-Ton Truck
-Closed tab ton truck
-Coupé
-2 door
-4 door
-Center door
-Station Wagon
-Convertible -
John Ruskin
John Ruskin, primarily remembered today as an art and architectural critic, was hugely influential amongst the labour movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His influence was acknowledged by William Morris, and a poll of the Independent Labour Party, in the first decade of the twentieth century placed Ruskin as the most important figure of influence in the membership. -
Michael Thonet
A humble artisan who set up his own workshop specializing in parquetry (1819), Thonet began in 1830 to experiment with new cabinetmaking techniques. He developed a system of steambent veneers and glued four or five together, from which he made complete chairs that were light and curvilinear. Similar techniques were in use at the time in New York City by the German-born furniture maker John Henry Belter. -
Phillip Webb
Philip Speakman Webb (born January 12, 1831 in Oxford, England) is often called the father of the Arts & Crafts Movement, along with his friend William Morris. Famous for his comfortable, unpretentious country homes, Philip Webb also designed furniture, wallpaper, tapestries, and stained glass. As an architect, Webb is best-known for his unconventional country manor homes and urban terraced houses (townhouses or row houses). -
Phillip Webb
His homes expressed traditional English building methods—red brick, sash windows, dormers, gables, steep-sloped roofs, and tall Tudor-like chimneys. He was a pioneering figure in the English Domestic Revival Movement, a Victorian residential movement of grand simplicity. Although influenced by medieval styles and the Gothic Revival movement, Webb's highly original, yet practical designs became the germ of modernism. -
William Morris
William Morris was a leading member of the Arts and Crafts Movement. He is best known for his pattern designs, particularly on fabrics and wallpapers. His vision in linking art to industry by applying the values of fine art to the production of commercial design was a key stage in the evolution of design as we know it today. -
Christopher Dresser
Associated with the design reform movement in the second half of the nineteenth century, Christopher Dresser is considered the first industrial designer. Dresser addressed the constraints as well as the strengths of the machine in the manufacture of domestic utilitarian objects. -
Christopher Dresser
Dresser believed that the ornamentalist could, through truthful or false design, “exalt or debase a nation.” In search of a moral design vocabulary, he established principles based on Truth, Beauty, and Power; Truth criticizes imitation of materials, Beauty describes a sense of timeless perfection in design, and Power implies strength, energy, and force in ornament, achieved through Knowledge. -
Christopher Dresser
Finding inspiration in plants and their structures, which he determined were geometrically balanced, Dresser took a radically scientific approach to art and design. He believed that truth was founded in science and that art reflected beauty. Knowledge, the manifestation of Truth and Beauty, as Dresser resolved, is Power. -
Christopher Dresser
In addition to providing designs for industry, Dresser was an importer and furnishings retailer. He published books and articles and lectured throughout his career on topics ranging from botany to appropriate design for industrial production.
Throughout the nineteenth century, morally based theories of design and construction suggested that deceptive or “sham” manufacture, such as veneering and the use of illusionistic decorative devices, corrupted the consumer by extension. -
William Morris
William Morris was an artist, designer, printer, typographer, bookbinder, craftsman, poet, writer and champion of socialist ideals. He believed that a designer should have a working knowledge of any media that he used and as a result he spent a lot of time teaching himself a wide variety of techniques. Like many designers of his time, Morris was skilled in a wide range of arts and crafts. -
The Victorian Era
The long reign of Victoria, who became queen of England and Ireland in 1837, spanned most of the nineteenth century. The Victorian era is often defined as the years from 1837 to 1901.
The momentum of the industrial revolution had already begun, but it was during the Victorian era that the full effects of industrialization made itself felt. Along with technological breakthroughs, the Industrial Revolution brought crime, urban poverty, and the rise of a self-indulgent nouveau riche class. -
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The Victorian Era
The long reign of Victoria, who became queen of England and Ireland in 1837, spanned most of the nineteenth century. The Victorian era is often defined as the years from 1837 to 1901, Queen Victoria’s period in office. -
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The Victorian Era
With technological breakthroughs, the Industrial Revolution brought crime, urban poverty, and the rise of a self-indulgent nouveau riche class.
Wealth became a motivating cultural force. As the desire for unlimited comfort spread from the wealthy to the new middle class, a taste for ornamentation and ostentation became the dominant style. -
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The Victorian Era
Extravagant embellishment was applied to architecture, furniture, clothing, and appeared as elaborate borders and lettering in graphic design. Sentimentality, nostalgia, and idealized beauty were expressed through printed images of young women, flowers, children, and puppies and kittens. -
John Ruskin
Between 1843 and 1860 Ruskin produced his multi-volume examination of art history, Modern Painters. But he became increasingly diverted by the ugliness of industrialisation, urbanisation, and poverty of a developing capitalist Europe, which seemed contrary to his moral and aesthetic religious view of the world. In the late 1850s, Ruskin's thoughts began to turn from the nonsensical religious analysis of art to an examination of the conditions under which art was produced. -
John Ruskin
Ruskin's conclusion that artistic and social decline was due to political and economic conditions produced works that were of interest to later critics of capitalism; most notably the political reformists that emerged from the labour movement in the late nineteenth century, but also early socialists like William Morris. -
John Ruskin
He contrasted the works of gothic beauty in Stones of Venice (1851-3) with the squalid uniformity and imitation of industrial British architecture. The relation of the labourer to his work in industrial capitalist society meant that production was totally separated from the workers' creative faculties and art had become bastardised displays in private galleries for the appreciation of a privileged few. -
Henry Cole
In 1846, in his role as a council member of the Society of Arts, Henry was introduced to Prince Albert. It appears that Henry and the prince got on well as not long afterwards the society received a Royal Charter and changed its name to the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers, and Commerce. -
Journal of Design
The journal was edited by Henry Cole and his friend Richard Redgrave. Having an aim to improve the standards of British industry, the journal concentrated exclusively on the decorative and applied arts, targeting a middle-class audience that the editors felt needed instruction in taste. The inclusion of actual samples of fabrics and wallpapers heightened the journal's appeal and effectiveness. This first volume contains 44 fabric patterns and upwards of 200 engravings. -
The Great Exhibition
A new technology was showed, it was the new method of color printing: chromolithography. Although lithography had become widespread, it was initially a single-color printing method. Early experiments with color lithography were perfected in 1837 when a French printer patented a process named chromolithography. The beauty of this process is due to the talented artists who created the original designs, and the skilled craftsmen who traced the original art onto lithographic stones. -
Michael Thonet
His representative works shown at the Great Exhibition, London (1851), were a huge success. By 1856 he had perfected the bending by the heat of solid beechwood into curvilinear shapes, and he was ready for mass production. By 1870 his Viennese firm was producing furniture in hitherto unheard-of quantities—some 400,000 pieces annually. After his death the enterprise was conducted by his sons, who continued to open more factories. -
Aesthetic movement
The aesthetic movement was a late nineteenth-century movement that championed pure beauty and ‘art for art’s sake’ emphasizing the visual and sensual qualities of art and design over practical, moral or narrative considerations. In applied arts, it can be seen as part of the revolution in design initiated by William Morris, with the foundation of Morris & Co in 1862. From 1875 the ideals of aestheticism were commercialized by the Liberty store in London, which later also popularised art nouveau. -
Henry Cole
At the time Henry’s day job was as an assistant record keeper at the Public Records Office, but he had lots of other interests to including writing, editing and publishing journals. Henry’s major passions appear to have been industry and the arts, and he combined both of these as editor of the Journal of Design. The journal encouraged artists to apply their designs to everyday articles which could then be mass-produced and sold to the great unwashed. -
Antonio Gaudí
Antoni Gaudí was a fervent Catholic whose fantastical buildings burst with color, freedom, and hedonism. -
Museum V & A
The Museum has constantly evolved in its collecting and public interpretation of art and design. Its collections span 5,000 years of human creativity in virtually every medium, housed in one of the finest groups of Victorian and modern buildings in Britain. Henry Cole, the V&A's first Director, declared that the Museum should be a "schoolroom for everyone". Its mission was to improve the standards of British industry by educating designers, manufacturers, and consumers in art and science. -
Michael Thonet
His representative works shown at the Great Exhibition, London (1851), were a huge success. In 1853 he incorporated with his sons, renaming his firm Gebrüder Thonet. By 1856 he had perfected the bending by the heat of solid beechwood into curvilinear shapes, and he was ready for mass production, exporting as far as South America. -
Michael Thonet
- Log sawing into sections
- Lathing to obtain round sections
- steaming
- Bending
- Machining
- protecting and packaging
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William De Morgan
In 1863 De Morgan had his first real career break when he met William Morris and the painter Edward Burne-Jones. As Morris had not been very successful with ceramics, De Morgan took over the tile production side of the business and soon began designing his own tiles. He collaborated with him many years.
De Morgan was commissioned to install these tiles in the Arab Hall of Leighton's house, designed by architect George Aitchison. -
William De Morgan
De Morgan was able to make up deficiencies in many of the panels and completely tiled the entrance hall and staircase with tiles of an intense Turkish turquoise. This early introduction to the rich and varied patterns of the Middle East was to influence De Morgan throughout his career. From 1882-1900, he was required by P&O to provide tile decorations, depicted fanciful landscapes representing cities and countries visited on their journey. De Morgan designed panels for several other ships. -
Adamo Boari
Designs of great majesy, such as the palaces of Fine Arts and Mexican Postal, in the capital of this country, are part of the legacy left by the Italian architect Adamo Boari. Participated in a National Exhibition of Architecture in Turin, where his architectural projects and designs obtained great recognition. -
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The Aesthetic movement
In painting it is exemplified by J.M. Whistler, Albert Moore and certain works by Frederic, Lord Leighton. Japanese art and culture was an important influence, especially on Whistler and aesthetic design.
In applied arts it can be seen as part of the revolution in design initiated by William Morris, with the foundation of Morris & Co in 1862. From 1875 the ideals of aestheticism were commercialised by the Liberty store in London, which later also popularised art nouveau. -
William Morris
The creative approach that William Morris employed in his designs was revealed in a lecture from 1874: 'first, diligent study of Nature and secondly, study of the work of the ages of Art'.
Morris felt that the 'diligent study of Nature' was important, as nature was the perfect example of God's design. He saw this as the spiritual antidote to the decline in social, moral and artistic standards during the Industrial Revolution. -
Arts and Craft Movement
The two most influential figures were the theorist and critic John Ruskin and the designer, writer and activist William Morris. Ruskin examined the relationship between art, society and labour. Morris put Ruskin's philosophies into practice, placing great value on work, the joy of craftsmanship and the natural beauty of materials. -
Arts and Craft Movement
It was one of the most influential, profound and far-reaching design movements of modern times. It began in Britain around 1880 and quickly spread across America and Europe before emerging finally as the Mingei (Folk Crafts) movement in Japan.
The Movement took its name from the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, founded in 1887, but it encompassed a very wide range of like-minded societies, workshops and manufacturers. -
Arts and Craft Movement
By the 1880s Morris had become an internationally renowned and commercially successful designer and manufacturer. New guilds and societies began to take up his ideas, presenting for the first time a unified approach among architects, painters, sculptors and designers. In doing so, they brought Arts and Crafts ideals to a wider public. -
Charles Francis Annesley
His first important work as an independent architect was a house design in 1885, showing his priority values, principles based on premises of the Arts and Crafts. He pretended to find the interior to be relaxing. He took this kind of thoughs during his architecture production. (mcnbiografías.com) -
Michael Thonet
The work carried out by Voysey in his architectural work, of much greater interest from the functional point of view than from an aesthetic or abstract appreciation, was complemented throughout his professional career by his work as a designer of decoration elements, despite the fact that he considered his designs of papers and fabrics painted as too ornate against the simplicity which he had preferred. (mcnbiografías.com) -
Charles Francis Annesley
The work carried out by Voysey in his architectural work, of much greater interest from the functional point of view than from an aesthetic or abstract appreciation, was complemented throughout his professional career by his work as a designer of decoration elements, despite the fact that he considered his designs of papers and fabrics painted as too ornate against the simplicity which he had preferred. (mcnbiografías.com) -
Hector Guimard
Hector Guimard practiced what he preached. His architectural creations tend to embrace each of the different branches of the arts, from painting and sculpture to graphics and even typography. The seamless harmony and flow that reigns in the aesthetic of Guimard's buildings and other works very much mirrors the kind of harmonious environment and society that Guimard hoped the world could eventually achieve politically. -
Charles R. Ashbee
Ashbee himself was willing to do complete house design, including interior furniture and decoration, as well as items such as fireplaces. In the 1890s he renovated The Wodehouse, commandant of the Royal Military School of Music, Shaw-Hellier commissioned him in 1907 to build the Villa San Giorgio in Taormina, Sicily, as a little island of England in Italy, hence the name of the patron saint. MacCarthy judges it "the most impressive of Ashbee's remaining buildings"; it is run as the Hotel Ashbee. -
Charles R. Ashebee
He set up the Essex House Press after Morris's Kelmscott Press closed in 1897, taking on many of the displaced printers and craftsmen. Between 1898 and 1910 the Essex House Press produced more than 70 titles. Ashbee designed two typefaces for the Essex House Press, Endeavour (1901) and Prayer Book (1903).
Ashbee wrote two utopian novels influenced by Morris. Ashbee also founded the Survey of London. -
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman and illustrator whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life, elegant and provocative images of the modern and sometimes decadent life of those times. Toulouse-Lautrec – along with Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin – is among the most well-known painters of the Post-Impressionist period. In a 2005 auction at Christie's auction house, a new record was set when La blanchisseuse, an early painting of a young laundress, sold for US$22.4 million. -
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Physically unable to participate in many activities typically enjoyed by men of his age, Toulouse-Lautrec immersed himself in art. He became an important Post-Impressionist painter, art nouveau illustrator, and lithographer, and recorded in his works many details of the late-19th-century bohemian lifestyle in Paris. Toulouse-Lautrec contributed a number of illustrations to the magazine Le Rire during the mid-1890s. -
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Art Nouveau
Generating enthusiasts in the decorative and graphic arts and architecture throughout Europe and beyond, Art Nouveau appeared in a wide variety of strands, and, consequently, it is known by various names, such as the Glasgow Style, or, in the German-speaking world, Jugendstil. Art Nouveau was aimed at modernizing design, seeking to escape the eclectic historical styles that had previously been popular. -
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Art Nouveau
Artists drew inspiration from both organic and geometric forms, evolving elegant designs that united flowing, natural forms resembling the stems and blossoms of plants. The emphasis on linear contours took precedence over color. The movement was committed to abolishing the traditional hierarchy of the arts, which viewed the so-called liberal arts, such as painting and sculpture, as superior to craft-based decorative arts. -
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Art Nouveau
The style went out of fashion for the most part long before the First World War, paving the way for the development of Art Deco in the 1920s, but it experienced a popular revival in the 1960s, and it is now seen as an important predecessor - if not an integral component
of modernism. -
Bauhaus
The Bauhaus was the outcome of a continuous effort to reform applied art education starting in Germany around the turn of the century, in 1898 of Karl Schmidt´s creating a furniture-manufacturing business, then with the appointment in 1903 of Hans Poelzig and Peter Behrens to the directorships of applied art schools in Breslau and Düsseldorf, at the end in 1906, with the founding of the Grand Ducal Schools of Arts and Crafts with the direction of the Belgian architect Henry Van de Velde. -
Bauhaus
As there was a conflict between the Ministry and Fritz Mackensen, Gropius argued for the relative autonomy of the latter and made a workshop-based design education for designers and craftsmen. When the conflict ended, Gropius became director of an institution consisting of the Academy of Art and the School of Arts and Crafts. -
Rene Lalique
In 1900 at the age of 40, he was the most celebrated jeweler in the world and an art nouveau artist and designer of magnificent proportions. But by 1925 at the height of the art deco era he was the most celebrated glassmaker in the world. In between Lalique would leave his contemporaries behind as he turned from creating unique jewelry and objects d'art, to the mass production of innovative and usable art glass. -
Rene Lalique
He brought glass into the home of everyday people where it had never been before, and he worked out the industrial techniques to mass produce his useful art glass objects on a scale and cost to complement the spreading industrial revolution and resulting worldwide appetite for his products. -
Expressionism
Main currents of art in the later 19th and 20th centuries.
Distortion, Exaggeration, Primitivism, Fantasy.
Use to manipulate reality because of emotions. Forms of art such as painting, literature, cinematography, music, etc. Reveals the pessimistic side created by the historic events on that time. Pure and bold colors used in a more aggressive and raw way. -
Modernism
Modernism, in the arts, a radical break with the past and the concurrent search for new forms of expression. Modernism fostered a period of experimentation in the arts from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, particularly in the years following World War I. -
Modernism
In an era characterized by industrialization, rapid social change, and advances in science and the social sciences, Modernists felt a growing alienation incompatible with Victorian morality, optimism, and convention. New ideas in psychology, philosophy, and political theory kindled a search for new modes of expression. -
Eliel Saarinen
Already in his earliest works his reaction against eclecticism can be seen, as demonstrated by the pavilion of Finland (Exhibition of Paris, 1900), simple orthogonal lines, or the house-study in Hvitträsk (1902), a construction of granite and wood of pine used with extraordinary subtlety. -
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Italian Design
https://www.widewalls.ch/italian-design/
http://www.aboutitaliandesign.info/history-of-italian-industrial-design.html
The Italian design is worldwide famous and in Milan there’s a special museum narrating its origins. Design is everywhere ; food design, interior and industry design. The Triennale Design Museum is the first in Europe representing the multiplicity of expressions in design. It’s a dynamic museum, ever-developing and giving us new points of view and uncommon experiences. -
Eliel Saarinen
He designed the plans for Casa Kalevala, but the project never came to fruition. In other works of his, such as in the building of the National Historical Museum and in the railway station of Helsinki, one can detect influences of the carelianismo. In Helsinki Central Station (1904-1914), the contrast between the purity of the vertical tower and the noble proportions of the horizontal volume that surrounds it can be seen. -
Viktor Schreckengost
Viktor Schreckengost, a distinguished yet largely unsung industrial designer who spent most of the 20th century quietly infusing every corner of the United States with his work, from dinnerware for the average home to the prized Art Deco “Jazz” bowls for the White House. Industrial design democratizes high style, he was widely considered among the most democratic industrial designers. He made things found routinely in homes, backyards, and garages in this country and around the world. -
Peter Behrens
How exactly Peter Behrens a painter turned graphic designer came to receive his first commissions from AEG in 1907 remains somewhat unclear.The credentials Behrens’ brought to this appointment were substantial, and his success within the industrial powerhouse was immediate. -
Peter Behrens
Prior to his tenure at AEG, Behrens had acted as artist-in-residence at the Darmstadt Artist’s Colony, headed the Kunstgewerbeschule in Düsseldorf, and with Hermann Muthesius, Josef Hoffmann, and Joseph Maria Olbrich, among others, was a founding member of the Deutscher Werkbund. -
Futurism
“The manifesto proclaims the program and ideology of Futurism—the first European avant-garde movement—which shuns tradition and embraces technology, war, and aggressive action.”
Futurism emerged in the 20th century, while the industrial revolution was still developing; it influenced the movement greatly. By Filippo Tommaso Marinetti -
Futurism
Futurism began its transformation of Italian culture on February 20th 1909 with the publication of the Futurist Manifesto by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.
The movement vanished in the late 1920s when Fascists introduced the concept of “degenerate art” from Germany. -
Tapio Wirkkala
He was a multitalented design genius, widely considered a leading figure of modern Finnish industrial art. Wirkkala's wide-ranging portfolio spans from glass, furniture and product design to sculpture, city planning, art, graphics and even creating banknotes for the Finnish treasury. -
Tapio Wirkkala
As his reputation grew internationally, Wirkala exhibited throughout the world but he was a recluse by nature. It was in nature that he found his much-loved solitude and the inspiration for forms that industry could produce or artwork could create. -
Bauhaus
Gropius elaborated an anarchic reworking named Gesamt-Kunstwerk in 1919 for the Exhibition of Unknown Architects which was a concept to refer to 6 different types of art: music, dance, poetry, painting, sculpture and architecture. He also persuaded the reluctant state government to adopt the word Bauhaus as the name of the new institution. -
Constructivism
Sought to abolish the traditional artistic concern with composition, and replace it with 'construction'.
Constructivism called for a careful technical analysis of modern materials, and it was hoped that this investigation would eventually yield ideas that could be put to use in mass production, serving the ends of a modern, Communist society.
Russian Constructivism was in decline by the mid 1920s, partly a victim of the Bolshevik regime's increasing hostility to avant-garde air. -
Van Doesburg's
His position on the faculty was immediately filled by the Hungarian artist and social radical Lászlo Moholy-Nagy. On his arrival in berlin in 1921, Moholy-Nagy had to come into contact with the Russian designer El Lissitzky, who was then in Germany for the preparations of the Russian Exhibition of 1922. -
Van Doesburg's
This encounter encouraged him to persue his own Constructivism learnings, and from this date forward his painting featured Suprematist elements, those, modular crosses and rectangles soon to become the substance of his famous “telephone” pictures, executed in enameled steel. -
Paul Jaray
The great designer received his German State Patent for car streamlining in 1926. Paul Jaray (1889-1974), born in Vienna. He studied at Maschinenbauschule and then worked at Prague Technical University. Later he became the chief design engineer for the aircraft building firm Flugzeugbau in Friedrichshafen designing seaplanes. Further experiments in the LZ’s wind tunnel led to his establishment of streamlining principles for car designs. -
Itten's and Moholy-Nagy
The aim of Itten’s foundation course, mandatory for all first-year students, was to release individual creativity and to enable each student to assess his own particular ability.
Moholy Nagy’s aim was no longer to demonstrate a feeling for contrasting materials and forms but to reveal the statical and aesthetic properties of free-standing asymmetrical structures. -
Art Deco
Many scholars consider that the Art Deco movement emerged from the Paris Exposition of 1925, but its beginnings were in fact before it. The first part of the twentieth century was marked by great changes in society. The aftershock of World War I and the visions that it spawned about the future of western civilization were especially
significant to Art Deco development. -
Art Deco
The early adoptive stage of Art Deco architecture, during the 1920s, is classified as "Jazz-age Deco", "Zig-zag Deco", or the "Skyscraper Style." These terms are synonymous. This phase of Art Deco was noted for its emphasis on the vertical aspect of a structure, combined with a geometric, rectilinear theme (McAlester,
1984: 465). -
Art Deco
The French designs introduced ornamentation paying homage to ancient Mayan pyramids. In New York, their limited space placed a premium on land values, and thus building technologies using concrete and steel allowed building "taller" as a viable alternative (Dwyer, September 22 - November 3, 1974: 15). The distinctive Art Deco skyscraper received its characteristic stepped back pattern through a combination of the Mayan influences seen in Paris and the modified height ordinance of New York City. -
László Moholy-Nagy
He classified painting as a means of shaping color, while he considered photography as an instrument of investigation and exposure of the light phenomenon. -
László Moholy-Nagy
Painting, photography, cinema, sculpture, advertising, product design, theater mushroom ... László Moholy-Nagy did it all. Although his true passion was painting, today he is remembered as one of the best photographers of the 20s, a pioneer in this field. In fact, his publication Painting, Photography, Film, 1925, constitutes the eighth volume of the Bauhaus Books and is one of the main pillars of photography, establishing a relationship between painting and photography. -
Gropiu's
The last two years of Gropius´s tenure were distinguished by three major developments:
The politically enforced and well-orchestrated move from Weimar to Dessau.
The completion of the Dessau Bauhaus.
The gradual emergence of the recognizable Bauhaus approach, in which a greater emphasis was replaced on deriving form from productive method, material constraint and programmatic necessity. -
Terragni Giusseppe
Italian architect, he founded the "Group 7", together with other people. The "7" were presented to the public through a series of articles, in which they declared themselves supporters of an Italian and rational architecture, inspired by the international movement and free of neoclassicism and eclectic elements. They defended the survival of tradition-in spirit, not in form-and the moderate character in their works, fleeing from the extremist tendencies of a part of the modern movement. -
Donald R. Dohner
A US industrial designer, he started with Westinghouse as a design consultant in 1926, teaching there as an "Art Engineer", and was hired as Director of Art in the engineering department of its Heavy Industry Division in 1929. He and his staff contributed to the design of 128 products, including electric ranges, diesel-electric locomotives, water coolers, and ash trays. In 1934, he left Westinghouse and initiated the world's first degreed program in industrial design at CIT. -
Norman Bel Geddes
He opened the Industrial Design Studios. In 1932 he made the book: Horizons. In 1939 New Youk world fair "Futurama".
In 1928 the Simmons Company commissioned him to design metal bedroom furniture that went to market in 1932. In 1931 a model of his "House of Tomorrow" was published in Ladies Home Journal and became a major impetus for architectural "streamlining." -
Walter Dorwin Teague
Poco antes de Teague concluyó su carrera de 18 años de publicidad, él participó en varias comisiones en el diseño de productos, para lo cual un número creciente de clientes buscaron asesoramiento. A la edad de 43 años, Teague estableció una empresa unipersonal dedicada al producto y el envase diseño. En 1927. Su primer cliente fue Eastman Kodak, donde realizó un plan de diseño que incluía el estudio y desarrollo de productos. -
Gio Ponti
Architect, designer and artist, Gio Ponti graduated in Milan in 1921. In 1927, he founded Il Labirinto with Lancia, Buzzi, Marelli, Venini and Chiesa to produce furniture and objects of high quality. From 1923 to 1930, he was artistic director of Richard Ginori. Thanks to the creation of the Domus magazine in 1928, Ponti made a profound contribution to the renewal of Italian production in the sector, giving it a new impetus. -
Alvar Aalto
Alvar Aalto, architect and designer, is one of the most outstanding of the 20th century; he managed to give pure rationalism, both in its buildings and in its furniture, unusual charm and warmth. His first famous buildings are the offices and press of a newspaper in Turku (1927-1930); the Viipuri library, which has become an example of this type of building for modern architecture; and the anti-tuberculosis sanatorium of Paimio (1929-1933). -
Henry Dreyfuss
He made 250 stage sets for theater, then in 1929 he opened the first Industrial Design Office, and later he won the competition "Phone of the future".
Born in 1904. -
Eero Saarinen
Eero Saarinen is considered an icon of architecture and organic design. In 1929 he began studying sculpture at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris and from 1930 to 1934 he studied architecture at Yale University in New Haven. Later he worked in the office of his father Eliel Saarinen in Ann Arbor, and became his partner in 1941 together with J. Robert Swanson. In 1950 he opened his office in Birmingham under the name of Eero Saarinen & Associates. -
Hector Guimard
Guimard's version of Art Nouveau was nationalistic but also focused on community and the friendly acknowledgment of differences between the varied nationalities and ethnicities of the world. Today Guimard is regarded as one of the most individualistic artists of his era, one of the innovating founders of Art Nouveau who developed a personal aesthetic that is often instantly recognizable and distinguishable even from his fellow practitioners of the style. -
Dante Giacosa
Dante Giacosa became one of the most influential car engineer/designers in Automotive history. He worked at Fiat from 1930 to 1970. He rose from a design engineer to Car Engineering Manager to head of the Vehicle Engineering department in 1955, and in 1966, Division Manager and Member of the Executive Committee. The small car prototypes Fiat had made up to then were modern, conventional designs equal to other competitors. -
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Organic Design
This gained the inspiration from nature and wildlife, inspiring the artist to create products and architecture using delicate forms, cylindrical shapes, smooth lines.
Buildings became part of the landscape. The first organic projects were created during the interwar period, however, the bloom of this movement took place after the second world war. -
Period: to
Organic Design
The aspiration towards organic design can be seen in the development of modern product design: the 1946 Vespa motorised scooter by Piaggio features a streamlined, domed chassis. Designed in 1950, the fibreglass “Dax” armchair by Charles Eames features an organically formed seat. In the 1970s, organically designed plastic furniture blossomed. From 2000, car design was characterised by a strong trend towards flowing forms. -
Neoplastisism
In fine art, the term "neo-plasticism" refers to the austere, geometrical style of concrete art developed just after the First World War. The word is a meaningless translation of the complex Dutch phrase nieuwe beelding, first used by the writer Matthieu Schoenmaekers in his book Het Nieuwe Wereldbeeld , and re-used by Mondrian in his theoretical essay De Nieuwe Beelding in de Schilderkunst, before he adopted the French translation Neo-Plasticisme from which the English term is taken. -
Harold Van Doren
Van Doren opened a design office in 1931 in partnership with John Gordon in Toledo, OH. They designed a colorful, art deco skyscraper public health scale for their first client, the Toledo Scale Company, and in 1933 a green plastic skyscraper style radio for Air King Products. In 1934 they designed a trend-setting sheet metal gasoline pump for the Wayne Pump Company. -
Franco Albini
He was a fundamental figure of the Rationalist Movement, standing out in architectural, furniture, industrial and museum design. After obtaining his degree in architecture in 1929, he worked with design studios Ponti. When he inaugurated his own studio in Milan in 1931, he accepted the challenge of creating housing for workers and continued on this path after the war. -
Bauhaus
They required the Bauhaus closed and its sachlich façade capped by an “Aryan” pitched roof. They required the Marxists impeached and the liberal émigrés banished along with their obscure art works, later to be designated as decadent. The desperate attempt of the mayor of Dessau for but two more years. In October 1932 what was left of it moved into a warehouse on the outskirts of Berlin, but by now the floodgates of reaction were open, and nine months later the Bauhaus was finally closed. -
Luigi Figini
Italian Architect. He was one of the founders of Gruppo 7. The Villa-studio was designed by Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini. It was built in 1933 in the greenery of the Sempione Park in Milan, Italy and demolished three months after the event. The inspiration comes from Mies van der Rohe´s Villa Tugendhat and it is clearly visible.
Among his work, is "la fábrica Olivetti" in Ivrea (in colaboration with G.Pollini and A. Fiocchi) and the "complejo industrial de cerámica Porri" in Sparanise. -
Alvar Aalto
In 1935 they founded the company Artek, which still today produces innovative furniture. Aalto's international reputation grew with a series of pre-World War II buildings, all made with wooden structures, such as the Finland Pavilion of the Paris International Exposition of 1937 or the Villa Mairea (1938-1939), built for a well-to-do client, where he also achieves, following the principles of rationalist architecture, a feeling of luxury never before achieved. -
Raymond loewy
He designed the Pennsylvania Railroads' S1 steam locomotive. In 1940 he changed the Lucky Strike cigarette package. In 1953 he designed his razor and 2 years later he introduced the first king Size Slenderized Coca-Cola bottle.
In 1962 he redesigned Airforce One aircraft. -
The Castiglioni Brothers
Shortly after graduating from the Polytechnic University of Milan, Pier Giacomo(1913-1968), along with his brother Livio(1911-1979), founded a small architecture firm in Milan. They worked together with architect Luigi Caccia Dominioni to design interiors, furniture, and other objects, such as the Caccia Cutlery Set (1938) and the Fimi-Phonola 547 Radio (1939). -
Andrea Branzi
Born in Florence in 1938, architect, designer. Critical for the journals Domus, Interni, Casabella and Modo, he is among the founders of the Domus Academy and among the members of the EEC Commission for the promotion of European design. He has worked for Cassina, Vitra, Zanotta. -
Art Deco
In other ways, Art Deco dramatically differed from Art Nouveau and other styles that went before it. Where Art Nouveau tended to be floral and elaborate, with detailed lines, it was bold, stark, and had simple, crisp lines. -
Eliot Noyes
Eliot Noyes was a remarkable figure in twentieth-century design. He went on to become the first Director of the Industrial Design department at MoMA in the 1940s. In 1950 he was Consulting Director of Design for IBM, Mobil Oil, Westinghouse and Cummins Engine Company, and was responsible for bringing about a change in the way that these corporations, and others that followed, were to think about design and its impact on business. -
Eliot Noyes
He enlisted pioneering designers, notably Charles Eames, Paul Rand, Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar, to help him bring about innovative architectural, graphic and industrial design. He was personally responsible for the design of some notable twentieth-century classics, such as IBM’s Selectric typewriter and Mobil Oil’s service stations and petrol pumps. His own work includes architectural projects, such as the award-winning Noyes' family residence in Connecticut. -
Clara Porset
Clara Porset Dumás was born in the city of Havana, and was a pioneer of industrial design in Mexico, where she lived from 1940. She participated with Horacio Durán in the founding project of the industrial design career at UNAM in 1969, where she remained as a teacher until her death in 1981. -
Charles Eames and Ray Eames
Charles and Ray married in 1941 and moved to California where they continued their furniture design work with molding plywood. During World War II they were commissioned by the United States Navy to produce molded plywood splints, stretchers, and experimental glider shells. In 1946, Evans Products began producing the Eameses’ molded plywood furniture. -
Charles Eames and Ray Eames
Their molded plywood chair was called “the chair of the century” by the influential architectural critic Esther McCoy. Soon production was taken over by Herman Miller, Inc., who continues to produce the furniture in the United States today. Our other partner, Vitra International, manufactures the furniture in Europe. -
George Nelson
He invented in 1945 the "storage wall", an innovative method that filled the space between the walls of the house with shelves inserted. He was design director of the Herman Miller studio and hired figures such as Ray and Charles Eames for the firm. He defended that the mission of the designers and architects was to create a better world for the human being, practical but in harmony with nature. -
Eva Zeisel
She gains national notice with the porcelain table service´s first show devoted solely to a female designer. "Maker of useful things".
100 years old and she was still working, engaged in what she described as a "playful search for beauty". -
Ettore Sottsass
Ettore Sottsass was an Italian architect and designer. It was one of those names that gave the Italian design international fame and helped define the so-called Italian style. In an interview, he recalled those postwar years as "very difficult" and said that he dedicated himself to designing objects for "lack of money". After returning home in 1948, he established his own architectural and industrial design studio in Milan. -
Ettore Sottsass
It was then that his work won the attention of the Italian businessman Adriano Olivetti, with whom he started a collaboration of 30 years and which is reminiscent of the famous Mainframe computer Elea 9003, and the portable typewriter Valentine. The firm Olivetti became the main vehicle for Italian creatives abroad. -
The Castiglioni Brothers
The Castiglioni studio-derived its main income from exhibition design, but they also restored buildings destroyed by the war, such as the Palazzo Della Permanente in 1952. Livio left to start his own practice in 1952; today, he is best known for his Boalum Lamp for Artemide (1970/71) a light featuring internally lit, flexible plastic tubing which he co-designed with Gianfranco Frattini (1926-2004). -
The Castiglioni Brothers
The brothers were eager to find inspiration every day, they often worked with found objects and components. Standout pieces in this vein include the Mezzadro Seat (1954-7) and Sella Seat (1957), both eventually put into production by Zanotta, and the Arco Floor Lamp (1962) and Toio Floor Lamp (1962), both produced by Flos. -
Period: to
Pop Art
It was also an inspiration from the culture of music-popular culture. The main topic of paintings were well-known celebrities, for example, Marylin Monroe. It was a satire, because artists were persuading the museums to invest large sums of money in the paintings of mundane themes made with acrylic paints on plywood, which quickly was becoming ruined. Comic Inspiration, expressive forms, bright and rainbow colors. -
Ettore Sottsass
While designing for Olivetti in the 1960s, Sottsass developed a series of objects that were expressions of his personal travel experiences in the United States and India, such as clay pots inspired by his interest in tantric art and passion for the Indian culture. -
Ugo la Pietra
With his research he has crossed several currents: artistic ("art", "conceptual art", "environmental art", "art in social", "narrative art", "artist cinema", "new writing" , "extra media", "neo-eclecticism", architecture and radical design). He communicated and divulged his thoughts and experiences through intense didactic and editorial activity. It has promoted research groups and exhibitions involving a large number of operators (artists, architects, derigners). -
Ugo la Pietra
Ugo La Pietra has developed since 1962 an activity aimed at clarifying and defining the "individual-environment" relationship. At the beginning of this process of work he has developed knowledge tools that tend to transform the traditional "work-viewer" relationship. He worked in and out of the disciplines by declaring himself "a researcher in the visual arts"; an artist uncomfortable and inconvenient and therefore difficult to classify. -
Andrea Branzi
From 1964 to 1974 he was partner of Archizoom Associati, first vanguard group internationally known, whose project are preserved at Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione in Parma and at Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. He was one of the founders of the Domus Academy, the first international post-graduate school of design. A key member of the Studio Alchimia, founded in 1976, he went on to associate with the Memphis Group in the 1980s. -
Henry Dreyfuss
He was the president of the IDSA. In 1971 he made the standards fo sign and symbols and the next year he made the Symbol sourcebook, with 145 signs and symbols. -
Art Deco
The term “Art Deco” was coined in 1968 by Bevis Hillier in his definite book titled “Art Deco: the style of the 1920s and 1930s” (Gebhard, 1996: 2). During the second II World War (1939 to 1945).
The first theory is that Hillier used the term "Art Deco" to juxtapose the style against the earlier "Art Nouveau" style.
The second one is that "Art Deco" was an abbreviated reference to the "Exposition des Arts Decoratifs et Industrials," the exhibition held in Paris in the year 1925. -
Timo Sarpaneva
He was an international force in Finnish design. A designer, sculptor and educator, Sarpaneva’s pioneering glass work merged art with utilitarian design. Besides glass, he also worked with textiles, wood, porcelain, and metal. Sarpaneva’s works are exhibited internationally. He has received much recognition throughout his illustrious career including the Lunning Prize. In 1976, Sarpaneva received the honorary title of Professor from the Finnish government. -
The Marshall Plan
Members of Congress and others have recommended establishment
of a ‘Marshall Plan’ for Central America, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and elsewhere. They do so largely because the original Marshall Plan, a program of U.S. assistance to Europe during the period 1948-1951, is considered by many to have been the most effective ever of U.S. foreign aid programs. -
The Marshall Plan
An effort to prevent the economic deterioration of Europe, expansion of communism, and stagnation of world trade, the Plan sought to stimulate European production, promote adoption of policies leading to stable economies, and take measures to increase trade among European countries and between Europe and the rest of the world. -
The Marshall Plan
At the completion of the Marshall Plan period, European agricultural and industrial production were markedly higher, the balance of trade and related “dollar gap” much improved, and significant steps had been taken toward trade liberalization and economic integration. The Plan had contributed to more positive morale in Europe and to political and economic stability which helped diminish the strength of domestic communist parties. -
The Marshall Plan
It was designed to accomplish these goals through achievement of three objectives: 1- The expansion of European agricultural and industrial production.
2- The restoration of sound currencies, budgets, and finances in individual European countries.
3- The stimulation of international trade among European countries and between Europe and the rest of the world. -
The Marshall Plan
In the main, the Plan was not a humanitarian relief program. It was designed specifically to bring about the absolute economic recovery of Europe and avoid the repeated need for relief programs that had characterized U.S. assistance to Europe since the War. -
The Journal of Design & Manufacturers
The journal was edited by Henry Cole and his friend Richard Redgrave. Having an aim to improve the standards of British industry, it concentrated exclusively on the decorative and applied arts, targeting a middle-class audience that the editors felt needed instruction in taste. This first volume contains 44 fabric patterns and upwards of 200 engravings, now making it a wonderful primary resource for students of design and Victorian social history. -
Dieter Ram´s
The principles of good design. Good design is: 1- Innovative
2- Makes a product useful
3- Aesthetic
4- Makes a product understandable
5- Unobtrusive
6- Honest
7- Long-lasting
8- Thorough down to the last detail
9- Environmentally friendly
10- A little design as posible
