A creative explosion in design and art lit up the 1920s. The Jazz Age explores the dynamic changes in American taste and lifestyles during this period through a broad range of furniture, jewelry, fashion, textiles, decorative arts, and architecture, as well as art, film, and music. The influences that fueled this burst of innovation, exoticism, and modernity were manifold and flowed back and forth across the Atlantic. Jazz music, a uniquely American art form that sprang from African American musicians who preserved and improvised on its historic roots, also found a ready audience in Europe. An apt metaphor for the era’s embrace of urbanity and experimentation, jazz captured the pulse and rich mixture of cultures and rhythms that brought a new beat to contemporary life.
Significant influences from Europe included avant-garde artistic movements; the Paris 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts décoratifs et industriels modernes; recent immigrant designers, primarily from Austria and Germany; traveling exhibitions featuring the latest designs, many available for sale; and fashion and jewelry acquired overseas. At home, new modes of transportation and the development of industrial design with its impact on consumer products and the interior profoundly shaped American taste. Equally exciting and important as these influences were the rapid growth of American cities and architecture—most notably the soaring American skyscraper—which awed Americans and Europeans alike and inspired unprecedented dynamic forms in design.
New freedoms abounded. Women gained the right to vote in 1920 and enjoyed more independence, bending traditional social rules of decorum and engaging in new professions such as interior design. This freer spirit also appeared in art and design through vibrant colors, bold geometric forms, and the use of new materials and experimental production methods. These changes became increasingly visible as the decade progressed and are explored in the exhibition’s six thematic sections: The Persistence of Traditional "Good Taste," A New Look for Familiar Forms, Bending the Rules, A Smaller World, Abstraction and Reinvention, and Toward a Machine Age.
A Smaller World
After World War I, American artists, designers, and patrons eagerly traveled to Paris, attending the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts décoratifs et industriels modernes where various countries—though not the United States or Germany—exhibited significant new designs. An American government committee selected 400 objects from the exposition, many for sale, to tour US museums in 1926. Department stores followed suit with exhibitions of imported modern design. Other influences came through the immigration of trained designers, particularly from Vienna and Berlin, to the US. These designers brought new aesthetics and an interest in industrial design that they combined with a fascination with American skyscrapers. The interaction of European-trained and American-born designers created new energy and a style that might be called "melting-pot modern."
Agnes Miles Carpenter admired the Lobmeyr glass at the 1925 Paris Exposition and placed an order for a commission with the firm in Vienna. These life-sized designs were sent to Carpenter in New York as part of the commission, which included glassware by Oswald Haerdtl. The tall glass is on display in the case nearby.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
This drawing of 8 Ambassador-pattern vessels is carefully composed to illustrate that the pieces are intended as a set, ranging from water glasses to finger bowls and candlesticks. Agnes Miles Carpenter approved the pieces for her Fifth Avenue apartment, some of which are in Cooper Hewitt’s collection.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
With its stylized figures, well-groomed animals, and tropical flora, this wallpaper conveys the patterned surfaces and curved forms frequently used in Groult's interiors and furnishings. Groult's block-printing workshop enabled him to produce coordinated textile and wallpaper designs to complete a total design work, much in the way the Wiener Werkstätte created its designed interiors.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Museum purchase through gift of Georgiana L. McClellan
Following her visit to the 1925 Paris Exposition, Agnes Miles Carpenter ordered a group of Lobmeyr’s Ambassador glassware, presumably for use on the Jules Bouy–designed dining room furniture seen in drawings nearby. Designed by Oswald Haerdtl, the pieces helped define the era’s interest in sphere and cone forms. An American’s commission of an Austrian designer and company, shown in Paris, underscores not only the nexus of creative activity in Vienna’s cross-media design collaborations but also the exposure Paris gave them.
Fillìa was the adopted name of Italian Futurist artist Luigi Colombo. In the 1920s Futurists experimented across media to create “opera d’arte totale,” or a “total work of art.” They sought to conceive complete spaces and often used colorful indoor murals to soften the perceived coldness of modernist interiors.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
The fluted sides of Hoffmann’s raised silver bowl mimic the channels on the Ionic and Corinthian marble columns of Greek temples. Hand-hammered marks from raising the bowl from a sheet of silver create a contemporary feel while simultaneously reflecting classical aesthetics.
This vase, produced by the Wiener Werkstätte after Dagobert Peche’s designs in 1923, shows Peche’s more exuberant style. It dates to the last year the Wiener Werkstätte had a shop in New York, and was acquired by architect Ely Jacques Kahn and later given to Cooper Hewitt.
The pattern of this textile, which incorporates influences from Léger to the Wiener Werkstätte, was also used for wallpaper on view at the 1925 Paris Exposition. The textile and wallcoverings manufacturer Paul Dumas also produced work for Paul Poiret’s decorating workshop Atelier Martine.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
joined wood, cut, pressed and dyed shagreen, carved ivory
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Forsythe Sherfesee
personal
symmetry
storage
offices
rectangular
geometric
Jean-Michel Frank liked to mix surface textures—an aesthetic he conveyed to Eyre de Lanux—such as the use of shagreen (sharkskin) for this desk while other pieces from the same commission were covered in straw, leather, and parchment.
Museum purchase from General Acquisitions Endowment
An example of this model was shown at Il Biennale Monza 1925 and in the Macy’s 1928 International Exposition of Art in Industry. It displays a whimsy combined with elements of Italian traditional design.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
molded and carved glass, white metal; leather, silk, brass (case)
Gift of Jacques Jugeat
circles
birds
jewelry
glass
clear
necklace
Both this bowl and necklace feature a row of parakeets. René Lalique repeatedly featured birds in tablewares, lamps, jewelry, hood ornaments, statuary, and more. He finished his work to a high quality standard, employing polishing and wheel-carving to enhance the sophistication of his molded and pressed designs.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Lalique’s contributions to the 1925 exposition could be seen all over the grounds, most notably in a tall central fountain of glass that was lit at night, a motif picked up in a glass fountain that centered La Parfumerie, the fair’s perfume pavilion. In years following, the fountain remained a popular motif, evoked here in a series of graduated curls.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Among the French objects on view at the Exposition of Modern French Decorative Art at Lord & Taylor in 1928 was Suzanne and René Lalique’s Tourbillons vase, with a faceted glass surface created through mass-production pressing and hand-carving. This vase, here accented with black enamel, represented a new vision and technique in decorative glass.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Art deco (or French moderne, as the style was called in New York) was enthusiastically promoted by the city’s leading department stores. This brilliant red-orange-lacquered suite features a color, sometimes known as Chinese red, which helped popularize this American variant of a French design in mixed woods by Léon Jallot.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Mrs. John Alden Carpenter, a socially active decorator whose husband was a prominent musician, created a new design for Austro-Hungarian-born Elizabeth Arden’s "Salon de Beauté". She used standing lamps with feathery molded glass shades by the Italian-born French designer Marius-Ernest Sabino, whose lamps also decorated the Ile de France ocean liner.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Maria Likarz-Strauss worked in many media for the Wiener Werkstätte, producing postcards, textiles, garments, fashion accessories, wallcoverings, and more. Drapery wallpapers typically imitated lush silk velvets or satins with deep swags and dramatic shadow effects. This rather unusual drapery is rendered in a minimal style with a flattened perspective.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Arthur Crisp’s use of color-saturated gouache and Persian elements evokes otherworldly luxury in this study for a tapestry meant to adorn the walls of a music room. The resulting tapestry, one of a set of three made of silk batik, measured over eleven by nine feet in size.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
brush and silver paint, watercolor, pastel, graphite on off-white illustration board, ruled borders in graphite
Gift of Donald Deskey
display
geometric
fashion
industrial
department store
In 1926 Donald Deskey was commissioned by Saks Fifth Avenue to decorate its show windows and contribute to its graphic identity. His display schemes were notable for their mixing of materials such as cork, metal, and corrugated steel. Deskey used a similar approach for the apartment of Saks president Adam Gimbel, who introduced him to designer Paul Frankl.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Although Jules Bouy ran Ferrobrandt, the New York branch of Edgar Brandt’s metalwork firm, he also designed in his own right for a sophisticated clientele. This lamp mixes sharp angles with graceful curves in steps of different shades of metal and can be used as a wall light.
Museum purchase from Smithsonian Collections Acquisition and Decorative Arts Association Acquisition Funds
textile design
leaves
diagonal
colorways
Dagobert Peche’s work for the Wiener Werkstätte introduced a flourish of asymmetrical patterns and organic elements, including his characteristic spear-shaped leaves. Named after a Trojan War hero, the Diomedes pattern was available in these two colorways during the time of its production from 1919 to 1928.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Museum purchase from Smithsonian Collections Acquisition and Decorative Arts Association Acquisition Funds
Dagobert Peche’s work for the Wiener Werkstätte introduced a flourish of asymmetrical patterns and organic elements, including his characteristic spear-shaped leaves. Named after a Trojan War hero, the Diomedes pattern was available in these two colorways during the time of its production from 1919 to 1928.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
pen and black ink, brush and watercolor, white gouache, gold paint, graphite on yellowish paper, laid down on tissue paper
Museum purchase through gift of Carola Walton in memory of her mother Dorothy S. Teegan
Joseph Urban, born and trained in Austria, brought color, fantasy, and new lighting effects to his projects as opera and theater designer, architect, decorator, and illustrator. In 1930 Vogue described the Roof Garden at the Hotel Gibson as "decorated with delightful fantasy by Joseph Urban," with flowery walls and peacocks adorning the columns.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
This stylized floral pattern is one of twenty-five designs created by Peche for the German manufacturer Flammersheim & Steinmann. The wallpaper features Peche's distinctive blade-like leaf and petal forms and shows an interest in the Rococo and Baroque, characteristics also seen in the designer's silver vase nearby.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
American manufacturer F. Schumacher & Co. commissioned Paul Poiret to create its first collection of furnishing textiles by a major designer. A Schumacher advertisement for his designs proclaimed, “Turn your house into a modern garden.” This pattern’s stylized florals and vegetation, rich red color, and lively composition recall Poiret’s earlier Atelier Martine textiles.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Following the 1925 Paris Exposition, fountains proliferated as a design motif, appearing on this interior architectural element from Wanamaker’s Men’s Store.
Museum purchase through gift of Georgiana L. McClellan
Following her visit to the 1925 Paris Exposition, Agnes Miles Carpenter ordered a group of Lobmeyr’s Ambassador glassware, presumably for use on the Jules Bouy–designed dining room furniture seen in drawings nearby. Designed by Oswald Haerdtl, the pieces helped define the era’s interest in sphere and cone forms. An American’s commission of an Austrian designer and company, shown in Paris, underscores not only the nexus of creative activity in Vienna’s cross-media design collaborations but also the exposure Paris gave them.
Museum purchase from Drawings and Prints Council Fund
art
graphic design
advertising
flowers
art deco
intertwined
typography
exhibition poster
Metalsmith Edgar Brandt’s lithographic poster uses the opulent motifs of his decorative ironwork to promote the designers represented in his gallery, many of whose work is on view nearby in this exhibition.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Museum purchase through gift of Dale and Doug Anderson, Anonymous Donor, Arthur Liu, and Prairie Pictures, Inc. and from General Acquisitions Endowment Fund
interior
decoration
container
display
flowers
organic
texture
ridges
biomorphic
Marianne Rath, daughter of Stefan Rath, who succeeded his uncle Ludwig Lobmeyr as head of the glassmaking firm of J. & L. Lobmeyr, produced rock crystal–like forms by a complicated modeling process throughout her career. This glass bowl was one of the centerpieces of the Lobmeyr display in the Austrian pavilion at the 1925 Paris Exposition.
Museum purchase through gift of Dale and Doug Anderson, Anonymous Donor, Arthur Liu, and Prairie Pictures, Inc. and from General Acquisitions Endowment Fund
While the Ambassador series, seen in clear glass on this shelf, favored Lobmeyr’s ultrathin "muslin" glass, Powolny’s ceramic work may have led him to explore thicker glass and color, as seen in his fruit bowl and tumbler.
Museum purchase through gift of Dale and Doug Anderson, Anonymous Donor, Arthur Liu, and Prairie Pictures, Inc. and from General Acquisitions Endowment Fund
decoration
container
domestic
display
dining
delicate
globular
flared
luminous
blue
fruit bowl
While the Ambassador series, seen in clear glass on this shelf, favored Lobmeyr’s ultrathin "muslin" glass, Powolny’s ceramic work may have led him to explore thicker glass and color, as seen in his fruit bowl and tumbler.
The strong patterning on this matched set of wallpaper and border combines hard and soft shapes, along with dark and light colors. The radiating lines with accentuated angles recall not only fashion designs such as the dress retailed by B. Altman nearby, but also the Sunray patterns popular in textiles and metalwork, as seen upstairs.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
The strong patterning on this matched set of wallpaper and border combines hard and soft shapes, along with dark and light colors. The radiating lines with accentuated angles recall not only fashion designs such as the dress retailed by B. Altman nearby, but also the Sunray patterns popular in textiles and metalwork, as seen upstairs.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
From 1923 on, Georg Jensen had a New York shop promoting his simple, elegant forms. Featured in American museum and department store exhibitions during the 1920s, this model of bowl continued to be made for decades. Danish styling was so popular that American firms referenced Jensen’s expressive decoration in an effort to emulate its success.
This print originally appeared in Sonia Delaunay’s 1925 folio featuring designs for fashion and textiles, which was published to coincide with the Paris exposition. Delaunay worked simultaneously across media and viewed her designs for clothing and textiles as an extension of her artistic practice.
Museum purchase from Charles E. Sampson Memorial Fund
One of a pair designed by Hilda Jesser, this vase was listed in the original catalogue of products available from the Wiener Werkstätte’s short-lived New York shop. The vase’s lantern-like form and stylized decoration suggests an Asian influence while the motifs include an urban skyline to appeal to New York customers.
On trips to Vienna, Munich, and Paris in the late 1920s, Lois and William Katzenbach saw modern wallpapers for the first time and were inspired to start their own wallpaper firm in New York in 1928. The company commissioned designs from Paul Poiret, and imported and sold wallpapers by the Wiener Werkstätte and the Deutsche Werkstätten. These four pages are from the sample book European Papers: Modern Designs, released in the company's first year of business.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Manufactured by Pauly & C. - Compagnia Venezia e Murano
blown glass
Gift of Neil and Donna Weisman
While Umberto Bellotto’s works typically combined glass with wrought iron, the Transparente Series is a rare example exclusively of glass. Presented at the Mostra delle Arti Decorative di Monza in 1927, this series shows how Bellotto transformed the look of antique Roman glass into a modern one using geometric forms.
French architect and designer Pierre Chareau was one of the most ardent proponents of open-plan interiors and a vocabulary of forms that could be used in a variety of settings. Similar to a stool he had designed for the Grand Hotel de Tours, this table represents a breakthrough in small furniture designed for modern living.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Smithsonian Libraries, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Library
The Mayan-inspired theater in Detroit’s Fisher Building featured fountains, archways, live birds, and lighting fixtures with stepped decoration designed by E. F. Caldwell & Company. Reflecting the period’s fascination with pre-Columbian art, Mayan motifs were among the most popular decorating schemes used for American movie palaces.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Smithsonian Libraries, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Library
Designed for the Barbizon-Plaza Art Music Residence Center, this modern design for a chandelier suited the multifunctional building. Built as both a hotel and music-art residence center, its original design included two auditoriums, artist studios, multiple exhibition spaces, and 1,400 guest rooms.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Collection of the Newark Museum, Purchase 1923, Gift of Otto Kahn, 1923.236
Michael Powolny’s ceramics exhibit patterns typical of those found in Wiener Werkstätte wallcoverings and textiles of the same date, but contrast with the lack of decoration seen in his glass bowl nearby. This vase was exhibited and acquired by the Newark Museum in 1923, but generally Powolny’s work was not known in the United States until later.
Collection of the Newark Museum, Purchase 1929, 29.1362
John Cotton Dana, director of the Newark Museum, was first among museum directors to launch, in 1909, a series of exhibitions of modern European design. He acquired this pitcher from Georg Jensen’s 57th Street shop in New York in 1923. The smooth surface and handcrafted look of Danish silver appealed to traditionalists and modernists alike.
Zimmermann’s vases and bowls draw inspiration from Asia and Egypt. The form of this bowl is similar to designs for Japanese plume fans and Chinese-influenced silver by the Kalo Shops of Chicago. The vase’s green patination suggests ancient metal vessels and examples by Viennese designer Dagobert Peche, connecting Zimmermann’s work to antiquity, Asia, and contemporary Europe, especially Vienna.
Zimmermann may have studied Tang dynasty footed metal dishes before creating this form, reduced to three lobes painted in a strong blue color that gives it a modern look while referencing the color of Chinese kingfisher feathers.
Dagobert Peche designed this early metal vase of about 1917 shortly after he became director of the Wiener Werkstätte, displaying an interest in color effects in metal, soon picked up by Marie Zimmermann in New York.
Lent by Dallas Museum of Art, The Patsy Lacy Griffith Collection, bequest of Patsy Lacy Griffith, 2001.148
Artisans in the workshops of Daum Frères had focused on naturalistic subject matter starting in the Art Nouveau period. During the 1920s, wild animals were popular motifs throughout the decorative arts, as evidenced by the gazelles seen on this vase.
Lent by Dallas Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Harry Perkins, 1995.38
The organic nature-based shape of this bowl references Asian forms, like those found in Marie Zimmermann’s metalwork. Steuben also was influenced by Austrian and Swedish glass exhibited in the 1925 Paris Exposition.
Lent by Dallas Museum of Art, The Patsy Lacy Griffith Collection, gift of Patsy Lacy Griffith by exchange, 2002.17.1-.7
Silver by Jean Puiforcat, also included in many museum and department store exhibitions, was among the fashionable items in the gifts department at Saks Fifth Avenue soon after the 1925 Paris Exposition. His use of faceted and globular forms influenced makers in silver and other media into the 1930s.
lead-glazed earthenware with polychrome decoration
Lent by The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Arthur T. Aldis and Russell Tyson, 1924.980
Even before the tour of selections from the Paris exposition reached Chicago in 1926, collectors there were acquiring French ceramics, such as this vase, from The Art Institute of Chicago’s annual selling exhibitions. Buthaud’s ceramics were exhibited in 1928 at Lord & Taylor in New York.
Lent by The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Robert Allerton, 1924.211
A variant of this Rainbow pattern was used in the upholstered Gondola chairs designed by Josef Urban for the group’s New York shop. Chicago collector Robert Allerton presumably acquired this fabric in 1922 or 1923 when the Art Institute of Chicago held a Wiener Werkstätte exhibition; he gave it to that museum in 1924.
Lent by The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Robert Allerton, 1924.184
Best known for his stage and costume designs for the Ballets Russes, Léon Bakst created textiles for Clingen and Selig that were an artistic and commercial success for both designer and producer. Bakst arrived in the United States in 1920 through the patronage of Mrs. John Garrett of Baltimore, whose husband was ambassador to France.
Lent by The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Arthur T. Aldis & Russell Tyson, 1925.748
Artists and firms working in traditional techniques such as glazed porcelain looked to new styles to attract new clients. An example of this figurine featured in the 1929 International Exhibition of Ceramic Art, sponsored by the American Federation of Arts, which traveled to major American museums. According to the catalogue, the exhibition aimed to show "the American public, the manufacturer, and the designer what is being done in the medium of baked clay in various European countries and America."
These covered urns are miniature adaptations of the stepped forms that topped columns at the entrance to the Pavillons de la Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres, designed by Henri Patou, at the 1925 Paris Exposition. They were purchased at the fair by Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Jr. and were on display in their apartment at 740 Park Avenue.
This vase by Jean Dunand, on view both in the 1925 Paris Exposition and in the traveling American selections show, is a masterpiece of the designer’s eggshell lacquer technique.
Lent by Cleveland Museum of Art, Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection, 964.1932
This vase, made right after Viktor Schreckengost’s return from Vienna in 1931, gave his new style immediate American exposure as it was exhibited at and purchased within the year for the Cleveland Museum of Art. Schreckengost won a special prize for Outstanding Excellence in Pottery when this vase was shown there in 1932.
Lent by The Cleveland Museum of Art, Dudley P. Allen Fund, 1929.438
Although Viktor Schreckengost was exposed to new ideas in Vienna through the teaching of Michael Powolny and others, the exhibition and acquisition of this sculpture, Das Wasser, by the Cleveland Museum of Art before his departure in 1929 reveals that he already had some exposure to Viennese portrait design in Cleveland.
Lent by The Cleveland Museum of Art, Dudley P. Allen Fund, 1938.383
Swedish decorative glass, especially that of Orrefors, was promoted through both museum and commercial exhibitions in the 1920s, including the 1926 selections from the 1925 Paris Exposition. The organic curves and motion of the dancers in the frieze show Hald’s earlier training as a painter under Matisse in Paris.
Lent by The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Mary Spedding Milliken Memorial Collection, Gift of William Mathewson Milliken, 1947.170
A former antiques dealer, Giacomo Cappellin joined Paolo Venini to form MVM Cappellin in Murano in 1921. Cappellin continued the company after Venini’s departure in 1925, and with new artistic directors produced figures based on the carnival in Venice, using historic techniques. Seven Cappellin works were first shown in the US in Macy’s 1928 exposition.
Lent by The Cleveland Museum of Art, Anonymous Gift, 2009.457
Both this bowl and necklace feature a row of parakeets. René Lalique repeatedly featured birds in tablewares, lamps, jewelry, hood ornaments, statuary, and more. He finished his work to a high quality standard, employing polishing and wheel-carving to enhance the sophistication of his molded and pressed designs.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Designs that featured elements of Japanese styling within a European context extended to jewelry. In this ring, multicolored stones bring Western techniques to Japanese motifs such as a pagoda.
Chrysler Museum of Art, Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., 87.58
The updated neoclassical designs of Gio Ponti revolutionized the look of the Richard-Ginori firm during his time as its chief designer, from 1923 to 1930. His whimsical forms and irreverent decoration helped propel the Italian ceramic factory to a first prize at the 1925 Paris Exposition.
With harlequin figures in floral bowers, these mural panels epitomize the interest in color and fantasy that Joseph Urban brought to his opera, theater, and film designs. The Joy of Life was used as a mural on the Ziegfeld Theater’s proscenium wall.
Lent by The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Museum purchase funded by the Design Council, 2001, 2001.257
The use of a gilded figure superimposed over a foliate ground in Brandt’s fire screen recalls similar patterning in Viennese design of a decade earlier.
Lent by The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Museum purchase funded by the Geoffrey and Barbara Koslov Family, The Manfred Heiting Collection, 2002.2868
George Hoyningen-Heuné’s Swimwear by Izod was one of a series of images of leisure along the fashionable French Riviera that appeared in the Paris edition of Vogue in 1930. Horst P. Horst, Hoyningen-Huené’s protégé, is the male model in this image.
While predominantly known for its use of colorful precious stones, Mauboussin also used the geometric forms found in other design disciplines. This necklace of about 1929 features diamond-decorated globe forms and was sold in New York, where Mauboussin had a shop for two years leading up to the stock market crash.
diamonds, aquamarine, platinum, carved moonstone, black enamel and cabochon sapphires
Neil Lane Collection
This brooch by Mauboussin features a large aquamarine as its central element, unusual in 1925. Made in the year of the Paris Exposition, it may have been purchased there by an American.
platinum, osmium, gold, enamel, diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds
Lent by Siegelson, New York
Geometry and color with cabochon gems suggesting bubbles feature prominently in this exceptional bracelet by Boucheron shown at the 1925 Paris Exposition.
This clock combines strong lapidary skills in the lapis rams and water centered by a mosaic created by Vladimir Makovsky, a Russian émigré in Paris, who worked in mixed mother-of-pearl, rock crystal, and hardstones, which he also used for panels set into cigarette and vanity cases.
Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Isenburger, 1978 (1978.439.1/5)
Peter Müller-Munk’s tea service, while showing the influence of Josef Hoffmann’s earlier design seen nearby, suggests his move toward industrial design with its sharp edges and geometric decoration. The ivory’s material and form, however, implies the exoticism of horned animals.
Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Edward C. Moore Jr. Gift, 1923 (23.213.1)
Dagobert Peche added a more rococo aesthetic to the Wiener Werkstätte when he became its codirector in 1916. This chandelier was an early addition to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s modern decorative arts collection, having been acquired by curator Joseph Breck from the Wiener Werkstätte shop in New York in 1923.
Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Edward C. Moore Jr. Gift, 1924 (24.242.2)
Peche’s first contributions to the Wiener Werkstätte were designs for textiles and wallpaper. Soon his work included jewelry, furniture, glass, graphic design, and more. This brooch, acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art apparently from the Zurich branch of the Wiener Werkstätte just after the New York branch closed, shows a mix of organic and stylized classical elements.
Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Edward C. Moore Jr. Gift, 1924 (24.133)
The floral pattern on Edgar Brandt’s wrought-iron door panel reflects Persian manuscript sources but possesses the boldness seen in contemporary textiles. After presenting the panel at the 1923 Salon d’Automne, Brandt added feet to make it freestanding. The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired it within a year of the exposition.
Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, John Stuart Gordon Gift, 2002 (2002.172)
Jean Dunand contributed elements to Jean-Michel Frank’s design for Templeton Crocker’s penthouse apartment in San Francisco. Dunand’s silver bedroom decorations included depictions of deer in the forest, a popular motif in the 1925 Paris Exposition.
Lent by The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund, 1926.563
The Cleveland Museum of Art purchased this textile in 1926 when they hosted A Selection from the International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Art from Paris, 1925. Gregory Brown won a gold medal for his firm’s contributions to the fair in Paris.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
silk, artificial gold thread; twill based jacquard weave
Lent by The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 2003.42
For the 1925 Paris Exposition, Maison Bertrand produced a silk fabric with large-scale embroidered chrysanthemums that resemble tumbling fireworks displays.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Lent by Kent State University, Gift of Martha McCaskey Selhorst Collection, KSUM 1996.58.550
The 1920s witnessed the introduction of formfitting modern bathing suits. This knitted tubular silhouette, with a scoop-necked sleeveless top sewn into a pair of trunks, was worn by men and women. Often available in bright colors, this casual design was known as the "California-style" suit.
When German-born Peter Müller-Munk immigrated to the United States in 1926, he worked in a traditional handcrafting manner for Tiffany & Co. and on his own before moving into industrial design. These bowls take inspiration from early Chinese and Japanese lotus bowl forms, as do Marie Zimmerman’s bowls nearby.
This monumental wrought-iron console and mirror won top prize at the 1931 May Show at the Cleveland Museum of Art, though it remained unsold in the Rose Iron Works studio as the Depression took hold.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
This wrought-iron table lamp, probably by Hungarian metalsmith Paul Kiss who worked in Paris during the 1920s, shows influence of earlier Viennese design. The lamp was purchased around 1930 by Rose Iron Works in Cleveland as inspiration for its new turn toward modernist design.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
The Cleveland Museum of Art, On loan from the Rose Iron Works Collections, LLC, 352.1996
Featuring a stylized figure of entertainer Josephine Baker, based loosely on widely publicized photos of her dancing nude on the Parisian stage, this screen is a tour de force of the melding of accessible modernist design elements with the technique of master craftsmen. Its foliate decoration and repetition of decorative elements recall the influence of Viennese motifs in the hands of Austro-Hungarian-trained designer Paul Fehér, who had worked in Paris.
This monumental wrought-iron console and mirror won top prize at the 1931 May Show at the Cleveland Museum of Art, though it remained unsold in the Rose Iron Works studio as the Depression took hold.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Lent by Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio, The Greater Cleveland Growth Association, 72.65.19
Former Ohio governor Myron T. Herrick, United States ambassador to France from 1912 to 1914 and again from 1921 to 1929, vigorously advocated for US participation in the Paris exposition. He was instrumental in persuading President Hoover to establish a commission of important figures in the design world to visit the fair and report on the exhibits. The commission’s report resulted in the 1926 exhibition of selections from the fair that traveled to American museums.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
As with many older French manufactories, designers at the helm of the Gobelins tapestry looms wished to update their traditional lines after the First World War. Robert Bonfils, later one of the organizers of the 1925 Paris Exposition, designed this chair in a modern take on traditional style. Its tapestry upholstery celebrated the end of hostilities, with contemporary machinery depicted in the design.
Parisian decorator Armand-Albert Rateau’s first major commission, a suite of indoor pool furniture, came in 1919 from wealthy Francophile New Yorkers George and Florence Meyer Blumenthal, owners of Cartier Egyptian revival accessories, which can be seen upstairs. In 1921 Parisian fashion designer Jeanne Lanvin commissioned Rateau to decorate her apartment; this screen is one of a pair from her salon. The other anchored the 1926 touring exhibition in Cleveland.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
With bright red beadwork forming a pagoda landscape, this elegant French cape embodies the influence of chinoiserie and color on the period’s fashions. In the 1920s fur styles favored mink as a luxurious accent or in full length as a coat. Oversized fur collars, seen here, were popularized by Hollywood stars.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Smithsonian Libraries, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Library, NA6225 .H4Z folio. Gift of George R. Kravis II
At the 1925 Paris Exposition the "Rue des boutiques" was a central thoroughfare that showcased the temporary shop fronts of forty luxury boutiques. René Herbst designed some of the facades, assembled this book of photographs capturing the storefronts, shop windows and display fixtures of the thoroughfare, and created its cover design. Gilbert Rohde acquired this copy when he attended the fair
Smithsonian Libraries, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Library, F128.5 .N499 1920, Gift of George R. Kravis II
This promotional brochure for the daily newspaper the New York American appealed to business owners seeking advertising space. The paper claimed that by advertising in its pages a client would "reach the moderns," pictured here as a fashionable couple silhouetted against a gleaming skyscraper skyline.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
square-shaped diamonds, baguette-, brilliant-, round old- and single-cut diamonds, blue egyptian faience, cabochon sapphires, black enamel, gold, platinum
Lent by Cartier Collection, Inv. CL 341 A26
In an attempt to produce the most authentic adaptations of ancient Egyptian jewelry, Cartier acquired actual fragments of archaic Egyptian faience to incorporate into its Egyptian revival works. This belt buckle owned by Linda (Mrs. Cole) Porter features a popular scarab motif. The Cole Porters spent a lot of time in Paris and the south of France, newly in fashion with both Americans and the British.
sapphires, emeralds, rubies, diamonds, onyx, enamel, and platinum
Lent by Cartier Collection, Inv. BT 110 A25
Multicolored, or Tutti Frutti, jewelry was in evidence at the 1925 Paris Exposition, where its Indian-style carved gemstones earned acclaim. Tutti Frutti became associated with Cartier whose bracelet was acquired later that year in Paris by Linda (Mrs. Cole) Porter.
One of Cartier’s most sophisticated high-end productions was the "Mystery" clock, a collaboration between clockmaker Maurice Coüet and Cartier in Paris. An ingenious mechanism creates the illusion of the hands appearing to float in this example of about 1921 owned by Anna Dodge, whose vast wealth came from her husband Horace Dodge’s family automobile business
Lent by Museum of the City of New York, Gift of Mrs. Fritz Kreisler, 1960, 60.142.1
Callot Soeurs was one of the most important Parisian designers favored by American women. The house’s designs often featured asymmetrical hems, lace and embroidered elements, and Eastern inspiration, all seen here. Harriet Kreisler, wife of the renowned violinist and composer, wore this dress while circulating in glamorous social circles.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Lent by Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Mrs. Christian R. Holmes, 1941, 41.282
Beads were applied to eveningwear from the turn of the 20th century and their popularity—along with that of sequins—reached a peak in the 1920s, when these reflective materials solidly covered handbags, garments, and shoes. Beaded coats provided yet another layer to the highly decorative ensembles of the decade.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Lent by Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Ann Andrews, 1972, 72.136.6A-B
This suit exhibits Chanel’s soft tailoring, which brought a casual elegance to the female suit. This design was owned by Ann Andrews, a stage actress; admired for her beauty, she also appeared in major fashion magazines as a model.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Lent by Museum of the City of New York.1982-21-1-a,b
The French shoemaker André Perugia collaborated with many top couturiers, most notably Paul Poiret, in the 1920s. Perugia’s craftsmanship and inventive use of materials and color earned him a client list that included Josephine Baker, Gloria Swanson, and stars of the Folies Bergères.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Lent by Museum of the City of New York.Gift of Miss Mildred Sawyer, 1932, 32.200.1
The cloche hat, complementing the bobbed haircuts of the 1920s, was often made of felt that had been molded around a wooden hat block to obtain a shape that was fitted to the head. Cloches featured an array of embellishments including satin bows and rhinestones, as seen here.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Lent by Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Mrs. Ralph K. Robertson, 1940, 40.337.1A-B.
With the use of rhinestones, which were an affordable way to upgrade a plain design and attract attention with reflection, these shoes connect to the materials and styles of costume jewelry and accessories. Evening shoes became increasingly bare in the 1920s, and the T-strap was a popular silhouette.
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
This pocket watch reveals the influence of Viennese design in its use of a lively foliate pattern of emeralds, diamonds, and onyx surrounding the dial. Women’s watches of that era usually had jeweled backs like brooches with the dial facing in.
enamel, diamonds, mother-of-pearl, onyx, gold and platinum
Lent by Vartanian & Sons
The exterior of this compact by Mauboussin, with its powder container inside, is a veritable jeweled landscape. The fountain motif, in a mixture of mother-of-pearl and enamel, reflects a theme visible throughout the 1925 Paris Exposition, where it was exhibited the year it was made.
Lent by Museum of the City of New York, Gift of the Estate of Mrs. Jesse I. Straus, 1970, 70.71.1A-B
This object is currently on display in room 206 in Carnegie Mansion.
Bending the Rules
The 1920s abounded with new lifestyles. Now able to vote and empowered as decision-makers, women cast off old social customs with their corsets. Their more revealing fashions necessitated exercise and dieting, and called for colorful jewelry in exotic new forms, accessories for cosmetics, and cigarette smoking paraphernalia for additional glamour and adventure. The fashionable "stepped out" to nightclubs first in Paris and then in the US to hear jazz music that gave the era a swinging beat and new excitement. Prohibition reigned throughout the 1920s—but creative designs for cocktail shakers and cups showed the rules being stylishly bent.
silk leaf embroidered with steel sequins, mother-of-pearl sticks with steel piqués, mother-of-pearl washer
Gift of Anonymous Donor
women's fashion accessories
collapsible
cooling
geometric
handheld
This glittering fan is a beautiful example of the fashion for spangled fans in the first two decades of the 20th century. The entire surfaces of the silk leaf and the mother-of-pearl sticks are covered with carefully aligned steel spangles, creating a graphic and modern textural effect.
white, blue, and orange pastel on black wove paper
Gift of Donald Deskey
smoking
textile design
art deco
All-over
smoke
curving lines
public health
cigarettes
Vivid diagonal lines of lit cigarettes contrast with curving blue plumes of smoke to create movement across the surface of this textile design. Deskey’s furniture incorporated new synthetic plastics and laminates, and his textile designs similarly embraced synthetic fabrics such as Permatex and Rayon.
This object is currently on display in room 302 in Carnegie Mansion.
Around 1930, Eleanor Roosevelt, then New York’s First Lady, commissioned a ceramic bowl from Cowan Pottery. Designer Viktor Schreckengost, inspired by Manhattan’s modernity and music, used a sgraffito technique to depict stylized advertisements, skyscrapers, cocktail glasses, instruments, and figures. He finished the bowl in cobalt-blue that reminded him of neon, which he called the “funny blue light in New York.”
A year after immigrating to America in 1913, Winold Reiss, who had trained in Munich, co-founded with Ilonka Karasz the Society of Modern Art and its publication Modern Art Collector. In the 1920s, several publications hired Reiss to illustrate important figures of the Harlem Renaissance. This abstract illustration of a cityscape shows elements of Cubism and references to skyscrapers.
This playful pattern of stylized violins by Tommi Parzinger captures the dynamism of jazz and swing music. Similar to Ruth Reeves’s textile designs for Radio City Music Hall featuring abstracted instruments, Parzinger’s drawing uses invigorating colors, high contrast, and an all-over pattern, characteristics that would define his textile designs for the next decades.
This object is currently on display in room 302 in Carnegie Mansion.
This box reflects the commissioning of French designers and perfume-makers to create products for individual American retailers. Armand-Albert Rateau also designed the screen, seen downstairs, for the Paris 1925 exposition that traveled to the US as well as the flacon for the Bal Masque perfume nearby.
Gift of Merrill C. Berman in honor of Caitlin Condell
advertising
typography
promotional poster
shoes
footwear
Slim ankles cross to show off elegant shoes in Cassandre’s 1932 poster for the French luxury brand UNIC. Equally sleek from every angle, they seem to dance before our eyes. This design, from a series of UNIC posters, departs from Cassandre’s established mode of stylized abstraction. Where many earlier Cassandre designs for train travel, ocean liners, and fine wines sold a lifestyle, this poster emphasizes objecthood. Here he abstracts only the wearer.
Jazz promoter and Hot Club de France founder Charles Delaunay, son of artists Sonia and Robert Delaunay, used his commercial art training to create this poster for Freddy Johnson and His Harlemites. The band, composed of Freddy Johnson (piano and vocals), Arthur Briggs (trumpet), and Juan Fernandez (bass), recorded for the American label Brunswick Records during its short career.
Venetian/Murano glass surged with the focus on Italian crafts in the Monza biennials of 1923, 1925, and 1927. The interest in engraved glass emanated from Scandinavia, and from Austria during the 1925 Paris World’s Fair and in the late 1920s. Here Stella’s organic vase form is enhanced by engraver Peltzel’s depictions of floating dancing figures.
Venetian/Murano glass surged with the focus on Italian crafts in the Monza biennials of 1923, 1925, and 1927. The interest in engraved glass emanated from Scandinavia, and from Austria during the 1925 Paris World’s Fair and in the late 1920s. Black enamel-painted figures appear to be dancing to jazz music in Stella’s rhythmic blue vase, whose color may suggest nightclub light.
An internationally recognized star, Charlie Chaplin became synonymous with his image as a little man with a bowler hat, mustache, and cane, identifiable in the new Soviet Union. Listed as actor-director for this “artistic drama” called Parisienne, Chaplin’s “Little Tramp” character was used in Russian theater, as shown on this book design.
The book cover features a graphic design style representative of Constructivism. Using images of city skyscrapers and a movie director’s megaphone, the book design expresses modernism, American movies, and the times, when movies captured the imagination as much as did fashion and the arts.
Collection of the Newark Museum, Purchase 2007, Friends of the Decorative Arts and The Mr. and Mrs. William V. Griffin Fund, 2008.10
Lavish displays of white diamonds featuring the latest cuts and geometric settings became a staple of evening dress for many well-heeled American women.
Lent by Brooklyn Museum, Modernism Benefit Fund, 1990.10a-b
During Prohibition, drinking accessories often hid their function, taking on playful new designs including skyscrapers, animals, and even a Zeppelin. Individual silversmiths and metalwares firms expanded their designs to include these novelties.
Lent by The Art Institute of Chicago, Restricted gift of Quinn E. Delaney; Wesley M. Dixon, Jr. Fund, 1990.179
During Prohibition drinking accessories often hid their function, taking on playful new designs including skyscrapers, animals, and even a Zeppelin. Individual silversmiths and manufacturers expanded to include these novelties.
diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and platinum
Private Collection
Events such as the discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, followed by the excavation of his sarcophagus and gold coffin, provided sources of motifs, sparking a renewed popularity of turquoise and lapis blues. Lacloche, a Paris firm with no American branch, specialized in Egyptian revival jewelry.
Lent by The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of C. M. de Hauke, 1929.114
Marinot’s mask-like glass vases directly reference African forms, as does Man Ray’s photograph of Kiki de Montparnasse, which contrasts the soft, porcelainlike quality of the dancer’s skin with the angular ebony of an African mask. Man Ray’s study may have been the result of a collaboration with his friend, American set designer George Sakier, who lived in Paris, owned the mask, and might have even staged the shot. Sakier, after his return to the US designed glass for Fostoria, as seen later in the exhibition.
Lent by The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Henry H. Hawley, 1995.92
Gabriel Argy-Rousseau’s pâte-de-verre vases referenced animals in the African Sahara, a subject also used by Gallé and Daum in cased glass. Works by Argy-Rousseau were featured in the 1926 traveling American exhibition of selections from the Paris 1925 exposition.
rock crystal, carved jadeite, carved sapphires, emeralds, diamonds, platinum
Private Collection
Sold from Cartier New York, this lavish bracelet with its carved and colorful stones was made soon after the yearlong honeymoon of Mona and Harrison Williams. Harrison, twenty-four years Mona's senior, created American Gas and Electric Co. By 1929 his fortune was estimated at $680 million.
The stepped shapes of Mayan decoration and skyscraper design are given a Persian twist with pierced scrolls. With a post connecting them, they could be used either for a cape or dress or as a lapel pin.
Chunky link shapes between geometric arrangements of large diamonds were popular with Americans. This bracelet dates to the year Van Cleef & Arpels opened its first shop in New York.
In these elliptical earrings of 1924, Van Cleef & Arpels used a clever trompe l’oeil setting to give the appearance of overlapping loops of diamonds and sapphires that would have been seen with bobbed hair.
Oscar Heyman’s use of geometric patterns of diamonds in platinum reflects the American taste for this “white jewelry”. The firm also produced pieces with colored stones in French taste.
diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and platinum
FD Gallery Collection
Events such as the discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, followed by the excavation of his sarcophagus and gold coffin, provided sources of motifs, sparking a renewed popularity of turquoise and lapis blues. Lacloche, a Paris firm with no American branch, specialized in Egyptian revival jewelry.
French artist and set designer Paul Colin designed posters for musical, film, and theater venues throughout Paris in the 1920s, including the Folies Bergères, the Moulin Rouge, and most famously Josephine Baker’s Revue Nègre. This composition captures a couple dancing against an abstracted backdrop of the Eiffel Tower and a steamship coming into a harbor, suggesting a mix of lighthearted tourism and dance.
Parisian artist Paul Colin perfectly captured the rhythm of Josephine Baker and her fellow dancers in posters for La Revue Nègre at the Theatre Champs-Élysèes as well as for Columbia Records, as seen in this drawing. His work helped to create a sensation around the singer, whose career blossomed after her arrival in Paris in 1925.
Smithsonian Libraries, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Library, M1622.S688 S54 1921, Gift of Stephen Van Dyk
This song was a Tin Pan Alley hit, and was adopted by early jazz bands in New Orleans, making it a jazz standard. It was composed in response to the popularity of the 1921 Rudolph Valentino film The Sheik. The cover illustrates the song’s themes of romance and seduction.
Smithsonian Libraries, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Library, M1366.E44 B53 1927, Gift of Stephen Van Dyk
This is the first published edition of the famous jazz composition Black and Tan Fantasy. A musical arrangement for the foxtrot, a popular dance starting in the late teens, it was ideal for nightclubs in the jazz age.
Lent by Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Anonymous Gift, 1986.778-.782
Gebelein earned acclaim for the high quality of his handcrafted wares such as this Federal-style silver tea service of 1929 based on Paul Revere. An expert in the history of colonial silver, Gebelein collected antique silversmithing tools, some purchased directly from Revere's descendants.
Collection of Mara Motley, MD, and Valerie Gerrard Browne
Archibald Motley Jr.’s Blues captures the sights and sounds of a black-and-tan nightclub in the late ’20s, where patrons could be free from the strictures of white society. He painted this work while on a Guggenheim Fellowship in Paris but returned in 1930 to become a significant figure in the Harlem Renaissance and in the lively Chicago arts scene.
Boucheron featured whimsical designs, such as this large bow tie–shaped brooch in contrasting colors, in its critically acclaimed display at the 1925 Paris Exposition.
Formed of links, each with baguette-cut diamonds, this bracelet alternates clusters of rubies between contrasting diamonds, emphasizing color in a way typical of French work of the mid- to late 1920s.
This long necklace or sautoir represents a new jewelry form aimed at those wearing less structured undergarments and flat-front dresses that could accommodate jewels extending beyond the bodice. A sautoir could also be provocatively twirled and handled for a seductive look.
Oscar Heyman of New York produced its own designs and also made jewelry for other retailers, finding a niche for French-style settings including some with colored stones.
yellow and white diamonds, platinum, cabochon emeralds
Neil Lane Collection
The appeal of color and geometric forms popular in the 1920s is expressed in this brooch with its overlapping spheres of white and yellow diamonds within a lozenge, half of cabochon emeralds and half of marquise-cut diamonds.
This lavish and colorful carved ruby and diamond necklace of 1929 dates to the year Van Cleef & Arpels opened its first shop in New York and may well have been offered there.
diamonds, platinum, rock crystal (quartz), chalcedony (onyx)
Lent by Tiffany and Company, Archives, A1999.28
Although the jabot was usually a ruffle or cravat, the jabot pin was normally worn on a cloche hat or lapel. The fan shape creates exoticism by suggesting a turban ornament. Both the form and materials show Tiffany working in a very French taste.
Tiffany & Co. continued to appeal to a traditional market while introducing new fashions such as the bandeau, an update on the tiara and best worn with bobbed hair.
Lent by Brooklyn Museum, Purchased with funds given by an anonymous donor, 73.142
Using luxurious materials for this stool model—first created for fellow designer Jacques Doucet—Pierre Legrain adapted a traditional and basic African form to the modern European desire for comfort and sophistication.
Although the flacon for the Bal Masque perfume was designed by Armand-Albert Rateau in 1923, the Lanvin logo was drawn in about 1929 by Paul Iribe after a 1907 photograph showing Jeanne Lanvin and her daughter Marguerite dressed for a masked costume ball, or Ball Masque, as the perfume’s name indicates. With the logo, Iribe created a striking sculptural form for a fashion house that, like most top names, also produced a famous perfume.
The Chanel No. 5 presentation was conceived to be as simple and straightforward as possible. In pairing an unadorned clear glass vessel with a plain polished steel case they produced one of the most innovative and avant-garde designs of the day, much like the shapes and combinations for Chanel’s fashion.
presentation case: burlwood; four larger flacons: molded glass; seven smaller flacons: molded glass, metal
Christie Mayer Lefkowith Collection
This bar-form set held a selection of liquor bottle–like perfume bottles entitled “Bittersweet,” “Sweet,” “Dry” and “Angostura no. 1” through “Angostura no. 7” that equated the sensuality of perfume with drinking in a not-so-subtle reference to the illicit cocktail culture during American prohibition. The empty bottle entitled “My Own” was provided to encourage the owner to mix and match her own scent. In 1928 Patou installed a women-only cocktail bar in his Paris boutique for clients, many American, to enjoy while making final decisions on garments and waiting for fittings and alterations.
blue silk chiffon with applied blue ombré silk fringe
Lent by Kent State University Museum, The Helen O. Borowitz Collection, KSUM 1997.71.7ab
Dancing to jazz music encouraged movement in fashion, accessory, and jewelry design. Materials and silhouettes were kinetic; tassels appeared in earrings and necklaces while dresses and shawls featured fringe. In this dress Chanel used shades of blue including indigo, which in 1927 became known as "Chanel blue" in Women’s Wear Daily.
By the 1920s most jewelers in the United States and Europe carried smoking accessories. The cigarette holder protected one’s fingers and eyes while also playing a significant social and fashionable role. Although men used cigarette holders, the Jewelers’ Circular credited the rise of female smokers to the cigarette holder industry, which used a great range of materials and eye-catching styles.
By the 1920s most jewelers in the United States and Europe carried smoking accessories. The cigarette holder protected one’s fingers and eyes while also playing a significant social and fashionable role. Although men used cigarette holders, the Jewelers’ Circular credited the rise of female smokers to the cigarette holder industry, which used a great range of materials and eye-catching styles.
By the 1920s most jewelers in the United States and Europe carried smoking accessories. The cigarette holder protected one’s fingers and eyes while also playing a significant social and fashionable role. Although men used cigarette holders, the Jewelers’ Circular credited the rise of female smokers to the cigarette holder industry, which used a great range of materials and eye-catching styles.
By the 1920s most jewelers in the United States and Europe carried smoking accessories. The cigarette holder protected one’s fingers and eyes while also playing a significant social and fashionable role. Although men used cigarette holders, the Jewelers’ Circular credited the rise of female smokers to the cigarette holder industry, which used a great range of materials and eye-catching styles.
By the 1920s most jewelers in the United States and Europe carried smoking accessories. The cigarette holder protected one’s fingers and eyes while also playing a significant social and fashionable role. Although men used cigarette holders, the Jewelers’ Circular credited the rise of female smokers to the cigarette holder industry, which used a great range of materials and eye-catching styles.
By the 1920s most jewelers in the United States and Europe carried smoking accessories. The cigarette holder protected one’s fingers and eyes while also playing a significant social and fashionable role. Although men used cigarette holders, the Jewelers’ Circular credited the rise of female smokers to the cigarette holder industry, which used a great range of materials and eye-catching styles.
Lent by Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Max D. Levy, 1967, 67.109
George Gershwin helped bring jazz into the mainstream with his series of symphonic compositions such as Rhapsody in Blue (1924) featuring syncopation and jazz styling, influenced by his connections with the Harlem Renaissance. Artist William Auerbach-Levy, best known as a caricaturist, depicted many Jazz Age artists, actors, society figures, and musicians, and such portraits appeared in popular periodicals.
Lent by Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Collection, Museum Collection, S84.123A
This dress exhibits the increasingly international reach of the fashion industry in the 1920s. Made with silk designed by Liberty of London, it was retailed by forward-thinking department stores B. Altman & Co. in New York and Metz & Co. in Amsterdam. Its complicated pieced construction creates a cubist collage.
When Cartier produced this Egyptian-style sarcophagus-form vanity case they integrated the bone lid as an ancient artifact, adding appeal for American Florence Blumenthal, who, with her husband George, head of Lazard Frères, New York, often traveled to Paris.
Silent film star Mary Pickford, born Gladys Louise Smith, was a cofounder, with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith, of United Artists. She married Fairbanks in 1920.
Vienna-born American fashion entrepreneur self-named Hattie Carnegie not only provided her customers with the latest fashions but marketed her own line of perfume, made in France to her specifications.
In the early 1920s, new ideas challenged the supremacy of traditional American "good taste" in design. Although wary of the socialistic fervor associated with radical design movements such as Russian Constructivism, the fashionable consumer was eased into modernity through an admiration for France. Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, Edgar Brandt, Louis Süe, and André Mare were among those who produced works using lavish craftsmanship, exotic materials, and extreme technical skill; invoking 18th-century French styles, but with pared down form and decoration. This trend influenced American manufacturers, especially in furniture. Silver and jewelry design created an important connection between traditional metalwork techniques and new influences.
Tassinari & Chatel was one of the great French silk manufacturers of the 1920s. This textile was one of four produced by the company based on Clarinval’s gouache series, The Four Elements: Water, Fire, Earth, and Air, and exhibited at the 1925 Paris exposition.
Artist Raoul Dufy’s woodcut prints were well suited to textile patterning. One of thousands of designs he produced for Bianchini-Férier, Grand Feuillage exhibits lush vegetation reflecting a fascination with the exotic.
silk warp and weft, gold thread is s-wrapped foil, over 2-ply z-twisted cotton
Gift of Jean Mailey
Textile designer and scholar Herman Elsberg specialized in the adaptation of historic patterns for interior design. He also owned a textile mill in Lyon, France, where this furnishing fabric was hand-woven on a Jacquard loom. His inspiration for this pattern came from drawings found in the margins of Persian manuscripts.
Gift of Stanley Siegel, from the Stanley Siegel Collection
This cachepot's shape bears resemblance to the ancient Greek form of the kylix, a two-handled drinking cup. Winding volutes and vine-like handles hint at the cachepot's function of holding a plant. Following the 1925 Paris exposition, Brandt opened a gallery in Paris, and a showroom in New York called Ferrobrandt.
Following a practice started by the very first fashion magazines, the Gazette du Bon Ton often included inserts depicting modern interiors to add variety to the magazine’s many luxurious fashion plates. One hand-colored pochoir print shows a striking design for a boudoir featuring a lacquer table, bold tiles, rug, and a pouf. The other includes a massage bed, chair, and marble dressing table in stylized vine decor.
This object is currently on display in room 302 in Carnegie Mansion.
Following a practice started by the very first fashion magazines, the Gazette du Bon Ton often included inserts depicting modern interiors to add variety to the magazine’s many luxurious fashion plates. One hand-colored pochoir print shows a striking design for a boudoir featuring a lacquer table, bold tiles, rug, and a pouf. The other includes a massage bed, chair, and marble dressing table in stylized vine decor.
This object is currently on display in room 302 in Carnegie Mansion.
The lone female figure standing in contrapposto alludes to antique statuary, while the draped garlands and the delicate balancing of the figure on the floral swag draw from eighteenth-century neoclassical wallpapers. The fresh colors and minimal nature of the design speaks to the 1920s.
In 1924, American silk manufacturer Cheney Brothers commissioned metalwork by Edgar Brandt for their New York showroom, that inspired some of their textile designs. The jets of water featured on this textile are found in several of Brandt’s masterworks, including a showroom door and L’Oasis, a grand screen shown at the 1925 Paris exposition.
Charles Burchfield, a renowned American watercolorist, is less well known as a wallpaper designer for M.H. Birge and Sons in Buffalo, New York, from 1921 until 1929. While a number of his wallpapers were based on his paintings, Modernistic is the result of Birge's asking him to design a modern wallpaper.
The Compagnie des Arts Français’s products ranged from furnishings to tableware, including the mirror nearby and the faience vegetable dish modelled after this drawing that was exhibited at the 1925 Paris exposition. Süe and Mare’s designs suggest a parallel dialogue between historic style and a modern sensibility.
This object is currently on display in room 302 in Carnegie Mansion.
A purple ground adds vibrancy to this more traditional floral pattern. While synthetic pigments in intense colors first appeared on wallpaper around 1900, the variety and saturation of colors were never more apparent than those on papers beginning in the 1920s, where less printed ornament revealed more of the boldly colored grounds.
The Dinette Tea Set was promoted as a space-saver for city apartments. Although the Dinette line was first developed by the International Silver Co.'s in-house designger, Jean George Theobald, whose background was in jewelry design, the company engaged self-described "decorative arts consultant" Virginia Hamill to refine the forms.
carved indian rosewood, indian rosewood-veneered wood, brass, and linen velvet
Private Midwest collection
Decorator and designer Marcel Coard designed the canapé gondole prominently placed in Jacques Doucet's studio in Neuilly. This canapé is the only other known version of this model. A carved basketwork motif outlining the sofa's graceful curve adds a note of exoticism, also seen in the Pierre Legrain stool in Doucet's studio.
kingwood (amaranth) veneer on mahogany, ivory inlay
Lent by Brooklyn Museum, Purchased with funds given by Joseph F. McCrindle, Mrs. Richard M. Palmer, Charles C. Paterson, Raymond Worgelt, and an anonymous donor, 71.150.1
The strong black and white contrast of the ivory and ebony floral inlay in the central medallion may represent the influence of the Wiener Werkstätte on Ruhlmann, who designed this corner cabinet in Paris ca. 1923 as part of an interior for "les Terrasses," the newly built house of A. Weitz, in Lyon, France.
Contrasted color with jet black was a popular motif in fashion as well as decorative design in the 1920s, as evident in this line of glass designed by Frederick Carder and produced by the Steuben Glass factory in Corning, New York, about 1929.
Manufactured by R. Wallace & Sons Manufacturing Company
silver, plastic
Lent by Dallas Museum of Art, The Jewel Stern American Silver Collection, gift of Jewel Stern in honor of Charles L. Venable, 2002.29.36.1-.6
Born near Birmingham, England, Percy Ball immigrated with his family to Providence, Rhode Island. From 1893 Ball worked at Gorham while studying painting. His career included work for major American silver manufacturers such as Wallace, for whom this Rhythm pattern was a modern departure in its attenuated lines and plastic accents.
porcelain with colored pâte-sur-pâte, glazes, and gilding
Lent by The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 1987.196
While this jar's form is based on that of a traditional Chinese ginger jar, its decoration resembles the oversized flower and leaf textiels patterns of Raoul Dufy. This form was introduced at the Sèvres factory in 1925, and the Clochettes Mauves pattern is listed in the Sèvres archives as the twelfth project approved in 1929.
silver, lapis lazuli, rock crystal, enamel, marble
Lent by Chrysler Museum of Art, Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., 78.245
A member of the national soccer and rugby teams as well as the French ice hockey team at the 1920 Olympics, Puiforcat reinvigorated the sporting trophy design for a number of commissions. This example, later used as a centerpiece, was made for a figure skating competition at the Palais de Glaces in Paris in 1923.
Hattie Carnegie became one of the most successful boutique purveyors of fashion and accessories in New York during the 1920s. French enamelist Jean Dunand produced portraits of many prominant figures in 1920s society across arts and cultures, also including Madeleine Vionnet, Josephine Baker, and Florence Blumenthal.
This object is currently on display in room 302 in Carnegie Mansion.
Lent by The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Gift of Cecily E. Horton, 2014.814
Marie Zimmermann was among the most celebrated female artisans working in jewelry and metalwares in the 1920s. Her work often referenced ancient cultures. This bowl was given to William Weaver Heaton, longtime member of the Board of Governors of the New York Stock Exchange, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday in 1925.
This chair, part of a suite for New York philanthropist Adolph Lewisohn at 881 Fifth Avenue, is modernist painter Claggett Wilson’s only known residential commission. Its pierced back slat suggests Wiener Werkstätte motifs. The residence also contained Renaissance tapestries, Chinese porcelains, Impressionist art, and antique furniture.
Lent by Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The John Axelrod Collection, 2014.1290.1-2
In 1928 Elsa Tennhardt designed a series of tablewares in angular shapes for the manufacturer E. and J. Bass. Her work was included in the International Exposition of Art in Industry at Macy's in 1928. The designer's keen grasp of line and shape drew from her parallel career as a painter.
18k gold, cabochon sapphire, demantoid garnet, faceted sapphires and enamel
Neil Lane Collection
Meta Overbeck supervised the art jewelry department of Tiffany & Co. beginning in 1914. Strong color combinations or orange, blue, and green, typical of design in the 1920s, feature in this necklace and earrings set. A book of Meta Overbeck's drawings survives in the collection of The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art.
Lent by David Owsley Museum of Art, Frank C. Ball Collection, Gift of the Ball Brothers Foundation, 1995.035.164
Actaeon, one of a pair with Diana (conceived a few years earlier) reflects Paul Manship's admiration for classical antiquity as a source for modern interpretation. The fluidity and movement in Manship's work belie the density of the bronze. This work captures a climactic moment of transformation, as Actaeon has just been hit by Diana's arrow, which is turning him into a stag.
Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Edward C. Moore Jr. Gift, 1923 (23.174)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's first Decorative Arts Curator Joseph Breck purchased this desk from Ruhlmann in 1923, making it the first work by the designer to enter a public collection. Breck wrote, "Perfection of craftsmanship is united in Ruhlmann's work with a luxurious employment of precious materials."
Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Theodore R. Gamble, Jr. Gift, in honor of his mother, Mrs. Theodore Robert Gamble, 1980 (1980.333)
In 1926 recent acquisitions of Ruhlmann furniture were displayed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Company of Master Craftsmen used these new pieces as inspiration to adapt high-style French designs to American tastes, in sizes appropriate for apartment living.
cherry or pearwood, mirror glass, paint, gold leaf
Lent by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Edward C. Moore Jr. Gift, 1923 (23.175.14)
Edward C. Moore Jr., son of Tiffany & Co.'s artistic direector, established a fund at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1922 for the purhcase of modern decorative arts. This mirror was among the furniture purchased directly from the Compagnie des Arts Français in 1923. Another example was selected from the 1925 Paris exposition to travel in the US.
Lent by Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Katherine Cortesi Armstrong, 1998, 98.76.4
The New York owner was described as a "conventional woman with strong opinions."
Toward A Machine Age
Design that took its inspiration from machinery became an important part of American taste in the 1920s, moving from the factory into domestic interiors. While aesthetic and technical innovations of Europeans Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier involved limited production of chrome-plated bent metal furniture, Americans Donald Deskey and Gilbert Rohde partnered with industry to expand furniture production and affordability. Similarly, George Sakier’s Fostoria Glass designs combined mass production with sophisticated forms. This exhibition concludes in the early 1930s, showing how the technological and stylistic innovations of the 1920s—that had originated as fashionable alternatives to the past—became widespread in America after the 1929 stock market crash.
In May 1927 Charles Lindbergh made his historic nonstop flight from New York to Paris. Within the year United Wallpaper introduced this wallpaper honoring the American hero.
This object is currently on display in room 302 in Carnegie Mansion.
brush and gouache, silver paint, graphite on illustration board
Gift of Donald Deskey
interior
decoration
profile
woman
abstraction
designers
luxury
accessories
mobility
hair
cubism
faces
Around 1930, writer and theater critic Gilbert Seldes commissioned Donald Deskey to design his apartment. Seldes was writing an adaptation of Lysistrata by Aristophanes, so Deskey based his abstract design for this dining room screen on the play’s main character, reducing her profile to a series of simple curves and wavy lines.
These models by the Teagues are noteworthy for their long, tapering hoods, which were designed to improve airflow, diminish drag, and increase speed. Despite ciritical acclaim, few went into production before the Great Depression that led to the company's demise.
brush and white gouache, black wash, graphite on tan paper
Museum purchase from Drawings and Prints Council Fund
mythology
classical
art deco
stars
presentation drawing
mural
planets
celestial
cosmology
Meière’s mural design for AT&T’s installation at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair features the patron god of communication with technological innovations.
This object is currently on display in room 302 in Carnegie Mansion.
This desk’s streamlined styling encapsulates Frankl’s assertion that "the horizontal line is expressive of the style today." Rounded edges, linear accents, and the use of chrome and geometric forms establish visual parallels with both contemporary transportation and skyscraper design.
Museum purchase through gift of Esme Usdan and from General Acquisitions Endowment Fund
interior
home
seating
minimalism
bands
tubular
A functionalist, Herbst created this chair using tubular steel and sandows, bungee-like elastic cords, an early instance of adaptive reuse of industrial materials in design.
This lamp was part of the original furnishings for a bar room with black lacquered walls at Duke Farms, New Jersey, home of heiress and philanthropist Doris Duke. Walter von Nessen used three concentric conical forms as uplights—an ingenious way to diffuse, control, and direct light—creating a dramatic effect against the black background.
These models by the Teagues are noteworthy for their long, tapering hoods, which were designed to improve airflow, diminish drag, and increase speed. Despite ciritical acclaim, few went into production before the Great Depression that led to the company's demise.
This mocha or hot milk pot may be a prototype for a porcelain set that Sutnar developed in the late 1920s and early '30s. According to his son Radislav Sutnar, this set was Sutnar's favorite, and this one was probably the first created, as it was his personal set.
Kiesler, who had worked in theatrical design, window display, and the graphic arts, left Vienna to join the De Stijl movement in Holland before coming to New York in 1922. His first American domestic commission was to furnish the apartment of textile designer Marguerita Mergentime, a fellow émigré from Vienna. With its moving parts and smooth lines, this bed made ingenious use of space.
Fostoria turned to artist and designer George Sakier to update its product lines with a modern aesthetic. The designs terminate in flat, perpendicular rims that evoke an industrial aesthetic.
Fostoria turned to artist and designer George Sakier to update its product lines with a modern aesthetic. The designs terminate in flat, perpendicular rims that evoke an industrial aesthetic.
Highly expressive of streamlining in American furniture, this piece's raked profile and cantilevered structure endow it with a visual energy parallel to that of the airplane. Conceived for mass production, the earliest models of the Airline Chair were constructed from collapsible plywood parts.
By the late 1920s the German steel blade manufacturer J. A. Henckels had opened a store in New York and expanded its product line to include novelties such as smoking accessories and traveling bars in an attempt to increase revenue in the United States.
mold-blown, sand-blasted, acid-etched, and wheel-cut glass
Promised gift of George R. Kravis II
As design consultant, Teague visited the Corning plant monthly to observe glass production. Teague often specified colorless glass in his designs for Steuben, reflected a trend exhibited by Scandinavian glass that took advantage of contrasting engraved decoration on a colorless body.
Utilizing the same molds used for railroad signals and automotive lamps already in production by Corning, Teague's Lens Bowl was an adaptation of the same form for the domestic market.
The first radio broadcasts, starting in 1920, enabled technology to enter the living room with music, news, and performance. Wells Coates won E. K. Cole's competition to design a radio in modern taste with this circular model in Bakelite, exploiting its potential for color and form.
When Louis C. Kalff was hired by Philips in 1925, the company was one of the largest producers of lightbulbs in the world. For this poster, Kalff illustrated a car whose piercing headlights illuminate the scene, using narrative to put a clever spin on the traditional sachplakat (object poster). He dispensed with a slogan and instead punctuated the scene with a detailed rendering of the product, a Philips lightbulb.
This object is currently on display in room 302 in Carnegie Mansion.
First exhibited at the Weissnehof exhibition at Stuttgart, Germany, Mies's MR534, inspired by a design by architect Mart Stam, used a cold-bent tubular steel frame accented by a caned seat and arms, marrying industrial and vernacular influences.
Smithsonian Libraries, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Library
In addition to producing lighting fixtures in a range of historical styles, the major American lighting manufacturer Edward F. Caldwell & Company expanded their offerings in modern styles. This set of brackets or sconces follows the popular conical silhouette of the period, echoed in the lamp by Walter von Nessen nearby.
This object is currently on display in room 302 in Carnegie Mansion.
La Maison Desny was founded by designers M. Desnet and René Nauny. Their work was characterized by severe and often symmetrical geometric forms, as in this architectural table lamp with a pitched glass shade. In addition to executing mass-produced products, the Parisian firm received custom commissions.
Designed by Le Corbusier (Charles Edouard Jeanneret-Gris)
wood, tubular steel, other metals, textile
Lent by Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Miani Johnson in memory of her mother, Marian Willard Johnson, 2010.52.3
Interest in bending metal evolved primarily in Germany with the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and the Bauhaus, including Marcel Breuer. While Germany and Austria had a history of bent wood, German designers saw the impact of metal in modern interiors. Architect Le Corbusier teamed with his brother Pierre Jeanneret and designer Charlotte Perriand, addressing an interest in the human form when they brought this concept to France. This LC4 chair was purchased in Paris by Marian Willard Johnson, later owner of the Willard Gallery.
Lent by Dallas Museum of Art, Gift of the Meadows Foundation, Incorporated, 1981.105
The use of strong color in design of the 1920s came out of artistic movements such as De Stijl and Orphism, a movement devoted to light and color championed by Robert Delaunay. The artist repeatedly took the Eiffel Tower as his subject. In this painting the predominant perspective seems to be from an airplane.
Lent by Dallas Museum of Art, The Patsy Lacy Griffith Collection, gift of Patsy Lacy Griffith by exchange, General Acquisitions Fund, and gift of Susan and Eric Saarinen, 2012.54.A-C
Eliel Saarinen's tea urn for the Wilcox Silver Plate Company required a special machine to create its perfectly spherical form.
Lent by The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Mary Spedding Milliken Memorial Fund, 2003.4.2
This chair and sideboard combine the linear impact of modern design with the soothing sage green color popular in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Here Weber references the shape and appearance of kitchen cabinetry. The Kem Weber Group was one of the designer's first projects for serial manufacture.
Lent by The Cleveland Museum of Art, Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection, 1760.1931
Born into a family of Ohio potters, Viktor Schreckengost studied sculpture in Vienna with Michael Powolny, whose work in glass can be seen elsewhere in the exhibition. Returning to Ohio, Schreckengost worked for Cowan Pottery, producing designs such as this piece and the Jazz Bowls seen nearby.
Lent by The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Mary Spedding Milliken Memorial Fund 2003.4
This chair and sideboard combine the linear impact of modern design with the soothing sage green color popular in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Here Weber references the shape and appearance of kitchen cabinetry. The Kem Weber Group was one of the designer's first projects for serial manufacture.
Fostoria turned to artist and designer George Sakier to update its product lines with a modern aesthetic. Conceived for mass production, Sakier's vases evoke a stylized classicism through vertical fluting. The designs terminate in flat, perpendicular rims that evoke and industrial aesthetic.
Lent by Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Decorative Arts Council Fund, M.2002.21
Richard Neutra's chair extends Mies's design in chrome with ash plywood and leather, making a tactile but modern statement for his California home, known as the VDL Research House. He also patented the design, hoping to put it into production.
Lent by Yale University Art Gallery, John C. Waddell Collection, Gift of John C. Waddell, B.A. 1959, 2012.124.13.1-.2
This pair of candelabra marries a modern aesthetic with traditional craftsmanship. The abstracted floral motif exhibits Weber's familiarity with European design, as in textiles elsewhere in the exhibition. The candelabra may have been purchased at Barker Brothers, where Weber was Design Director and Blanchard sold his metalwork.
Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Edward C. Moore Jr. Gift, 1935 (35.94.1ab)
The severity of this strong spherical form by Sidney Waugh, sculptor and chief assocate designer at Steuben, is relieved by an engraced frieze of dancing gazelles, a motif and style already popular in the mid-1920s. This bowl's colorless glass and thick walls show Swedish influence, while the engraver's technique comes from his Viennese training.
Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of M.H. Lobel and C.H. Lobel, 1983 (1983.493.1/4ab)
With its enlarged spherical forms, Paul Lobel's electroplated nickel silver tea service speaks both to the scale of the 1930s and the forms of earlier designs by Puiforcat.
The success of Charles Lindbergh's solo transatlantic flight was an event that shook the world. The French perfumer Les Parfums de Rosine developed a special fragrance to honor the feat with a bottle and box featuring Lindbergh's plane, the Spirit of St. Louis.
The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund and Gift of Prof. and Mrs. David C. Driskell, 2005.181
Painted by Douglas after his earlier illustration for songwriter and later civil rights advocate James Weldon Johnson’s book of poetry God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927), this work depicts the Angel of Death riding at God’s command to bring the soul of a dying woman back to heaven.
This object is currently on display in room 302 in Carnegie Mansion.
The Persistence of Traditional "Good Taste"
By the early 1900s, many Americans equated "good taste" and social success with historical European styles, a trend that continued through the 1920s. Imported architectural elements from French châteaux and English manors were enhanced by correspondingly styled furnishings. Early American design found new respect with the opening of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1924) and the restoration of colonial Williamsburg (1926), and the buying of antiques and antique reproductions. The new field of professional interior design—many pioneers were women such as Dorothy Draper and Nancy McClelland—helped introduce new sympathetic contexts for old objects, including wallpapers and fabrics.
Annie Schermerhorn Kane and her husband, a great-grandson of John Jacob Astor, collected antiques both in Europe and at home, many of which came to Cooper-Hewitt for study as examples of good design.
Collection of the Newark Museum, Gift of the Contemporary Club of Newark, 1926, 1926.277.1
Following training with Herter Brothers, Kleiser founded Edgewater Tapestry Looms in 1913. The firm was praised as an "American Gobelins." This monumental tapestry was given to the museum on the occasion of its opening a new building in 1926. It commemorates Newark's advancement from native village to bustling town.
Russian-born and -trained craftsman Samuel Yellin immigrated to Philadelphia and opened his own shop in 1909. The fire screen, made for his house in Philadelphia, and the andirons, reflect his taste for Medieval and Renaissance wrought-iron designs both for the home and commercial clients. The andirons graced the Director's Conference Room of the Westinghouse Air Brake Building in Philadelphia.
Lent by Brooklyn Museum, Dick S. Ramsay Fund, 67.271.1
Painter and decorative artisan Max Kuehne took inspiration from Persian miniatures for his fanciful decoration of this eighteenth-century-style blanket chest. The orginal owner, Laura Barnes, wife of Philadelphia collector Dr. Albert Barnes, was from Brooklyn
Despite her father-in-law's role as private secretary to President Lincoln, Alice Appleton Hay owned this French bracelet with its strong geometric pattern.
What appears to be an elegant lapel brooch is in fact a pendant watch. The watch is hidden on the underside to enable a woman to check the time surreptitiously, in an era when women were starting to join men in wearing watches.
Brothers Oscar, Nathan, and Henry founded Oscar Heyman & Bros. in New York in 1912. The firm earned a reputation for skillful work in platinum often in French taste, sometimes for other firms.
Lent by Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, New York. Museum purchase, acquired with funds provided by Horace Moses.
In the mid-1920s, William Sloane Coffin, trustee and later president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, founded The Company of Master Craftsmen and Oneidacraft, producing historical "registered reproductions" to be sold through the New York department store W. & J. Sloane. This secretary is one of fifty-two pieces commissioned from Sloane by the New York State Historical Association (now Fenimore Art Museum) in 1926 for a replica of John Hancock's former residence, demolished in 1863.
Abstraction and Reinvention
The abstract and often fragmented forms that appeared in 1920s design were influenced by fine art movements such as Cubism, but they also emanated from the profound impact of abstraction in architecture particularly the stepped, set-back profile of soaring skyscrapers and in the open-plan arrangements of interior spaces. Designers’ use of bold geometric shapes that became pervasive by the 1930s—from the zigzags of Reuben Haley’s Ruba Rombic glass and Ruth Reeves’s Electric pattern textile to the spheres of a Lobmeyr glass candy dish and a Puiforcat silver tea set—reflects an overall trend of paring down to pure form that had its root in the 1920s.
In 1925, to challenge French dominance in textile design, Stehli Silk commissioned American artists and illustrators to create distinctly American, modern designs for its Americana Prints Collection. Clayton Knight’s Manhattan uses geometric forms to create a stylized rendition of New York City’s skyscrapers.
Having purchased a house on the North Shore of Long Island in 1924, Mr. and Mrs. Solomon Guggenheim sought decorating help from their young British friend Rowland Burdon-Miller. At his recommendation, they commissioned doors and screens from Jean Dunand, the great French master of lacquer, and Séraphin Soudbinine, a Russian émigré and French sculptor—possibly the patrons’ first modern art commission.
Having purchased a house on the North Shore of Long Island in 1924, Mr. and Mrs. Solomon Guggenheim sought decorating help from their young British friend Rowland Burdon-Miller. At his recommendation, they commissioned doors and screens from Jean Dunand, the great French master of lacquer, and Séraphin Soudbinine, a Russian émigré and French sculptor—possibly the patrons’ first modern art commission.
Having purchased a house on the North Shore of Long Island in 1924, Mr. and Mrs. Solomon Guggenheim sought decorating help from their young British friend Rowland Burdon-Miller. At his recommendation, they commissioned doors and screens from Jean Dunand, the great French master of lacquer, and Séraphin Soudbinine, a Russian émigré and French sculptor—possibly the patrons’ first modern art commission.
Having purchased a house on the North Shore of Long Island in 1924, Mr. and Mrs. Solomon Guggenheim sought decorating help from their young British friend Rowland Burdon-Miller. At his recommendation, they commissioned doors and screens from Jean Dunand, the great French master of lacquer, and Séraphin Soudbinine, a Russian émigré and French sculptor—possibly the patrons’ first modern art commission.
graphite with fixative on tracing paper mounted on cardboard
Gift of Ely Jacques Kahn.
architects
architecture
study
design
art
landscape
communication
modernism
sketch
industrial design
minimalism
sales
New York
urban planning
cities
skyscrapers
cityscape
urban
buildings
elevations
This proposal for a skyscraper by Beaux-Arts-trained architect Ely Jacques Kahn demonstrates the power of the architectural drawing as an advertising tool in the midst of New York City’s building boom. Kahn emphasized the 65-story height through vertical lines and by depicting the building as looming over the city.
Wright’s 1913–23 designs for The Imperial Hotel in Tokyo included the décor and furnishings. Used in the hotel’s Peacock banquet room, this chair’s hexagonal back and square seat echoed the building’s Mayan Revival exterior but Japanese design also had a profound influence on Wright’s work.
black crayon, stumped, pen and black ink, brush and black wash, varnish on illustration board
Gift of Mrs. Hugh Ferriss
architects
instruction
architecture
study
streamlined
studio
display
modernism
future
commercial
presentation drawing
exterior
New York
cities
skyscrapers
buildings
This is one of a series of 4 architectural renderings by Hugh Ferriss showing the importance of the city’s landmark 1916 "set-back" law. Designed to allow light into city streets, the limitations imposed on maximum mass resulted in New York’s stepped architectural silhouette. This drawing, featured in Ferriss’s influential article in the New York Times Magazine in 1922, led to many of the skyscrapers that impressed Europeans and Americans alike.
This object is currently on display in room 302 in Carnegie Mansion.
Museum purchase from General Acquisitions Endowment Fund
architecture
building
domestic
bridges
women's clothing
drapery
New York City
furnishing fabric
affordable
home sewing
mass market
collage
photomontage
Chrysler Building
Empire State Building
This carefully composed photomontage pattern features famous New York City landmarks, including the Chrysler, Empire State, and Woolworth Buildings, Grand Central Station, the old Penn Station, the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, and the Statue of Liberty. The dynamic collage celebrates the city’s position as both the commercial and industrial design capital of the country, a point of pride during the economically depressed 1930s. .
An example of this wallpaper manufactured by Erismann et Cie of Breisach am Rhein, Germany, was given to Cooper Hewitt in the late 1920s by Paul Frankl of Frankl Galleries. This was possibly the first contemporary design given to the museum.
Manufactured by Paye & Baker Manufacturing Company
silver-plated metal
Museum purchase from Decorative Arts Association Acquisition and General Acquisitions Endowment Funds
interior
decoration
container
home
pattern
art deco
line
form
angular
cone
zoning
vase
Karasz developed designs by beginning with a form and appending new elements. Here, a conical object is altered by the addition of four triangular planes forming a cross at the base. Karasz utilized these simple geometric components for a variety of objects characterized by planes and smooth surfaces.
Manufactured by Weidlich Brothers Manufacturing Company
silverplated brass
Gift of Denis Gallion and Daniel Morris
Radiating lines, as on this silver-plated tray, were a strong feature of late 1920s design, also can be seen nearby in the Chanin Building Gates and a textile design by Max Forrer. Weidlich’s use of silver plate made this striking design element accessible to a broad market.
Museum purchase from the Decorative Arts Association Acquisition and Smithsonian Collections Acquisition Funds
personal
lighting
music
cylinder
minimalism
geometric
reading
music lovers
chrome
simplicity
spare
A self-described "poetic functionalist," Dutch architect J.J. Pieter Oud rejected ornamentation and historicism of any kind. The Gispen firm produced a wide range of metalwork, including bent tubular steel furniture and modern lighting devices, based on straightforward geometric shapes and featuring functional characteristics such as adjustability.
René Paul Chambellan designed these gates for the entrance to the executive office suite of the Chanin Building in New York. The radiating-ray design, which connects to Futurism and Cubism, is surrounded by decorative machine cogs, bringing industrial motifs into interiors a year after New York’s Machine-Age Exposition of 1927.
This object is currently on display in room 302 in Carnegie Mansion.
Museum purchase through gift of Friedman Benda, Elaine Lustig Cohen, Ruth Kaufmann, Patricia Orlofsky and from General Acquisitions Endowment Fund
pattern
movement
color
The striking juxtaposition of contrasting colors in this textile creates an illusion of movement, motion being central to Sonia and Robert Delaunay’s theory of simultaneity.
Museum purchase through gift of Susan Hermanos, Judith and Charles Bergoffen, Cathy Nierras, and Anonymous Donors and from Drawings and Prints Council and General Acquisitions Endowment Funds
graphic design
geometric
typography
exhibition poster
graphic designers
photomontage
text as image
overlap
With its carefully organized proportions and balance—of color, of positive and negative space, and of image and typography—this iconic poster is an accomplishment of Dutch modernism. Film festivals were a recent phenomenon in the late 1920s, and designer Piet Zwart, a film enthusiast, helped organize this avant-garde event.
brush and watercolor, gouache on photostat mounted on wove paper in a bound volume
Gift of Daren Pierce
presentation drawing
carpet design
geometric abstraction
hand-knotted carpet
In the 1920s, Marion Dorn’s influential modern carpet designs earned her the nickname "The Architect of Floors." Although an American, Dorn helped to bring official recognition to the textile design profession in Britain. This hand-colored Photostat is one of 22 from an album featuring designs of hand-knotted carpets for the Wilton Royal Carpet Factory. Of these 22, Dorn created 10 and E. McKnight Kauffer, later her husband, 12—one of which is on view nearby as a finished product.
leather-covered metal, chrome-plated and enameled metal, glass (camera); lacquered cedar, chrome-plated and enameled metal (case)
Gift of George R. Kravis II
geometric
camera
overlapping pattern
decorative box
coordinated package design
Walter Dorwin Teague redesigned the standard black camera housing for Kodak by introducing a range of colors and patterns, most vibrant in the overlapping geometries of the Gift Kodak Camera, released for the 1930 Christmas season. This pattern returns on a photograph storage album, on view nearby, that Teague likely designed for Kodak.
chromium-plated and enameled metal, molded bakelite, brushed-burnished silver
Gift of George R. Kravis II
The slightly stepped form of this table clock is reminiscent of the skyscraper-inspired furniture also by Frankl, popular at the same time. When most clocks cost $5, this one cost $50, making it a luxury item.
Russian Constructivist El Lissitzky spent much of his time in Germany in the early to mid-1920s. The design for this earthenware charger features strong geometrical patterns and the contrasting red and black favored by Constructivists and members of the De Stijl movement, to which Lissitzky was closely linked.
Margarete (Grete) Marks studied at the Bauhaus from 1920 to 1921, where she developed an appreciation of the geometric forms and color reflected in this coffeepot. The use of stoneware made these forms affordable for a broader audience.
Poul Henningsen’s lamp prototypes won a 1924 Louis Poulson lighting competition for the Danish Pavilion at the 1925 Paris Exposition and went on to garner gold medals there. His table and hanging lamps capture in lighting the tiered architectural forms of the period.
In 1928 Reed and Barton introduced the Modernist group, the company’s first experiment in modern design, including smoking accessories and tablewares in sterling, silver plate, and pewter. The silver compote was made up of concentric circular and conical shapes to achieve a modern aesthetic.
Donald Deskey saw newly fashionable screens during his time studying in Paris in 1920–22 and at the 1925 exposition, including examples by Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann and Jean Dunand with lacquering. From 1927 to 1931, Deskey produced decorative screens and accessories showcasing lacquering and bold colors, some retailed by Paul Frankl. The design and stepped form of this screen mirror the one used in Glendon Allvine’s modernist Long Island house, which also featured Ruth Reeves’s coverlet.
This object is currently on display in room 302 in Carnegie Mansion.
Andersen’s poster design reflects two significant movements of the avant-garde with his Bauhaus-inspired cityscape punctuated by the primary color palette of the De Stijl school. This poster promoted an exhibition of buildings and homes in Copenhagen, which included a competition for the House of the Future, won by Arne Jacobsen.
Originally conceived in shades of black, white, and gray, this chair was produced in a primary-color palette, starting in 1923. It was one of the first three-dimensional products of the De Stijl movement. Its form took inspiration from chair designs by Frank Lloyd Wright.
wood, possibly elm, walnut and maple veneers, ebonized fruitwood, modern horsehair pholstery
Lent by The Art Institute of Chicago, Bequest of Dr. Fritz Moellenhoff and Dr. Anna Moellenhoff, 1982.76
Josef Albers joined the faculty of the Bauhaus in 1922 as a painter and teacher of stained-glass making. He also taught a course in handcrafts that led him to designing furniture after the Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1925.
Parisian enamelist Jean Goulden was noted for the superior quality of his enamel work and his devotion to modernist design. This clock from 1928 reflects his interpretation of analytical Cubism in three dimensions.
In this vase master metalworker and lacquerer Dunand evokes African textiles in a strong palette of black with red geometric decoration that also shows the influence of modern art. He used a technique based on his studies of Japanese lacquer and European metalwork.
After initial forays into skyscraper forms in natural wood, Paul Frankl added more color and sleeker materials. He may have been influenced by the American designer Donald Deskey, whose colorful and decorative screens and accessories Frankl sold through his shop starting in 1927.
Lent by Milwaukee Art Museum, Purchase, with funds from Demmer Charitable Trust, M2015.69.1a-8
Elsa Tennhardt’s cocktail set for the E. & J. Bass Company is a study in geometric form with its triangular, conical shapes and ray-like decoration. Made during Prohibition, this set appealed to those who thought it chic to ignore alcohol restrictions.
Lent by Milwaukee Art Museum, Purchase, with funds from Demmer Charitable Trust, M2015.36
Although born in America, Eugene Schoen was strongly influenced by Viennese design. This cabinet relates to earlier examples by Wiener Werkstätte luminaries Kolomon Moser and Eduard Josef Wimmer-Wisgrill.
Lent by Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, The Gorham Collection. Gift of Textron Inc., 1991.126.488
Erik Magnussen’s Cubic coffee service for Gorham is radically different from the more traditional work he produced independently. Introduced in November 1927 as “The Lights and Shadows of Manhattan,” the set visually connects to skyscraper furniture and objects produced that year.
Seth Thomas’s Sutton Mantle Clock enabled the consumer to introduce modern design into the home with a modestly priced object of skyscraper form and Cubist-inspired decoration.
Lent by Grand Rapids Art Museum, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. John Halick, 1984.7.2
Austrian émigré Paul Frankl designed one of the most successful lines of furniture referencing the skyscraper, a uniquely American form of building. His "Skyscraper" line, introduced about 1926, consisted of stacked cubes representing the layered platforms and stepped-back profiles of buildings as seen from the street.
oil paint on wood panel, california redwood and black lacquer
Denver Art Museum, Lent by Grant and Betty Hagestad, 43.2009
Cubist principles spread to designers and artists in every corner of the United States in the 1920s. This screen, painted by Western artist Maynard Dixon, also served as a painting of the crags of the Grand Canyon in Arizona. In the spring of 1915 Dixon and his family traveled to Arizona, where he observed and drew the Grand Canyon firsthand.
Parallel with the lavish use of colored stones by experienced jewelers was another trend—capturing artistic movements such as Cubism in jewelry—as seen in Fouquet’s three-color gold brooch.
One of the most innovative of the artisan jewelers working in Paris during the Jazz Age, Raymond Templier combined geometric forms and contrasting textures to produce modernist designs.
One of the most innovative of the artisan jewelers working in Paris during the Jazz Age, Raymond Templier combined geometric forms and contrasting textures to produce modernist designs.
The tricolor bracelet set cleverly suggests both the French and American flag colors while also displaying a combination of Cubist and industrial sensibilities.
desk and bookcase: mahogany, cedrela, zebrawood, yellow poplar, and pine with aluminum leaf
chair: ash with aluminum leaf
blotter: silk over paperboard
Lent by Yale University Art Gallery, Bequest of Clara Migeon Swayze, by exchange,
1993.107.1.1-.3
In 1927 Joseph Urban asked Frankl to design the furnishings for a bedroom in Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach house for Marjorie Merriweather Post (Mrs. E. F. Hutton) that Urban was redesigning in an Italian-Spanish hybrid style. While other rooms featured a variety of historically themed furnishings, Frankl’s room was to be modern.
Lent by Yale University Art Gallery, John P. Axelrod Collection, B.A. 1968, 1995.49.1
Reeves’s electric pattern exhibited by W. & J. Sloane in 1930, combines influences of Cubism from her studies in Paris with the impact and energy of electric waves. This length was made into a coverlet for the bed that Reeves designed for the Long Beach, Long Island, house of Louise and Glendon Allvine, who also acquired a screen by Donald Deskey, a possible mate to the one seen nearby.
Lent by Yale University Art Gallery, John P. Axelrod Collection, B.A. 1968, 1995.49.6
These textiles feature famous New York City landmarks, including the Chrysler, Empire State, and Woolworth Buildings, Grand Central Station, Penn Station, the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, and the Statue of Liberty, as well as automobiles, smokestacks, and airplanes. Both Ruth Reeves’ dynamic sketched collage and the later photomontage, celebrate the city’s position as an architectural and industrial capital.
Lent by Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of Collection Société Anonyme, 1941.690
In this large canvas Stella explored fractured light through the suspension cables of the Brooklyn Bridge. His combination of Italian heritage, French study, interest in Futurism, and early appreciation of the New York urban environment distinguished him in the art and design world of the 1920s.
Lent by The Cleveland Museum of Art, Contemporary Collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1967.215
Dutch-born artist Piet Mondrian was a cofounder of the De Stijl movement, in which primary colors and right angles define spatial relationships. A devoted advocate of jazz, Mondrian frequently linked his works to music through their titles. He completed this painting in Paris just before beginning his series based on the Foxtrot.
Després’s necklaces reflect the strong interest in the globe form that appeared across design during this period. The combination of the handcrafted look of hammered silver and the avoidance of gemstones in favor of less precious materials created an impressive statement when used in large scale.
Smithsonian Libraries, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Library, N5 .W469 folio
Seven issues of the Dutch building and decorating periodical Wendingen were devoted to the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. Their front and back covers featured Wright-inspired pattern and composition. The periodical was recognized for its focus on modern architecture, art, and design as well as its graphically innovative covers.
Després’s necklaces reflect the strong interest in the globe form that appeared across design during this period. The combination of the handcrafted look of hammered silver and the avoidance of gemstones in favor of less precious materials created an impressive statement when used in large scale.
