A now-famous photograph of Gio Ponti's super-light Superleggera chair, held up in the air with a single finger by a female model, appeared in a 1952 edition of Domus magazine. The chair itself (second exhibition picture, below) and the way it was presented can be seen as symbolic of Ponti's pursuit of the light and the slim in his design and architecture.
Earlier in his career, from 1923 to 1930, Gio Ponti (1891-1979) had worked at ceramics company Manifattura Ceramica Richard Ginori, in Milan and Sesto Fiorentino, where his life-long obsession with the interior and exterior skin of buildings was kindled. Under his strong influence the entire output of the company would dramatically change.
To communicate texture and character, seeking to add a tactile quality to his buildings, Ponti incorporated both handcrafted and machine-made ceramics. Torafu Architects, designers of the current exhibition, Giving Warmth to The Building's Skin – The World of Gio Ponti, Father of Modern Italian Design, at Inax Museums in pottery town, Tokaname, Japan, created a framework that gives an illusion of floating volumes, allowing for a sense of lightness, reflecting Ponti's original aesthetic.
In the show, many of Ponti's sketches and architectural drawings appear alongside items of his furniture, and, so that visitors can better experience his architectural style – with the full support of the Gio Ponti Archives (Milan) – Inax have reproduced many actual tiles to Ponti's authentic designs.
Lenny Kravitz is on it. David Lynch is included. But Frank Ghery and Donald Judd don't make it and very surprisingly, neither does Harry Bertoia. Of the remaining seventy-five American furniture designers listed on Wikipedia, work by only a handful: Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, Eero Saarinen, Isamu Noguchi, Frank Loyd Wright, Florence Knoll, and Marcel Breur – although we still think of him as Hungarian, or even German – regularly come up in UK auctions. The same is probably true for the rest of Europe, which is as well served with British-designed modern and mid-century modern furniture, as we are with Dutch, French, Italian and German designers, plus, of course the work of the many and revered Scandinavians.
In the big New York sales at Sotheby's, Christie's, and at Rago in New Jersey, furniture from American designers like Wendel Castell and George Nakashima, regularly appear, but there are those that, even when their names do come up don't ring more than vague bells with many of the UK's modern furniture enthusiasts. Tomorrow's Palm Beach Modern Auctions' Fine Art, Decorative Arts, & Modern Design sale of 320 lots, includes items by many of those mentioned above, alongside a whole host of other talented American designers with perhaps less international reputations.
The New York Times is quoted as having said that Vladimir Kagan is one of the most important furniture designers of the 20th century and that furniture designed by him in the 40s, 50s and 60s have become icons of modernity. Published in 2004, The Complete Kagan: Vladimir Kagan, A Lifetime of Avant-Garde Design, has a preface by Tom Ford, who is a fan. Originally German, born in 1927, Kagan emigrated to the United States in 1938, studying architecture in New York, before opening his first shop there in 1949. His early work included furniture for the Delegate's Cocktail Lounge at the United Nations and furniture for the 'Monsanto House of the Future' displayed at Disneyland from 1957 to 1967. London's V&A, the Vitra Design Museum and Die Neue Sammlung in Germany all have items of his work in their permanent collections.
Another German émigré Karl Springer, born 1931, who moved to New York in 1957, began his career as a bookbinder, establishing a furniture workshop in Manhattan in the early 60s. By the 1980s there were Karl Springer Showrooms in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Munich and Tokyo. For his bold statement, luxury pieces based on Art Deco, Chinese and Bauhaus styles, made in wood, perspex or plexiglas (called lucite in the US), and mirrored metals, Springer demanded the highest level of materials and delivered high quality craftsmanship.
Gary Gutterman, who formed Axius Designs Inc in 1971, in New York, with Leigh Hammond, made futuristic pieces in stainless steel, glass and perspex.
The much-copied Planner Group furniture by Paul McCobb (1917-1969) was in continuous production at Winchendon, Massachusetts from 1949-1964 and is regarded as one of the best selling collections of the 1950s. From 1950 to 1955, the designer won five Musem of Modern Art Good Design Awards. As well as designing furniture, McCobb produced a wide range of items including textiles, wallpaper, lighting, dinnerware and radios.
Milo Baughman defined modern design as 'elegant yet accessible'. Influenced by the engineering and functional ideas developed at the Bauhaus, he fused them with midcentury-modern explorations of materials, earning himself many major manufacturing contracts. Baughman's wood-panelled Tuxedo Sofa was the inspiration for one gracing Don Draper's office in the TV drama Mad Men.
Ward Bennett (1917-2003) designed more than 150 chairs, many of which have become classics and can found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Quitting school at thirteen to work in New York's garment district, at fifteen he designed his first fashion collection. The following year he set off for Europe, where he studied at art schools in Paris and Florence. Mostly self-taught, his skills ranged from illustration, sculpture, and jewellery-making to furniture, and interiors. Returning to New York and quickly developing a reputation for his high-end furniture designs after, his client list included: David Rockefeller, the Chase Manhattan Bank, Tiffany & Co, Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner, and would also work for Italian industrialist Gianni Agnelli. Bennett is considered to be the first American furniture designer to use industrial materials, in his designs for furniture – well in advance of the 1970s fad for hi-tech products.
Furniture by globally-famous, American design heroes, Frank Loyd Wright and Raymond Loewy, are rare sights in Europe. Both are represented in the Palm Beach Modern sale, along with, among others, the great Italian, Gio Ponti, and important French designers, Boris Tabakoff, Piere Paulin and Jean Royere, as well as Swiss maker Pierre Jeanneret (cousin of the more famous Le Corbusier).
If it isn't a contradiction in terms, the phenomenon of modern architects creating furniture, and sometimes decorative items, for use in the buildings they design and elsewhere might well be termed a 'tradition'. And the importance of this tradition is confirmed in the upcoming Arts Décoratifs du XXe siècle & Design Contemporain sale at Sotheby's, Paris, which features items by, among others, Le Corbusier (with Pierre Jeanneret), Gio Ponti and Tadao Ando: architects whose work overlapped in a time span stretching from early 20th century modernism, through mid-century modern to whatever label we're currently attaching to 21st century contemporary.
Sir Norman Foster, and Foster and Partners, responsible for many of the world's key buildings of the last 30 years have designed sofas, lamps, bookcases, door handles and even sanitary ware for a range of clients, including Knoll, Molteni & Co, Acerbis and Nomos. There's even a Gherkin lamp available from Kundalini. If modernism hadn't already caught up with the future, Zaha Hadid's and Amanda Levete's respective oeuvres might still be referred to as futuristic. Zaha Hadid Architects' Z-Scape Furniture, designed in 2000 and produced by Sawaya & Moroni, is an ensemble of lounge furniture, whose forms derive from geology, glaciers and natural erosion but the company has also created equally-arresting and sculptural vases, lamps and tables. At Future Systems and currently, at AL_A, Levete has produced sinuous benches for Established & Sons and, in collaboration with Phillips, lighting, notably the Edge light. Always keen to control every aspects of the furnishing of his interiors, John Pawson, too, has had several of his spare furniture pieces produced by Driade. Common amongst all of the products created by these architects is quality design and a high degree of craftsmanship.
The fine, glazed earthenware Classical Conversation/'L'architetto' bowl included in the Sotheby's sale was produced by him around 1924, just one year after Gio Ponti began his career as an architect, during a period when he was influenced by and associated with the Milanese, neo-classical Novecento Italiano movement. Ponti would go on to become one of his country's most important 20th century modernist architects, industrial designers, artists and publishers – he founded and was twice editor of Domus magazine. Building offices for Fiat during the war years, the attention attracted by his Pirellone/Pirelli Tower (completed, 1960), in Milan, earned him worldwide fame and international commissions, including the Denver Art Museum, 1971. His renowned furniture designs for Cassina include the 1957 Superleggerra/Superlight chair, and he produced lights for, among others, Artemide and Fontana Arte.
Le Corbusier – still probably the most famous architect in the world, and certainly of the 20th century, his array of built work too vast and familiar to list here – and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret's wood and partially grey lacquered free-standing cabinet, was made in 1927, having been designed for The Poplars/Maison Guiette residence. Built by the practice in Antwerp, the house is an early and classic example of the International Style. Having been joined by Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier and Jeanneret presented their new concepts in furniture design at the 1929 Paris Salone d'Automne. That same year, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, whom Le Corbusier had probably met, along with Walter Gropius during a sojourn in Berlin, created the Barcelona chair for his avant garde German pavilion at the Barcelona Exposition. Although only two Barcelona chairs were made for the exposition, the design was put into production and became so popular that, with the exception of a sixteen-year period, it has been continuously manufactured. Earlier, In 1908, Le Corbusier had studied architecture under Joseph Hoffman in Vienna – himself an architect who loved to design furniture – and would have been familiar with Hoffman's designs, based famously on the square, and particularly the Kubus chair, 1910, which was almost certainly an influence on his and his co-designers' very cubic Grand Confort armchair, albeit the construction is entirely different. Centre-piece of the Salone d'Automne show, the famous design was reissued by Cassina in 1965. The company makes some fourteen other Le Corbusier furniture items, including the equally familiar LC4 chaise longue and LC6 dining table.
In a kind of reversal of the process, in 1924, furniture-maker, Gerrit Rietveld built the Rietveld Schröder house and filled it with objects he designed. When Eileen Gray, famous for her sumptuous Art Deco lacquered screens suddenly became a modernist convert, she built her exquisitely modern home, Villa E1027, designing for it radical, but equally luxurious pieces that required production by skilled craftsmen. Her Bibendum chair, originally created for the the rue de lota apartment in Paris, in 1925, lay largely forgotten until an original re-surfaced in a 1972 auction, which prompted a new production of the design classic. Eero Saarinen, studied sculpture in Paris and architecture at Yale before working on furniture design with Norman Bel Geddes and practicing architecture with his father, Eliel. His furniture for Knoll includes dining and low tables, the Executive chair, the Tulip chair, and the Womb chair and ottoman.
During the 1980s, when Alberto Alessi took over the management of the Italian Alessi kitchen utensil company, he began collaborations with designers, and especially with architects, to produce high-end, exclusive products. Among the best known of the company's product range from this period are Richard Sapper's kettle with a two-tone whistle and Michael Graves' kettle with the bird shaped whistle.
By 1941, when future Pritzker Prize winner (1995), Japanese architect Tadao Ando was born, modern architecture was firmly on the world map. Having taken no formal training Ando travelled the world visiting buildings by Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Kahn, then established Tadao Ando Architect and Associates in Osaka, in 1968. Strongly influenced by his traditional Japanese background his architectural style emphasises empty space to represent the beauty of simplicity, placing the inner feeling of a structure before its appearance. Working primarily in exposed cast-in-place concrete, from a formidable list of 154 completed projects, Ando is best known for The Church of Light in Osaka, 1989, The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St Louis, 2001, and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 2002. Current projects include a mausoleum for fashion designer, Tom Ford. His minimal buildings are designed to contain little in the way of furniture, however he has lately collaborated with Danish furniture company Carl Hansen & Son on a project to develop a prototype chair honoring the aesthetic of the late Danish designer Hans Wegner, which will be available in 2013. In 2011, to mark their 90th anniversary, he created a limited edition vase for leading Venetian glassmakers, Venini, established in Murano in 1921. At an estimated sale price of €35,000-45,000, a set of three of these vases, all signed and dated and coming from a private collection in Germany, is included in the Sotheby's sale.
Century of the Child is a large-scale overview of the modernist preoccupation with children and childhood as a paradigm for progressive design thinking. The rather grown up headings for the seven sections into which MoMA's new exhibition is divided: New Century, New Child, New Art; Avant-garde Playtime; Light, Air, Health; Children and the Body Politic; Power Play; Designing Better Worlds, are clues to the organisers' ambitious attempt to examine and make sense of the complex and often contradictory ideas about the place of children in the modern era and the role that 20th century designers, architects and artists have played – and that others over the course of the 21st century might play – in relation to it.
As early as 1900, Swedish design reformer and social theorist Ellen Key published Century of the Child, a manifesto for change – social, political, aesthetic, and psychological – that presented the universal rights and well-being of children as the defining mission of the century to come. The exhibition examines individual and collective visions for the material world of children, from utopian dreams for the citizens of the future to the dark realities of political conflict and exploitation. In this period children have been central to the concerns, ambitions, and activities of modern architects and designers, and working specifically for children has often provided unique freedom and creativity to the avant-garde.
On show are a range of over 500 items – 2D and 3D, large and small – including examples of toys, games, animation, clothing, safety equipment and therapeutic products, nurseries, furniture, books, playgrounds and school architecture.
Among the early featured items are Alma Siedhoff-Buscher's Bauhaus nursery furniture, puppets by Sophie Taeuber-Arp. There's a high chair by Gerrit Rietveld; a glass, child-sized desk designed by Gio Ponti in 1930 and children's chairs by Marcel Breuer and Alvar Aalto. Brightly coloured wooden teaching materials commissioned by Maria Montessori in the 1920s are also included. El Lissitzky's Tale of 2 Squares and Roald Dahl's The Gremlins 1943 – his first children's book written for Walt Disney Productions appear, as well as Aleksandr Rodchenko's poignant photograph, Pioneer Girl 1930.
Examples from the immediate post World War II, baby boom, years illustrate a new focus on less formal school environments and well-designed, safe and non-violent toys. In the aftermath of brutality and devastation, working closely with child psychologists, manufactures and educators, many designers sought to recover a lost innocence embodied in the spontaneity and directness of children's art, and to emulate the constructive impulse of children's play. Charles and Ray Eames in California, the influential CoBrA artists in Amsterdam – founded in 1948, who painted directly and spontaneously, like children, and worked expressively, without a preconceived plan – and the 1950s' Independent Group in London, all epitomized this preoccupation with the child and of trying to look at the world from their perspective. In addition to works by these designers and artists, a school desk by Jean Prouvé is included as well as Lego building blocks, the helical spring toy Slinky and a selection of wooden toys by the Swedish company Brio.
The 1960s through to the end of the 20th century is a period in which children and consumer culture exerted power over each other. Through showing examples of Soviet Bloc space toys alongside Peter Ellenshaw's 1954 plan of Disneyland, and plastic and inflatable toys by the Czechoslovakian designer Libuše Niklová, the exhibition considers the concept of the child as an autonomous consumer.
In the digital age children often surpass adults' command of innovative design development in the realms of computer games and communication. In contemporary Japan, a deep fascination with youth is manifested by young girls shaping their identities through fashion, accessories, creative products, comic book and animated heroes. They process the images and text of material culture and mass media in their own ways, often naïvely but sometimes in active subversion of intended meanings and purposes.
Heralding a pronounced progressive or idealistic philosophy, the exhibition curators, in using examples of toys designed and handcrafted by children in a South African village; Jukka Veistola's UNICEF poster from 1969; the XO laptop from the One Laptop per Child program; Marimekko clothing and do-it-yourself toys and Isamu Noguchi designs for play equipment and his – ridiculed at the time – Riverside Park Playground of 1933, attempt to communicate to us and children that children deserve a better world, and that through passionate public discourse among educators, parents, and politicians, and of course through good design, this world might indeed be possible to achieve.
Kinder Verkehrs Garten, Children's traffic garden.
Lithograph, 129.5 x 91.4 cm, 51 x 36″.
Printed by Allgemeine Gewerbeschule, Basel.
61 x 38.1 x 35.6 cm, 24 x 15 x 14″.
Letterpress, lithograph, 51.4 x 71.8 cm, 20 1/4 x 28 1/4″.
largest smokestack: 18.7 x 5.1 cm, 7 3/8 x 2″.
12 1/2 x 11 3/8 x 33 1/2″.
Manufactured by Gerard van de Groenekan.
Gift of Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder.
Offset lithograph, 100.3 x 69.9 cm, 39 1/2 x 27 1/2″.
72.4 x 114.3 x 86.4 cm, 28 1/2 x 45 x 34″.