All Photos By Gail
Founded in 1929, Isokon became one of the most progressive modern furnishings companies in the United Kingdom. Several former members of the Bauhaus were tapped as designers, including Marcel Breuer, whose chase lounge is on view above, and Egon Riss, who designed several zoomorphic pieces for the company, including this molded-ply bookcase (1939) that resembles a Donkey with its upturned ears.
Continue reading Eye On Design: Penguin Donkey Bookcase By Egon Riss
Installation View with Eames Shelving Unit (All Photo By Gail)
This side char was the product of a team research project led by Marcel Breuer (1902 – 1981), a celebrated architect and émigré known for his tubular metal furniture, and designer of the original Whitney Museum Building on Madison Avenue in NYC. Collaborating with the US Forest Products Laboratory, he applied knowledge accumulated over fifteen years of experimentation, as well as new developments in high-frequency gluing, to plywood construction.
The team’s report boasted of the chair’s ability to carry a load of five hundred pounds, and the jury of MoMA’s International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture described the design ad “ingeniously articulated.”
Photographed as Part of The Exhibit The Value of Good Design, on Through June 15th, 2019 at The Museum of Modern Art in NYC.
Photos By Gail
The triangular mass of Claes Oldenburg’s Giant BLT (Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato Sandwich”) 1963, is actually constructed from many smaller sculptural components including wood slabs, stuffed cushions and fabric pieces, which must be restacked each time the work is shown, allowing ample room for creative variation. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Claes Oldenburg, Giant BLT
Walter Gropius, German Architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, was born on this day, May 18th, in 1883. I admit to feeling a special sort of insider kinship with the Bauhaus, not only because I love band that took its name from this forward thinking movement of Architecture and Design, but because I once worked for an architectural firm whose founding partners has previously worked with another great Bauhaus architect, Marcel Breuer. Breuer designed those cool chairs that everybody has in their kitchens.