All Photos By Gail
Between 1913 and 1914, Morris Hirshfield was awarded 24 patents for slipper designs and orthopedic foot devices. Entire pages of the Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office are devoted to his slippers variously adorned with pom-poms, rosettes, buckles, tassels, or figure eights and set off by wraparound ornamental trims. Continue reading Eye On Design: Morris Hirshfield Slipper Designs Fabricated By Liz Blahd
Photos By Gail
After retiring from the footwear trade in 1935, Morris Hirshfield turned to the pursuit he had always dreamed of: painting. One of his first pictures, Angora Cat (1937), was painted on top of a pre-existing painting that his wife Henriette had framed and hung in their apartment in Bensonhurst Brooklyn. If you look closely, you can see that part of the underlying picture — the lion figurine displayed on the background wall — remains visible. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Morris Hirshfield, Angora Cat
Photo By Gail
Morris Hirshfield (1872 – 1946) began to paint at the age of 65, after retiring from a career making women’s coats, suits and slippers. The flattened, decorative forms of Inseparable Friends (1941) echo his garment-making work. Without distinguishing between the floor and the wall, Hirshfield creates a room  through thee planes of shapes and patterns: the women at their mirror, the tasseled curtain above them, and the plant and shoes at their feet. While Hirshfield’s compositions are simplified and stylized, he aimed for meticulous, realistic detail and believed that his figures represented the human body “better than the camera can do.”
Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.