STORAGE
Interiors Library Series Volume Four
George Nelson
George Nelson: STORAGE [Interiors Library Series Volume Four]. New York: Whitney Publications, Inc., 1954. First Edition. Folio. Embossed brown cloth titled in gold. Printed dust jacket. 176 pp. 303 black and white photographs. Dust jacket designed by Irving Harper. The finest copy we have handled: jacket with a couple of tiny nicks to upper and lower edges, thus a fine copy in a nearly fine dust jacket. Rare, especially in this condition.
9.25 x 12.25 hardcover book with 176 pages, with 303 black and white photos representing 138 leading furniture designers. Photos by Julius Schulmann, Ezra Stoller, Richard Avedon, among others. This book is worth its weight in gold as a reference volume for identifying midcentury furniture designs, designers and manufacturers. You have been warned.
Outstanding Dust jacket design by Irving Harper, the man credited with developing the design of the George Nelson clocks for Howard Miller. The DJ design alone makes this volume a welcome addition to any mid-century modern collection.
This book was George Nelson's attempt to sell modern furniture to America and it is a lavish production. Designed by the Office of George Nelson, the book itself is extremely well-designed and thoughtfully assembled. Drop-dead gorgeous photography, selected from the archives of interiors magazine (who sponsored the publication of all four volumes in their Interiors Library Series).
CONTENTS: Introduction; Shelving; Unit Cases; Special Purpose Storage; Architectural Storage; Index: Designers; Manufacturers and Distributers.
LIST OF ARCHITECTS AND DESIGNERS represented in this volume: Alvar Aalto; David Abrahams; Carl-Axel Acking; Albertini, Becker & Bursi; Franco Albini; Charles Allen; RenatoAngeli; Architects Associated; Charles Atwood; Jurg Bally; BBPR; Lina Bo Bardi; Milo Baughman; Beeston & Patterson; Ward Bennett; Bogner and Richmond; Rita Bravi; Breger-Salzman; Marcel Breuer; Brokman-Petersen; Tulio Bussi; Joseph Carreiro; A. Castelli-Ferreiri; Luisa Castiglioni; Serge Chermayeff; Norman Cherner; Paolo Chessa; Muriel Coleman; Luigi Colombibi; Mathew Cooper; Robin Day; Carlo De Carli; Charles Eames; George Farkas; Ignazio Gardella; Abraham Geller; Eugenio Gentili; Luigi Ghidini; T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings; Alexander Girard; R.Y. Goodden; Allan Gould; Greta Grossman; Victor Gruen; E.H. & M.K. Hunter; Huson Jackson; Finn Juhl; Henry Kann; William Katalvos; Edgar Kaufmann Jr.; Douglas Kelley; Florence Knoll; Knoll Planning Unit; Otto Kolb; Elsie Krummeck; James Lamantia; Mogens Lassen; Clive Latimer; Vittorio Latis; Le Corbusier; Gino Levi-Montalcini; Robert Levine; Rose Littell; Raymond Loewy Associates; Wendell Lovett; Gerald Luss; Alvin Lustig; Vico Magistretti; Angelo Mangiarotti; Bruno Mathsson; Paul McCobb; Lem McCoy; Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; Borge Mogensen; Guglielmo Mozzini; George Nelson; George Nemeny; Richard Neutra; Brian O'Rorke; Carlo Pagani; William Palhmann; Ico Parisi; I.M. Pei; E. Pollack; Gio Ponti; Reisner & Urbahn; Jens Risom; Gilbert Rohde; Augusto Romano; Irving Rose; Donald Ross; Paul Rudolph; R.D. Russell; Eero Saarinen; Gianni Saibene; Sanders, Malsin and Reiman; Morris Sanders; Harold Schwartz; Schweiker and Elting; Ezio Sgrelli; J. Stanley Sharp; Wahl Snyder; Alfred Steuer; Karen and Nisse Strinning; Albert Strom; Curt Swinburne; Mario Tedeschi; Maurizio Tempestini; Herbert TenHave; Lester C. Tichy; Ralph Twitchell; Arthur Umanoff; Van-Keppel-Green; Nigel Walter; Warner-Leeds; William Watting; Harry Weese; Hans Wegner; Edward Wormley; Frank Lloyd Wright; Henry Wright; Russel Wright.
LIST OF MANUFACTURERS AND DISTRIBUTORS represented in this volume: Baker Furniture;Bonniers; Brown-Saltman; California Contemporary,Inc.; Calvin Furn. Co.; Carron Ind. Inc.; Contemporary Southwest; Design Previews; Drexel; Dunbar; Electronic Workshops Sales Corp.; Elton Co.; Finsven Inc.; Garden City Plating & Mfg.; Glenn of California; Globe-Wernicke; Alan Gould Designs; Grand Rapids Bookcase & Chair Co.; Grand Rapids Chair Co.; Grosfeld House; Hille of London; Kaplan Furn. Co.; Knape & Vogt Mfg. Co.; Knoll Associates; Mengel Co.; Herman Miller Furn. Co.; Mueller Furn. Co.; Multiflex Corp.; Murray Furn. Mfg. Co.; O'Hearn Mfg. Co.; Pine and Baker; La Rinascente; Jens Risom Design Inc.; Romweber Ind.; Gordon Russell Ltd.; John B. Salterini Co. Inc.; M. Singer and Sons; John Stuart Inc.; Swedich Modern Inc.; George Tanier Inc.; Transvision Inc.; Unistrut Products Co.; Van Keppel-Green; Voice and Vision Inc.; Widdicomb Furn. Co.; Winchendon Furn. Co.; Woodlux Inc.
George Nelson (American, 1908 – 1986) possessed one of the most inventive minds of the 20th century. Nelson was one of those rare people who could envision what isn’t there yet. Nelson described his creative abilities as a series of “zaps” – flashes of inspiration and clarity that he turned into innovative design ideas.
One such “zap” came in 1942 when Nelson conceived the first-ever pedestrian shopping mall – now a ubiquitous feature of our architectural landscape – detailed in his “Grass on Main Street” article. Soon after, he pioneered the concept of built-in storage with the storage wall, a system of storage units that rested on slatted platform benches. The first modular storage system ever, it was showcased in Life magazine and caused an immediate sensation in the furniture industry.
In 1946, Nelson became director of design at Herman Miller, a position he held until 1972. While there, Nelson recruited other seminal modern designers, including Charles Eames and Isamu Noguchi. He also developed his own designs, including the Marshmallow Sofa, the Nelson Platform Bench and the first L-shaped desk, a precursor to the present-day workstation. He also created a series of boldly graphic wall clocks and a series of bubble lamps made of self-webbing plastic.
Nelson felt that designers must be “aware of the consequences of their actions on people and society and thus cultivate a broad base of knowledge and understanding.” He was an early environmentalist, one of the first designers to take an interest in new communications technology and a powerful writer and teacher. Perhaps influenced by his friend, Buckminster Fuller, Nelson’s ultimate goal as a designer was “to do much more with much less.”
“Imagining a sheet of paper as building site will give you a good sense for Irving Harper’s (American, 1916–2015) approach to graphic design. As the Swiss magazine Graphis noted in a 1953 survey of his print work for the Nelson Office, it’s an approach not dissimilar to that of an architect. “The page on which to print is regarded as a site on which to build…. Pictorial material, often broken into fragments, is organized by asymmetrical harmonies.” From his start working with Nelson in 1947 through his tenure as design director at the office until 1963, Harper brought a visual coherence and energy to everything he created—from furniture, to ads, to clocks—but it's in the printed collateral that his approach to design as a total experience is most easily gleaned. Be it evoking three-dimensional spatial gestures into a two-dimensional magazine spread, for example, or turning a functional object like a clock into a graphic abstraction, or giving a simple typographic treatment the textural quality of a swath of fabric, everything he designs has a deeper sense of dimension.
“Formally trained as an architect, Harper studied in his native New York at Brooklyn College and Cooper Union and eventually landed his first architectural job for Morris B. Sanders, who had been invited to design the Arkansas pavilion for the 1939-40 World's Fair. He put Harper in charge of interiors, thus inadvertently altering the course of his career. As he recalled to Julie Lasky in an interview for her book Irving Harper: Works In Paper, “‘[I] found design much more interesting because it was entrepreneurial.’ In an architecture office, ‘it’s hard to rise to the top.’ And ‘design work is more varied. Everything is a first-time thing. You learn a lot more.’” Harper’s early foundational work for Sanders and then for Gilbert Rohde, the illustrator-turned-product designer who had a hand in shepherding American furniture design into the 20th century through his work with Herman Miller and Heywood-Wakefield, helped solidify Harper’s position as a designer. It also helped him land the job at the Nelson Office: Ernest Farmer, an old colleague from Rohde’s office, had moved on to work for Nelson, and it was he who convinced Nelson to hire Harper to design graphics for the office. This early foundation in 3D design informed so much of Harper’s compositional predilections at the Nelson Office, and unlike many of the furniture pieces he designed there, his advertisements—especially the collateral work for Herman Miller, for whom George Nelson was design director—were often credited to him by name.
“When Nelson undertook his debut furniture collection as design director for Herman Miller, he was also tasked with creating the graphics and advertising work to support its sale. This included a new trademark that could be heat-stamped into the wood furniture. Nelson had initially approached Paul Rand, one of the most sought after graphic designers at the time (and well revered for his identity work, most notably the IBM logo) to create the mark, but when Rand backed out of the project, the job went in-house and ultimately landed in the hands of Harper. The first ad for the collection was to be printed in 1946, prior to any tangible furniture to photograph or illustrate and was limited to a two-color printing process. But like any good designer or architect might, Harper took note of his limitations, and building around them, fashioned a monumental, French-curved M in bold red, set against a black and white wood-grain texture. Harper later called it the century's least expensive corporate branding, but even despite the mark’s humble beginnings, the bones of that original M (minus the wood grain) have endured as Herman Miller’s logo—a testament to both Harper’s skill as a designer and the company’s belief in the clarity of his vision.” — Amber Bravo