INTERIORS AND INDUSTRIAL DESIGN November 1947
Volume 107, number 4
Francis de N. Schroeder [Editor],
Ray Johnson [Cover Designer]
Francis de N. Schroeder [Editor]: INTERIORS AND INDUSTRIAL DESIGN. New York: Whitney Publications, November 1947 [Volume 107, no. 4]. Original edition. Side stitched and perfect bound wrappers. 184 pp. Illustrated articles and trade advertisements. Cover by Ray Johnson. Wrappers loosened from binding, lightly worn and soiled with a small thumbnail tear to fore edge, and spine heel and crown chipped, but a very good copy.
“Ray Johnson, the most modest of our cover artists, is, we guess, well under twenty. He refuses to give us any information about himself except that he is a student at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, mostly with Josef Albers. He asks that we use this space to say something about the College. The unique institution is organized to provide a custom tailored education, in contrast to our huge educational factories. It “rejects the required curriculum, the report card, the board of trustees.” This implies neither coddling nor aristocratic attitudes; the school is a community in which students and faculty share alike, even to constructing its buildings and working its farm.
“About this gayest, most deceptively simple cover—Johnson obtained its riotous colorful effects with only black, red, and blue.” — Interiors’ Cover Artists, January 1948, p. 10
9 x 12 magazine with 184 pages of color and black and white examples of the best modern American interior and industrial design, circa 1947 -- offering a magnificent snapshot of the blossoming modern movement after World War II. A very desirable, vintage publication in terms of form and content: high quality printing and clean, functional design and typography and excellent photographic reproduction make this a spectacular addition to a midcentury design collection. Highly recommended.
Contents include:
- For Your Information: the United Nations, Rut Bryk, etc.
- Interiors Abroad: Domus, Arquitectura y Construccion, Werk, the Architectural Review, Art et Decoration, Art & Industry, Graphis, etc.
- Exit Taxidermist, Enter Couturier: Boston's New England Museum Of Natural History Into Bonwit Teller By William Pahlmann
- Cooperation Dramatized: The International Exposition Of City Planning And Housing
- Interiors Paint Pot [Violet]: Francis De N. Schroeder
- Tapestries For The 20th Century
- A Small Manhattan Apartment: Architects Associated
- The Good Word On Fabrics: Ben Rose, Oken Fabrics Celanese Corporation, Glendale Fabrics, Dan Cooper, Franco Scalamandre, Donelda Fazakas, Alexander Girard, Angelo Testa Arundell Clarke, Knoll Associates, Norman Trigg, Lee Behren, Dorothy Liebes, Henning Waterston, Etc.
- Office Cabinets By Jedd Stowe Reisner And Max Otto Urbahn
- Matson Lines Travel Office By Raymond Loewy Associates
- Merchandise Mart Showroom By Robert Sidney Dickens
- Problems Of Design: The Human Body, Remodelled By Bernard Rudofsky
- Pottery By Haeger Potteries [Bernard Siegel], Gladding McBean & Company, Bucchero And Marianna Von Allesch.
- Industrial Design: Johnson & Johnson Baby Products Plant
- Merchandise Cues: Alexander Crane, John B. Salterini, Henning Waterston, Mario Carreno, etc.
- Advertisements for Herman Miller, Laverne Originals, Widdicomb, Lightolier, Dunbar, kurt versen, Ben Rose, Jens Risom, etc.
- And much more.
"The art of Ray Johnson was rooted in his constant practice of correspondence. He dispersed a copious amount of collages and other printed matter through the mail to friends and colleagues. The Museum of Modern Art Library received materials in the mail from Ray Johnson from the 1950s until his death in 1995. This exhibition focuses on Johnson’s early printed materials, especially his promotional flyers for his work as a graphic designer and illustrator. These flyers were some of the first materials that the MoMA Library received from Johnson and they prefigure the graphic motifs and word play that remained central to his later art work. Publications that included Johnson’s design work from this period, including book jacket designs for publishers such as New Directions, The Jargon Society, and City Lights, are also featured." [Ray Johnson Designs, July 2–September 29, 2014, Museum of Modern Art]
George Nelson famously served as Editorial contributor to Interiors, where he used the magazine as his bully pulpit for bringing modernism to middle-class America. Interiors was a hard-core interior design publication, as shown by their publishing credo: "Published for the Interior Designers Group which includes: interior designers, architects who do interior work, industrial designers who specialize in interior furnishings, the interior decorating departments of retail stores, and all concerned with the creation and production of interiors-- both residential and commercial."