INTERIORS + INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
July 1949
Francis de N. Schroeder and George Nelson [Editors],
Irving Harper [Cover Designer]
Francis de N. Schroeder and George Nelson [Editors]: INTERIORS + INDUSTRIAL DESIGN. New York: Whitney Publications [Volume 108, no. 12] July 1949. Original edition. Slim quarto. Printed thick perfect bound wrappers. Side stitched textblock. 174 pp. Illustrated articles and period advertisements. Cover by Irving Harper. Spine lightly worn and fore edge thumbed. Covers lightly soiled with a small scatter of dust spots. A very good copy.
Easily the MVP of the George Nelson Associates design team, Irving Harper was responsible for many of the iconic images atrributed to Nelson over the years, including the Herman Miller logo, the Marshmallow Sofa, the Sunburst clock, the list goes on. Here is one of our favorite "Interiors" covers -- one piece that Harper was fully credited with creating.
9 x 12 magazine with 174 pages of color and black and white examples of the best modern American interior and industrial design, circa 1949 -- 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:
- Profiles Of Cover Artists Ann Sayre Wiseman, Harry Schulke, and Irving Harper.
- For Your Information: Chairs From Denmark By Finn Juhl, Hans Wegner, From Norway By Alf Sture, Raestad and Rolling; California Craftsmen; An Approach To Design Exhibition At Chouinard; Harold Darr; Modern Home Tour In New Canaan; John Weese and Henry Dreyfuss; Floyd Magnuson; Clara Nordfors; etc.
- Magazines From Abroad: Bonytt, The Architectural Review, Werk, etc.
- Modern Furniture. An Attempt To Explore Its Nature, Its Sources, and Its Probable Future: George Nelson. Work By Gilbert Rohde, Eero Saarinen, Alvara Aalto, Mies Van Der Rohe, Bruno Mathsson, Marcel Breuer, Edward Wormley, George Nelson, Gino Levi-Montalcini, Charles Eames, Albertini, Becker & Bursi, Morris Sanders, Alfred Steuer, Clive Latimer, Hans Bellman, Alvin Lustig, Aabel Sorenson, Maria Bergson, George Nakashima, Alden B. Dow, Alf Sture, Edward D. Stone, andre Dupre, Van Keppel-Green, Hardoy, Bonet, Kurcham, Franco Albini, Carlo Mollino, Florence Knoll, Le Corbusier, Fontano-Radici, Tapiovaara, Elias Svedberg, Finn Juhl, William Armbruster, Cristiani and Fratino, Isamu Noguchi, Nelson-Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright, etc. Three Years After Publication, This Article Was Expanded Into CHAIRS [Interiors Library Volume Two], George Nelson, New York: Whitney, 1952.
- In The Showrooms: Rugs, Rugs and Rugs.
- Merchandise Cues: Heritage-Henredon; Maurice Martine; Limpus Childrens' Furniture' Swedish Modern; Eve Peri; Gene Mcdonald; Fabrics By Rudofsky, Sorenson, Wormley, Dali and Nelson; etc.
- Advertisements for Herman Miller, T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings for Widdicomb, Dunbar, Laverne, Lightolier, Pascoe, Howard Miller Clock Co., Ben Rose, Heifitz, Harvey Probber, Kurt Versen, Thonet, etc.
- And much more.
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."
Interiors during its peak in the 1950s was the most beautfully designed and printed American Interiors magazine I have seen. An amazing vintage mid-century resource, not to be missed. Excellent vintage resource for wallpaper, rugs and floorware, funiture, lighting, decorative objects, etc.
“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 [Interiors_2018]