DISPLAY
George Nelson
George Nelson: DISPLAY [Interiors Library Series Volume Three]. New York: Whitney, 1953. First Edition. Small folio. Red embossed cloth titled in white. Printed dust jacket. 190 pp. 312 black and white photographs and spot color diagrams. Dust jacket and cover designed by Irving Harper. The fragile dust jacket is essentially complete, with wear along top edge, with tiny amount of loss to rear panel, light edgewear and weakened folds, and the spine crown chipped. Textblock pag edges lightly sunned. One of the better copies we have handled, a very good or better copy in a good dust jacket.
9.25 x 12.25 hardcover book with 190 pages, with 312 black and white photos and spot-color illustrations. Beautiful photography by the best in the field: Julius Shulman and Heidrich Blessing, etc.
This book was George Nelson's attempt to explain modern exhibion and interior design strategies 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). An amazing reference copy.
Architects, artists and designers represented in Display include Alvar Aalto, Renato Angeli, Frank Austin, Robert Auzelle, Luciano Baldessari, Belgiojoso Pressutti & Rogers, Milo Baughman, Herbert Bayer, Gian Antonio Bernasconi, Max Bill, Peter Blake, André Bouxin, Marcel Breuer, Erberto Carboni, Serge Chermayeff, Norman Cherner, Joseph Carreiro, Donald Deskey, William Daley, Victor d’Amico, Carlo De Carli, René D’harnoncourt, Frank Dolejska, Charles And Ray Eames, Charles Forberg, Enrico Freyrie, Alexander Girard, Ignazio Guardella, Bengt Gate, Walter Gropius, Vittorio Gregotti, Victor Gruen, Erik Herlow, Philip Johnson, Finn Juhl, William Katavolos, Douglas Kelley, György Kepes, Florence Knoll, Elsie Krummeck, James Lamantia, Ross Littell, Morris Lapidus, Leo Lionni, Alvin Lustig, Mackie & Kamrath, Maria Boeri, Herbert Matter, Paul Mayen, Thomas Mcnulty, Roberto Menghi, Peter Moro, Warren Nardin, Urban Neininger, George Nelson, Luigi Olivieri, Ico Parisi, Elio Palazzo, Stamo Papadaki, Charlotte Perriand, Gio Ponti, Robert Preusser, Henry Prouvé, Antonin Raymond, L. L. Rado, Albert Radoczy, Hilde Reiss, Jens Risom, Ernesto Rogers, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen, Reuben Sabetay, Edward Durrell Stone, Ladislav Sutnar, Albert Szabo, Mario Tedeschi, Lester Tichy, Vittoriano Viganó, Harry Weese, Tapio Wirkkala, Edward Wormley, Marco Zanuso and many, many others.
Exhibitions and shows represented in Display include: Airways to Peace (MoMA), Architecture: the Measure of man/ Italian Chair throughthe Ages (Ninth Triennale, Milan), Bauhaus Exhibition (MoMA), Festival of Britain, For Modern Living (Detroit Institute of the Arts), Good Design 1950 (Merchandise Mart), Good Design 1951 (Merchandise Mart), Good Design 1952 (Merchandise Mart), Good Design 1953 (Merchandise Mart), Jewelry Under Fifty Dollars (Walker Art Center), Lobmeyr Glass (MoMA), Modern Art in Advertising (Container Corporation of America), Modern Art in Your Life (MoMA), Olivetti: Designin Industry (MoMA), Road to Victory (MoMA), The New Landscape (MIT), Werkbund Exhibition (Paris) and others.
“George Nelson was an outstanding designer. We all know that. But my hunch is that, in a hundred years, he’ll be even better remembered for his thinking and writing about design.” – Stanley Abercrombie, architect and writer
”What you make is important. Design is an integral part of business. The product must be honest. You decide what you want to make. There is a market for good design.” – George Nelson
Even if he had never designed a single piece of furniture or a wall clock, George Nelson (1908 – 1986) would be remembered as one of the founding fathers of American Modernism. The Hartford native’s writing celebrated American Design with messianic zeal and pedagogical insight. Every book Nelson authored is a true classic in every sense of the word. He was a central figure in the mid-century American modernist design movement; and his thoughts influenced not only the furniture we live with, but also how we live.
Nelson came to design via journalism and literature. Upon receiving his bachelor’s degree in architecture from Yale in 1931, he won the Prix de Rome fellowship, and spent his time in Europe writing magazine articles that helped bring stateside recognition to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Gio Ponti, Le Corbusier and other canonical modernist architects. In the 1940s, Nelson wrote texts that suggested such now-commonplace ideas as open-plan houses, storage walls and family rooms. D. J. Depree, the owner of the furniture maker Herman Miller Inc., was so impressed by Nelson that in 1944 — following the sudden death of Gilbert Rohde, who had introduced the firm to modern design in the 1930s — he invited Nelson to join the company as its design director.
There Nelson’s curatorial design talents came to the fore. To Herman Miller he brought such eminent creators as Charles and Ray Eames, Isamu Noguchi, and the textile and furniture designer Alexander Girard. Thanks to a clever contract, at the same time as he directed Herman Miller he formed a New York design company, George Nelson & Associates, that sold furniture designs to the Michigan firm, as well as the Howard Miller Clock Company. Nelson’s New York team of designers (who were rarely individually credited) would create such iconic pieces as the “Marshmallow” sofa, the “Coconut” chair, the “Ball” clock, the “Bubble” lamp series and the many cabinets and beds that comprise the sleek “Thin-Edge” line.
In any of the designs, in any iteration whose manufacture Nelson oversaw and encouraged, there are shining elements of lightness, elegance, sophistication —and a little bit of swagger. George Nelson felt confident in his ideas about design and didn’t mind letting the world know.