INTERIORS + INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
June 1953
Olga Gueft [Editor]
Olga Gueft [Editor]: INTERIORS + INDUSTRIAL DESIGN. New York City: Whitney Publications, June 1953 [Volume 112, no. 10]. Original edition. Printed side-stitched wrappers. 170 pp. Illustrated articles and period advertisements. Cover by George Robinson. Wrappers lightly worn and rubbed, but a very good copy.
9 x 12 magazine with 170 pages of color and black and white examples of the best modern American interior and industrial design, circa 1953 -- offering a magnificent snapshot of the blossoming post-WWII modern movement. 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.
- Letters to the Editor from John Vassos and Pierre Kleykamp.
- For your information: Young Designers at the Akron Art Institute; Estelle and Edward Laverne; etc.
- Pratt's experiment in Design Education by Alexander Kostellow. 14 pages and 33 images [ one color plate].
- Alvin Lustig Portfolio '53: 8 pages and 19 color and black and white images. “[Lustig] was in the vanguard of a relatively small group who fervently, indeed religiously, believed in the curative power of good design when applied to all aspects of American life.” — Steven Heller
- Museum of Modern Art sculpture garden by Philip Johnson
- Wendell Lovett house in Bellevue Washington
- Beau Nash Revivified in the Ambassador West
- The new Furniture: 12 jewels in Laverne's collection. Designs by Ross Littell and Bill Katavolos.
- The Clash of Symbols 5: the BRaod Arrow by Francis de N. Schroeder
- Ben Rose Rooms under 5 skylights
- In the Showrooms: Paul McCobb; For Kittinger and irwin: festive faceliftings
- Merchandise Cues: Raymond Loewy; Russel Wright; Watting Design Group; Swedish modern, Inc.; Delta; advance Design; Vista; Koch & Lowy; etc.
- Vintage advertisements for Herman Miller Tables, the Bertoia wire chairs for Knoll, the Milo Baughman collection, Norman Cherner for MultiFlex, among many others.
"By the time he died at the age of forty in 1955, [Lustig] had already introduced principles of Modern art to graphic design that have had a long-term influence on contemporary practice. He was in the vanguard of a relatively small group who fervently, indeed religiously, believed in the curative power of good design when applied to all aspects of American life. He was a generalist, and yet in the specific media in which he excelled he established standards that are viable today.
"Lustig created monuments of ingenuity and objects of aesthetic pleasure. Whereas graphic design history is replete with artifacts that define certain disciplines and are also works of art, for a design to be so considered it must overcome the vicissitudes of fashion and be accepted as an integral part of the visual language." -- Steven Heller
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_2019]