THE ARCHITECT AND THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS
AN EXHIBITION OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN DESIGN
W. A. Dwiggins [wrappers and ornaments]
Edward Robinson, Leon Solon, et al.: THE ARCHITECT AND THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS: AN EXHIBITION OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN DESIGN [the eleventh in the museum series].
Edward Robinson, Leon Solon, et al.: THE ARCHITECT AND THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS: AN EXHIBITION OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN DESIGN [the eleventh in the museum series]. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 1929. First edition [10,000 copies]. Decorated French folded and yapped wrappers. [98] pp. 14 black and white plates. Wrappers and ornaments by W. A. Dwiggins, book designed by David Silve. Yapped wrapper edges lightly worn with minimal soiling, so a very good copy.
5.625 x 8.625 softcover exhibition catalog with a total of 98 pages and 14 black and white plates of rooms designed and decorated by Elieel Saarinen, Raymond Hood, Joseph Urban, Ely Jacques Kahn, Eugene Schoen, Leon V. Solon, Ralph T. Walker, Armisted Fitzhugh, and John Wellborn Root. This exhibition was originally secheduled to run for six weeks, from February 12 to March 24, but the run time was extended to seven months, concluding on September 2, 1929. Ten thousand copies were printed at the Plandome Press, Inc. in February 1929.
“Now for the first time in the Metropolitan’s industrial arts exhibitions, the requirements were that all of the objects be contemporary, that is, modern in style, as well as American in manufacture. It was the museum’s Advisory Committee on Industrial Art which, in the spring of 1928, suggested the change in format for the 1929 exhibit. Giles Whiting proposed that there be a concerted arrangement of items from different kinds of industries, and that idea was developed further by Sidney Blumenthal and Leon V. Solon. The concept of ensembles seen in this exhibition from the Paris Exposition of 1925 was expanded, with each of the nine architects designing a room and its contents. The Advisory Committee also chose the architects who who planned the exhibition: Elieel Saarinen, Raymond Hood, Joseph Urban, Ely Jacques Kahn, Eugene Schoen, Leon V. Solon, Ralph T. Walker, Armisted Fitzhugh, and John Wellborn Root. Saarinen designed a dining room, Hood a business executive’s office, Urban a man’s den, and so on. These splendid rooms dramatically marked the emergence of a modern American style, a style influenced by elegant by elegant European designs of the sort that the Metropolitan had been exhibiting during the previous few years. These new designs were very popular with the public. Indeed, the exhibition was such a success that its run was extended from six weeks to seven months.”— Christine Wallace Laidlaw
William Addison Dwiggins (United States, 1880 – 1956), was an American type designer, calligrapher, and book designer. He attained prominence as an illustrator and commercial artist, and he brought to the designing of type and books some of the boldness that he displayed in his advertising work. His work can be described as ornamented and geometric, similar to the Art Moderne and Art Deco styles of the period, using Oriental influences and breaking from the more antiquarian styles of his colleagues and mentors Updike, Cleland and Goudy.
Dwiggins began his career in Chicago, working in advertising and lettering. With his colleague Frederic Goudy, he moved east to Hingham, Massachusetts, where he spent the rest of his life. He gained recognition as a lettering artist and wrote much on the graphic arts, notably essays collected in MSS by WAD (1949), and his Layout in Advertising (1928; rev. ed. 1949) remains standard. During the first half of the twentieth century he also created pamphlets using the pen name "Dr. Hermann Püterschein.” His scathing attack on contemporary book designers in An Investigation into the Physical Properties of Books (1919) led to his working with the publisher Alfred A. Knopf. Alblabooks, a series of finely conceived and executed trade books followed and did much to increase public interest in book format. Having become bored with advertising work, Dwiggins was perhaps more responsible than any other designer for the marked improvement in book design in the 1920s and 1930s. An additional factor in his transition to book design was a 1922 diagnosis with diabetes, at the time often fatal. He commented "it has revolutionised my whole attack. My back is turned on the more banal kind of advertising...I will produce art on paper and wood after my own heart with no heed to any market."
In 1926, the Chicago Lakeside Press recruited Dwiggins to design a book for the Four American Books Campaign. He said he welcomed the chance to "do something besides waste-basket stuff" which would be "promptly thrown away" and chose the Tales of Edgar Allan Poe. The Press considered his fee of $2,000 to be low for an illustrator of his commercial power. Many of Dwiggins' designs used celluloid stencils to create repeating units of decoration.
Dwiggins' interest in lettering led to the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, sensing Dwiggins' talent and knowledge, hiring Dwiggins in March 1929 as a consultant to create a sans-serif typeface, which became Metro, in response to similar type being sold from European foundries such as Erbar, Futura, and Gill Sans, which Dwiggins felt failed in the lower-case. Dwiggins went on to have a successful working relationship with Chauncey H. Griffith, Linotype's Director of Typographic Development, and all his typefaces were created for them. His most widely used book typefaces, Electra and Caledonia, were specifically designed for Linotype composition and have a clean spareness.