INDUSTRIE UND HANDWERK SCHAFFEN
NEUES HAUSGERAT IN USA
[Industrial and Handcrafted Works:
New Housewares from the USA]
Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. [introduction]
Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. [introduction]: INDUSTRIE UND HANDWERK SCHAFFEN NEUES HAUSGERAT IN USA [Industrial and Handcrafted Works: New Housewares from the USA]. Krefeld: Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, 1954. First edition thus [first published in Stuttgart by Landesgewerbeamt, 1951]. Text in German. Square quarto. Printed boards. Plasti-coil binding. Unpaginated. Halftone plates. Multiple paper stocks. Index with curatorial information. Cover artwork by Saul Steinberg. Plasti-coil binding yellowed but 100% complete. White wrappers lightly soiled, but a very good or better copy.
7 x 7.75 plastic ring bound Catalog with many full-page black and white photographic plates of the best of American postwar Modern design (circa 1949), including furniture, fabrics, household products, typewriters, cutlery, appliances, toys, interiors, glass etc. The photographs are reproduced on matte paper and the text is on a variety of uncoated, colored newsprint. Cover illustrations by Saul Steinberg. The index includes full listings for all 578 items exhibited. All pieces are identified by designer and manufacturer. I suspect this information could be useful to some people out there.
These items were originally gathered by Alexander Girard and exhibited at the Detroit Institute of Arts from September 11 to November 20, 1949 as AN EXHIBITION FOR MODERN LIVING. Catalog from an American-curated exhibition in Krefeld from March 28 to April 25, 1954.
Designers and manufacturers represented in this Catalog include: Isamu Noguchi, Herman Miller Furniture Company, Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, Martin Freedgood, Davis Pratt, William Lam, Eero Saarinen, Hendrik Van Keppel and Taylor Green, Edward Wormley, George Nakashima, Harvey Probber, Ray Komai, Joseph Salerno, Fred Tydor, Harry Dalm, L. J. Zerbee and Don Hilliker, B. G. Bruening, Kurt Versen, Gerald Thurston, Greta Magnussen Grossman, T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings, James Prestini, Alexander Giampietro, Gertrud and Otto Natzler, Walter Heintze, Mary and Edward Scheier, Moss Rose, Theodore Randall, F. Carlton Ball, Minnie Negoro, LaGardo Tackett, John Kennedy, Bob Stocksdale, Maurice Heaton, Eva Zeisel, G. Howlett Davis, Freda Diamond, Allan Adler, George Thompson, The International Silver Company, Trudi and Harold Sitterle, John May, Ernest Lichtblau, Steuben Glass, Scalamandre Silk, Michael Belangie, Karl Laurell, Marianne Strengell, Juliet and Gyorgy Kepes, Dorothy Liebes, Presto Plastics, Ray Eames, Firestone Plastics, Dorothy Rice, Emily Belding, Charles Bloom, J. H. Barnes, Stanislav V’Soske, Earline Brice, John Cleeland, Peter Muller-Munk, James Hvale, Mark Maynard, John Hays Hammond, Lewis Salton, Earl S. Tupper, Richard Gaige, E. M. Zelony, Ladislas Medgyes, Robert Heidemann, Harry Berner, Eliott Noyes, and many others.
Edgar Kaufmann Jr. (American, 1910 – 1989) studied painting and typography in Europe before serving as an apprentice architect at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Foundation from 1933 to 1934. The Kaufmanns of Pittsburgh commissioned two of the iconic American residences of the 20th-century, Wright’s Fallingwater in 1936 and then Richard Neutra’s Palm Springs Desert House in 1946. Edgar Jr. joined the Museum of Modern Art in 1946 as director of the Industrial Design Department, a position he held until 1955. While at MoMA, he initiated the Good Design program (1950–1955) and was a strong proponent of uniform industrial design education standards.