INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
Raymond Loewy
Raymond Loewy: INDUSTRIAL DESIGN. Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1979. First edition. Square quarto. Photo illustrated dust jacket. Red silken cloth stamped in gold. Decorated endpapers. 252 pp. One fold-out. 700 + color and black and white illustrations. Remainder stamp to textblock tail. Interior unmarked and very clean. Out-of-print. A nearly fine copy in a nearly fine dust jacket.
10.75 x 10.75 hardcover book printed on glossy stock, 252 pages, with more than 700 color and black and white illustrations, sketches and photographs, including a full color fold-out.
The name Raymond Loewy is synonymous with industrial design. Loewy was one of the "big four" industrial designers, along with Walter Dorian Teague, Norman Bel Geddes and Henry Dreyfuss. This book is his personal testament to his legacy. A very impressive volume for aficionados of 20-th century industrial design.
- Introduction: my life in design
- Industrial design by the decades
- Design illustrations and text
- Gestetner
- Hupmobile
- Pennsylvania Railroad
- Princess Anne
- Coldspot
- International Harvester
- Starliner
- Avanti
- Shell
- NASA
- Maya
- Appendices
Raymond Loewy arrived in New York from France in 1922 with little more than his military uniform (which he had redesigned) and a $40 pension, but a sketch he'd made en route earned him an invitation to Condé Nast and other publishers to work as an illustrator. Soon celebrated as an expert on the new fashion of art deco, Loewy moved from illustration to window dressing for Macy's to his first industrial design, a duplicating machine for the British Gestetner company. By the end of the 1940s Loewy International proclaimed itself as the largest design agency in New York, responsible for the look of everything from lipsticks to locomotives. This book describes Loewy's impact on American design, fashion, and industry, and looks at such design successes as steam and diesel-electric train engines, the Studenaker Starline and Avanti cars, the Coldspot refrigerator and the Hallicrafter radio, and pioneering shop interiors for Lord and Taylor and Foley's.
Often referred to as the century of design, the 20th century saw the rise of the engineer-artist, the industrial designer who created the forms and the functionality of the products that advances in technology and industry made possible. This series looks at some of the most important designers of the mid-century, offering critical analyses of their careers and designs, illustrated with black and white photos and drawings on nearly every page.