Design

William Finden and his younger brother, Edward, were renowned English engravers. Their smooth, neat style proved popular and soon the brothers engaged several assistants to publish volumes of engraved plates depicting aspects of English society. Views of Ports and Harbours is one such volume. As the preface describes, this work is comprised of views of most of the principal ports, naval stations, watering places, and fishing-towns on the English coast from Berwick-upon-Tweed to Plymouth.

The Cooper Hewitt Library has a large collection of books on interior design of many countries, eras, and styles. This book discusses the important and influential Art Deco period. It features furnishings, including wallpaper samples, for many different living and working spaces. Extremely bold colors and styles demonstrate great imagination in promoting modern design. August Trueb, German architect and graphic designer, was active in Stuttgart in the 1920s and 1930s.  He was first trained as an architect but later turned to interior decoration, then advertising art.

This stunningly illustrated book is the work of distinguished German mineralogist Gustav Adolph Kenngott (1818-1897). Particularly interested in crystallography, Kenngott was the first to describe enstatite, a rare green mineral which can be cut as a gemstone. This volume is a distillation of his work intended for “the visual instruction of the young in school and with family.” In addition to its gorgeous multi-colored plates, it is significant in that it remains in its original pictorial binding, complete with advertisements for other natural history books!

In this novel, the titular "Gardener” is the book’s author, Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright and “The Commuter” is based on her husband, James Osborne Wright. The dedication reads “This Book belongs to the Commuter.” The story is filled with people who love family and nature, and the black-and-white photos invite the viewer into this genteel world. The Gardener is inspired to make her husband’s home a place of beauty and serenity. Mabel Osgood Wright (American, 1859-1934) was a remarkable and accomplished woman.

Ronald Cohen, architect and artist, was born in South Africa and later moved to London where he succeeded as an interior designer. On holidays, he traveled and painted widely in Europe, South America, the Middle East, and Africa, always drawn to different varieties of architecture.  “But then I discovered Cape Town,” he wrote, “and there I found absolutely everything to delight my senses—the wonderful clarity of the light, the expansive golden beaches, the granite rocks and the sparkling sea . . .

Kawanabe Kyōsai (1831-1889) is considered to be an important successor to artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). Kyōsai was also Japan’s first political caricaturist. He was imprisoned a number of times by the shogunate for his disrespectful art. When not painting caricatures he often chose subjects from folklore, nature, religion, and the Nô drama. Harold Stern, former director of the Freer Gallery of Art, proposed mounting the first major exhibition of Kyōsai’s work but that plan was dropped with Stern’s untimely death in 1976.

The ancient city of Palmyra was, for a number of centuries, an important trading center for materials transported across the Silk Road to and from many points in Asia and the Middle East. Much of our current understanding of silk in antiquity comes from the study of material from Palmyra. This book on Palmyra textiles picks up from earlier scholarship, seeking to identify the origin of these silks and to expand their cultural context.

Chokwe (an ethnic group from central and southern Africa) murals are among the best known and most thoroughly documented in Central Africa. These designs painted on the outer clay walls of their houses were community works by both adults and children. The murals reproduced here are replicas based on the José Redinha’s photographs and watercolors.

Carpets and Fabrics is a portfolio volume about the famous series of textile design pattern books published in 1929 by Charles Moreau in Paris. Textile artist Sonia Delaunay edited this collection of textiles, created by her contemporary Art Deco and modernist designers. Like her own work, the designs incorporate geometric shapes and abstract patterns for rugs and fabrics, the idea of modernism being that the overall design of interiors and fashion be a coordinated look.

In 1897, an unauthorized party of 250 British merchants and African soldiers disguised as porters approached the powerful city of Benin, located in what is now southern Nigeria, intending to overthrow its king and reestablish a once lucrative trade outpost. They were ambushed en route, only two men survived. In revenge, the British sent a punitive expedition to Benin which destroyed the city.

Ornamental Textile Fabrics of All Ages and Nations: A Practical Collection of Specimens features specimens from Auguste Dupont-Auberville's collection of ornamental textile designs. The samples, reproduced as simple chromolithographs, serve as a showcase of European, Eastern, and Egyptian design elements used in textile production throughout history.

Whether romantic farces in black-and-white or western epics in Technicolor, movies from Hollywood's golden age were introduced to the world by entrancing posters. The Lost Artwork of Hollywood is a tribute to the illustrators and artists who created posters and other promotional materials to spark the imagination of the public. Focusing on movies of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, the book contains over 100 images from film promotional materials, many of them full-page reproductions.

Four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie...Imagine those blackbirds popping out at you! The Pop-Up Mother Goose includes surprises on every page. Author Harold Lentz was a commercial artist who delved into the world of book publication in the 1930s, when he designed a series of colorful fairy tales, incorporating imaginative drawings and paper engineering. Lentz and his publisher were the first to coin the term "pop-up" to describe their surprising design. Produced and sold during the Great Depression, these imaginative books provided readers a joyful distraction.

This catalog was published in conjunction with the two-part exhibition “Paul McCarthy's Low Life Slow Life,” curated by the artist, which took place at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts on the San Francisco campus of California College of the Arts from 2008-2009. Packaged as a recreation of a vintage Tide detergent box circa 1973, this publication was designed by McCarthy to serve as an extension of the show and as an artwork in itself.

The International Exposition of 1867 (Exposition universelle de 1867), was the second world's fair to be held in Paris and featured 703 exhibitors from the United States. This volume includes 17 highly detailed black and white photographs credited to M. Léon and J. Levy. These featured American technology-themed exhibits such as the McCormick reaper from Chicago, Weed Sewing Machine Co., W.D. Andrews & Bro. steam and gas engines, and Smiths NY Ales displaying many more than 99 bottles of beer on the wall!

Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) created detailed and elaborate etchings illustrating the antiquities of Rome as well as a fictitious and atmospheric series entitled Carceri d'invenzione (Imaginary Prisons). The Smithsonian Libraries is fortunate to own several first-editions of Piranesi’s publications, including his book on fireplaces and mantels entitled Diversi Maniere d'Adornare i Cammini and “vedute” or views of Rome, an example of which is this 1761 folio.

The muted colors and illustrative style of the Arts & Crafts movement period are featured in this color trade catalog from 1912-13. The company focused on making large wallpaper friezes, and was one of the first companies to develop a washable color wallpaper printed with oils that could be cleaned with a damp cloth or sponge. It was called San-kro-mura, the “sanitary” wall covering. The company produced wallpaper with panoramic views of mountains, deserts, forests, lakes, and scenic narratives of folklore and history.

This is a rare 1935 portfolio of Art Deco style pochoir printed full-color plates of designs for modern interiors. Among the designers whose work is represented in this portfolio are Francis Jourdain, Pierre Chareau, Georges Djo-Bourgeois, and the author, Henry Delacroix himself. Living rooms, children’s rooms, bedrooms, offices, dining rooms, and libraries are included, along with the room’s furnishings, such as furniture, lighting, and decorative accessories.

A rare collection of items related to the Bostwick Gate and Shutter Company, this assortment of ephemera includes the patent for Alfred Clark’s Collapsible Gates, his identification card for his entry into the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle Internattionale, and a miniature brass sample of the known “Bostwick Gates.” Highly regarded for his ingenious folding gate design, this trade catalogue directly connects Cooper Hewitt’s existing World’s Fair collection with affordable practicality in industrial design.

Cassandre, pseudonym of Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron (1901 –1968), was a French painter, commercial poster artist, and typeface designer whose inventive graphic techniques show influences of Surrealism and Cubism. He was very popular in Europe and the United States during the 1930s. In 1935, Cassandre signed an exclusive contract with the firm of Draeger Freres for the French editions of his posters. Draeger, a French printer who published some of the masterpieces of French design was a pioneer of advertising.

This beautifully illustrated English version of the German Die Wiener Werkstätte, 1903-1928 : Modernes Kunstgewerbe und Sein Weg, commemorates the artists and design of the Wiener Werkstätte - a production community of visual artists founded by Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann which was active in Vienna from 1903 to 1928. The book is an artistic novelty, or "Kachelband," designed by Mathilde Flögl (1893-1950), inspired by Hoffman and incorporating innovative use of typography, layout, and bold colors such as gold, silver, red, and black.

This first and only edition of the earliest book on decorative arts designer Dagobert Peche (1881-1923), written by art historian and Vienna University professor Max Eisler (1881-1937), includes 100 full plates of Peche’s designs for lamps, glass, textiles, ceramics, jewelry, silverware, wallpaper, and interiors. Peche became artistic director of the Wiener Werkstätte in 1915, a production community of visual artists founded by Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann in Vienna in 1903.

This is an illustrated catalog of the significant glass collection of Felix Slade (1790-1868), noted philanthropist, bibliophile, and collector of engravings and etchings, whose scholarships formed the London Slade School of Art. He prepared the Slade Catalogue of his glass collection, edited after his death, which he hoped would “be useful in encouraging the study and practice of this country (England)." In the preface, he explains his early attraction to Venetian glass, and expanded his scope to include specimens of various ages and countries.

The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library owns over 4,000 photographs by American photographer and journalist Thérèse Bonney, (1894-1978), who documented life in Paris from 1925-35.

This is a first edition of an important pattern book containing 31 chromolithographics designed by Augustus Welby Pugin (1812-1852) and inspired by design forms found in nature. Pugin, best known as the designer of the interiors of Houses of Parliament (1836-1868) in collaboration with Sir Charles Barry (1795-1860), was a proponent of Neo-Gothic as a national style for England.

Wendingen (Dutch:Inversions / Upheaval) was an art magazine published from 1918 to 1932. It was a monthly publication aimed at architects and interior designers, and included discussions on graphics, sculpture, ceramics, glass, and theatrical design. The magazine gained recognition not only through its content but also by its remarkable square format, striking typography, and beautiful covers. In 1924, vol.

Owen Jones (1809-1874), one of the most influential English architects, designers, and design theorists of the nineteenth century, wrote this book. Jones selected 100 full-color plates sourced from the motifs of Chinese ceramics, cloisonné works, and carpet designs. In the preface, Jones notes that these magnificent works of Chinese ornament had rarely been seen before the 1860s, describing them as "remarkable, not only for the perfection and skill shown in the technical processes, but also for the beauty and harmony of the colouring, and general perfection of the ornamentation.”