Incollect Magazine - Issue 4

2023 Incollect Magazine 119 enabled objects to be mass produced for a consumer society. The left-leaning politics and core social mission of the Bauhaus, though, fell on deaf ears. Some members of the new generation of modern American designers were American-born, but many were European immigrants, among them several key members of the German Bauhaus (including Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe) after the Nazis closed the Bauhaus’s Dresden design school in 1933. American-born or not, by the end of the 1930s a pioneering group of designers using new materials and new industrial technologies had developed an American modern design style that was a product of this cocktail of social, cultural, economic and political influences. The list of designers who contributed to the emergence of a uniquely American design aesthetic is long and varied, for American society in all areas — commercial, industrial, domestic — underwent a profound change in the decades between the Wars. These designers included Paul T. Frankl, Raymond Loewy, Donald Deskey, Kem Weber, Jock Peters, Gilbert Rohde, Norman Bel Geddes, Russel Wright, Walter Dorwin Teague, Walter Von Nessen, Warren McArthur and Henry Dreyfuss. “There are really two facets of unique American modernist design,” says Sadofski. “These styles are Skyscraper design and Streamline Moderne design.” Skyscraper-style furniture and objects originated in the mid-1920s and Streamline Moderne originated in the 1930s. Paul Frankl, the central creator of Skyscraper design, Paul T. Frankl Skyscraper Sideboard for Frankl Galleries NY, circa 1928. Rare and important lacquered sideboard in two-tone yellow ochre finish with silver leaf ornamentation, original mirrored tops, glass shelves, bullet hinges, faceted solid brass silver leafed hardware and silver plated shelf ornamentation. This cabinet was produced in Frankl’s workshop and sold through his gallery on 48th Street in New York. One of the earliest examples of American Modernism in all original condition. From 20cdesign. Pair of lounge chairs designed by Donald Deskey for Radio City Music Hall, NYC in 1932. Deskey was commissioned to oversee all aspects of the interior of Radio City Music Hall, and stated as his goal, “We hope to impress the customers by sheer elegance, not by overwhelming them with ornament.” Recovered in vintage light sand-colored leather with mahogany detailing, from TFTM.