John Eberson (1875 – 1954) American Designer famous for the atmospheric theatre

John Eberson (1875 – 1954) was an american designer who was known for his cinema décors. One of his earliest, the 1923 Majestic Theatre in Houston, Texas, was a loosely recreated garden of a late-Renaissance palazzo in Italy. Through his workshop Michelangelo Studios, he was was successful at producing elaborate plasterwork for his theatre décors in Spanish, Moorish, Dutch, Chinese and other styles.

Over the course of his 50-year career, he designed over 500 theatres. He earned the moniker “Father of Atmospheric Theatre.”

Majestic Theatre Houston Texas designed by John Eberson
Majestic Theatre Houston Texas designed by John Eberson

Biography

John Eberson was born in Bukovina, Romania in 1875 and studied at the University of Vienna in 1893 and immigrated to the United States in 1901.

“We visualise and dream magnificent amphitheater, an Italian Garden, a Persian Court, a Spanish patio, or an Egyptian templyard, all canopied by a soft moonlight sky.”

John Eberson

Eberson settled in St Louis Missouri, where he learned theater design while working for the Johnston Theatrical firm. Upon gaining knowledge of all facets of theatre building he moved to Hamilton, Ohio, in 1904, where he continued his architectural practice.

The Atmospheric Theatre

While he also planned conventional theatres, he was best known for the unique concept of atmospheric design. He provided theatre audiences with a romantic fantasy escape, an outrageously diverse architectural tradition. His work took on four basic atmospheric styles: Moorish, Persian Courtyards, Italian Gardens and Egyptian Temples.

Iris at Kalamazoo State Theatre
Iris at Kalamazoo State Theatre

While other designers hung elaborate chandeliers Eberson created simple Mediterranean blue evening skies with wispy clouds and twinkling lights simulating stars, which brought his design costs to 25% less than other builders of the day.

The Atmospheric Theatre – the experience

An atmospheric theatre recreated the sensation of being in an exotic outdoor setting, typically a Mediterranean courtyard or garden, with an azure sky overhead. The introduction of new technology in the form of the Brenograph projector resulted in wispy clouds drifting lazily across cerulean heavens, which were actually a domed plaster ceiling resembling that of a planterium. As the film began, the illusion of a sunset began, gradually deepening to a deep velvet mauve. Twinkling lights in constellation patterns became visible as the ceiling was revealed.

Eberson’s goal was to bring the outside in. His nine “P” motto was: Prepare Practical Plans for Pretty Playhouses – Please Patrons – Pay Profits.

With the 1923 opening of The Majestic in Houston, Texas, Eberson’s first atmospheric theatre came the demand for the more of the same. He built in many different parts of the United States as well as overseas. But, as quickly as the birth of the atmospheric theatre arrived, it departed. In just seven short years, with the arrival of the Great Depression came the death of the boom of Eberson’s atmospherics.

Anderson Paramount Theatre Indiania designed by John Eberson
Anderson Paramount Theatre Indiania designed by John Eberson

Sources

Byars, M., & Riley, T. (2004). The design encyclopedia. Laurence King Publishing.

Naylor, D. (1981). American picture palaces: the architecture of fantasy. Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Williams, C. M., & Froehlich, D. E. (n.d.). In Contribution and Confusion: Architecture and the Influence of other Fields of Inquiry = 2003 ACSA International Conference. https://www.acsa-arch.org/proceedings/International%20Proceedings/ACSA.Intl.2003/ACSA.Intl.2003.80.pdf.

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    Her family settled in the USA when she was in her teens and took the Carnegie name. In 1909, with a friend, she opened a tiny dress and hat shop, New York, known as Carnegie—Ladies’ Hatter.Read More →

  • George Nakashima (1905 – 1990) American woodworker and designer

    George Nakashima (1905 – 1990) American woodworker and designer

    In 1934, he worked in the Indian office of American architect Antonin Raymond. In 1937, in the Tokyo office, he studied Japanese carpentry techniques. In 1941, he set up his first workshop in Seattle. In 1942 in Idaho, Nakashima studied with an old Japanese carpenter until Antonin Raymond arranged his release. Read More →

  • Elbert Green Hubbard (1856 – 1915) American furniture designer

    Elbert Green Hubbard (1856 – 1915) American furniture designer

    Elbert Green Hubbard (1856 – 1915) was an American furniture designer. Hubbard met William Morris in 1894 and the following year inspired by Morris’s Kelmscott Press, founded the Raycroft Press’ East Aurora, near Buffalo, New York. He was the founder of the Roycrofters, an Arts and Crafts community; he organized workshops, lectured, and wrote as…

  • Frank Nuovo (b.1961) Chief Designer for Nokia

    Frank Nuovo (b.1961) Chief Designer for Nokia

    Nuovo studied product and automotive design and graphics and communications design at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.Read More →

  • Faience Manufacturing Company – the heart of American ceramics

    Faience Manufacturing Company – the heart of American ceramics

    The Faience Manufacturing Company was an American manufacturing company that operated between 1880 – 1892 in the Greenpoint area of Brooklyn, New York. There is little evidence of the remains of the Company as it failed in 1892.Read More →

  • Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) American sculptor and designer.

    Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) American sculptor and designer.

    Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988), was an American sculptor and designer. He was born in Los Angeles and professionally active in New York. He was influential and well-received in the twentieth century. He produced sculptures, gardens, furniture and lighting designs, ceramics, architecture, and set designs throughout his lifetime of creative experimentation. His work, both subtle and bold,…

  • Ulrich Franzen (1921 – 2012) German-born American architect and designer

    Ulrich Franzen (1921 – 2012) German-born American architect and designer

    Ulrich Franzen, the German-born American architect, was a leading figure in the first post-war generation of American architects; including Paul Rudolph, Harry Cobb, John Maclane Johansen, and Philip Johnson. Read More →

  • Geoffrey Beene (1927-2004) an American Fashion Designer

    Geoffrey Beene (1927-2004) an American Fashion Designer

    Geoffrey Beene (1927 – 2004) was an American fashion designer; born Haynesville, Louisiana. He was a premed student at Tulane University when he found himself sketching gowns when he became bored during his lectures. Along with Bill Blass, he was regarded as the Godfather of American sportswear. Read More →

  • Raymond Loewy (1893 – 1986) 🇺🇸 American Designer

    Raymond Loewy (1893 – 1986) 🇺🇸  American Designer

    He arrived in the United States in 1929, just in time for the great depression. As it happened the beginning of the depression was a fortuitous time for a talented designer with new ideas to arrive in the United States. The old design aesthetic was disappearing with the collapsing economy. Manufacturers wanted to stimulate demand…

  • Angelo Testa (1921 – 1984) American fabric designer

    Angelo Testa (1921 – 1984) American fabric designer

    Angelo Testa (1921 – 1984) was an American fabric designer. He studied at the Institute of Design, Chicago, to 1945. As well as being a fabric designer, he was a painter and sculptor. He designed the 1941 Little Man abstract floral fabric, widely published and hailed as a new direction in textile design. It all…

  • How Paul Rand influenced Steve Jobs to accept the the visual identity for NeXT.

    How Paul Rand influenced Steve Jobs to accept the the visual identity for NeXT.

    During Steve Job’s time at NeXT he commissioned graphic designer Paul Rand to create the visual identity for NeXT. Rand had the reputation for exerting great influence on his clients, he created a 100-page branding book to help Steve Jobs understand the entire design process hidden behind the NeXT identity. Read More →

  • Calvin Klein (b.1942) American fashion designer

    Calvin Klein (b.1942) American fashion designer

    Klein’s excellent, modest tailoring and beautiful sportswear lines, as well as his casual separates created in the finest linens, silks, and cashmere, had earned him a name by the mid-1970sRead More →

  • Hartmut Esslinger (b.1945) a German Industrial Designer

    Hartmut Esslinger (b.1945) a German Industrial Designer

    Hartmut Esslinger (born June 5, 1944) is a German-American industrial designer and inventor. He is best known for founding the design consultancy frog, and his work for Apple Computers in the early 1980s.Read More →

  • Alexey Brodovitch (1898 – 1971) 🇺🇸 🇷🇺 graphic designer and magazine art director

    Alexey Brodovitch (1898 – 1971) 🇺🇸 🇷🇺  graphic designer and magazine art director

    Alexey Brodovitch (1898 – 1971) was an American/Russian graphic designer and magazine art director. Alexey Brodovitch was born in Russia and worked in Paris in the 1920s, creating books, posters, furniture, and advertising. He moved to America in 1930 and worked as the art director of Harper’s Bazaar magazine in New York after a brief…

  • Paul McCobb (1917 – 1969) American furniture designer

    Paul McCobb (1917 – 1969) American furniture designer

    One of the leading designers of the American design movement from the mid-20th centuryRead More →

  • Hilton McConnico (1943 – 2018) American interior and furniture designer

    Hilton McConnico (1943 – 2018) American interior and furniture designer

    Hilton McConnico ( 1943 – 2018) was American furniture and interior designer. He was born in Memphis, Tennessee. He worked professionally in Paris.Read More →

  • Dominick Labino (1910 – 1987) American glassware designer and ceramicist

    Dominick Labino (1910 – 1987) American glassware designer and ceramicist

    He began his work as an instrument builder for the Bacharach Instrument Company in Pittsburgh. He then moved on to Owens-Illinois Glass Company, where he developed a lifetime interest in glass. He established small laboratories to create new glass batches and fabricate small glass objects while in command of the Owens-Illinois Glass Company milk-bottle plant.…

  • Harvey Littleton (1922 – 2013) American glassware designer

    Harvey Littleton (1922 – 2013) American glassware designer

    Between 1939-42 and 1946-47, he studied at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, receiving a bachelor’s degree in design. In 1941 and 1949-51, he studied Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, receiving a master’s degree in ceramics. In 1945, he was a student at the Brighton School of Art, Brighton, under Nora Braden’s…

  • Ray and Charles Eames a partnership

    Ray and Charles Eames a partnership

    They were full collaborators as husband and wife. Design is infrequently a solitary endeavour, and husband-and-wife teams are not uncommon. The collaborative nature of the Eames work, on the other hand, was easily obscured by Charles’s widespread public recognition as an individual designer and thinker.Read More →

  • John Eberson (1875 – 1954) American Designer famous for the atmospheric theatre

    John Eberson (1875 – 1954) American Designer famous for the atmospheric theatre

    John Eberson was an american designer who was known for his cinema décors. One of his earliest, the 1923 Majestic Theatre in Houston, Texas, was a loosely recreated garden of a late-Renaissance palazzo in Italy. Through his workshop Michelangelo Studios, he was was successful at producing elaborate plasterwork for his theatre décors in Spanish, Moorish,…

  • Emeco American Designer Furniture

    Emeco American Designer Furniture

    Wilton C. Dinges founded the Electric Machine and Equipment Company (Emeco) in 1944 with $300 in savings and a used lathe for machine work. He started bidding on government manufacturing contracts out of a loft in Baltimore, Maryland, beginning with experimental antennas and jet engine parts. Read More →

  • LaGardo Tackett (1911 – 1992) American Ceramicist

    LaGardo Tackett (1911 – 1992) American Ceramicist

    He ran a pottery studio from 1946 to 1954. He taught at Los Angeles’s California School of Design, where he and his students developed outdoor pottery planters, which resulted in establishing the Architectural Pottery in 1950.Read More →

  • Arthur J. Pulos (1917- 1993) American industrial designer and educator

    Arthur J. Pulos (1917- 1993) American industrial designer and educator

    Arthur Pulos (1917 – 1993) was a well-known design teacher, promoter, and industrial designer. Arthur Pulos was renowned for his writings, lectures in developed and developing nations, and involvement with important organizations like the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID).Read More →

  • Tucker Viemeister (b.1948) American Product Designer

    Tucker Viemeister (b.1948) American Product Designer

    Tucker Viemeister graduated from Yellow Springs High School in 1966, went to two different colleges. He ended up studying industrial design at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, from which he graduated with a degree in industrial design in 1974. Read More →

  • Dakota Jackson (b.1950) American furniture designer

    Dakota Jackson (b.1950) American furniture designer

    Dakota Jackson is an American furniture designer best known for his Dakota Jackson furniture line. He was a magician’s son, and by the time he was six, he became a professional magician. He performed in public until his early 20s.Read More →

  • Thomas Molesworth (1890 – 1977) an American furniture designer

    Thomas Molesworth (1890 – 1977) an American furniture designer

    Molesworth ranch style furniture has inspired contemporary Western furniture designers such as Jim Covert, Jeff Morris and Marc Tagesger with its large brass pads, Native American motifs and wildfire imagery.Read More →

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Oliver Messel (1904 – 1978) British theatre, film and interior designer – Encyclopedia of Design

Oliver Messel was a British theatre, film, and interior designer who lived from 1904 to 1978. He worked professionally in London and Barbados. He attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London. He met Rex Whistler at the Slade, with whom he began making papier-maché masks.

Josef Pohl (1894 – 1975) Czech lighting designer – Encyclopedia of Design

Josef Pohl (1894 – 1975) was a Czech lighting designer. He designed the 1929 precursor of the adjustable lamp. Gerd Balzer produced his model. As part of its Kamden collection, Korting und Mathieson created a similar lamp. Pohl and others at the Bauhaus also executed the prototype adjustable wall lamp illustrated in Staaliches Bauhaus, Weimar and produced by Jucker.

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