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. Studies Between 1941-44,Read More →
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, traditional and modern, set a new standard for reintegrating the arts.Read More →
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 →
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 →
Jay Spectre (1930 – 1992) was an American Interior and furniture designer. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky. He was professionally active in New York.
He began his interior design career in 1951 in Louisville. In 1968, he established the design company Jay Spectre, in New York. He designed interiors for luxury homes, private jet aircraft, yachts, and offices, which showed Art Deco, Asian, and African influences with high-tech and hand-carved elements. Read More →
Florence Koehler was an American artist, craftsperson, designer, and jeweller, professionally active in Chicago, London and Rome. She was one of the best-known jewellers of the Arts and Crafts movement that flourished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In Chicago, Koehler’s jewellery in a crafts style was fashionable in artistic circles. Koehler became one of the American crafts-revival leaders in jewellery, related more to French than English styles.Read More →
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 for their products by offering customers new designs, and Loewy had an abundance of them with the ego to match. His mother had always told him, “It is better to be envied than pitied.”Read More →
William Van Alen (1883 – 1954) was an American architect born in Brooklyn, New York. He was professionally active in New York.Read More →
End of WWII a revolution in furniture design. Womb and shell chairs, biomorphic tables, cat’s cradle pedestals, and architectural shapes are reminiscent of the Second World War’s fertile furniture design era.Read More →
Charles Eames, a distinguished American designer, filmmaker and architect, studied architecture at Washington University in St. Louis in 1924. In the early 1930s, having worked in private practice, he received a fellowship in 1936 to study architecture and design at the Academy of Art in Cranbrook, which proved to be a valuable experience. Read More →
John Mascheroni is an American furniture and industrial designer. He studied at the Pratt Insitute in Brooklyn New York. He opened his own design office and furniture factory in New York. Mascheroni designed furniture for manufactures in High Point, North Carolina. From 1990, his furniture designs were produced by Swaim and, from 1991, others by Jeffco.Read More →
Danny Ho Fong was a Chinese American furniture manufacturer. He was born in Canton and professionally active in San Francisco and Los Angeles.Read More →
Sam Maloof, whose simple, elegant wooden furniture he designed and handmade, made him a central figure in the American post-war craft movement. Read More →
Oscar Onken (1858 – 1948) was an American entrepreneur. He was professionally active in Ohio. Onken was a prominent businessman and philanthropist. Impressed with the Gustav Stickley and Austrian stands at the 1904 St. Louis ‘Louisiana Purchase Exposition,’ he founded The Shop of the Crafts in Cincinnati in 1904. Read More →
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 a highly effective champion of the Arts and Crafts philosophy.Read More →
Dorothy Draper (1889 – 1969) was an American interior designer. She was born in Tuxedo Park, New York. Draper’s upper-crust upbringing, Tuxedo Park was one of the first gated communities in the United States. Dorothy’s parents were part of an old New England family with longstanding social connections. Dorothy’s childhood was spent playing in high-ceilinged ballrooms.Read More →
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 →
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 →
Herbert Bayer was an American; painter, photographer, architect, designer, and sculptor. His unspecialised approach to art and design reflected his Bauhaus training emphasizing basic principles of visual communication. He emerged as a veritable one-person band of modernism, able to address problems of form in practically any medium. Read More →
Paul Bacon was not a household name, but anyone who has a passion for books will have seen his works. Bacon was an artist, who used minimal imagery and bold typography to sell famous novels such as, “Catch 22” by Joseph Heller, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest’s and PhillipRead More →
