In 1953, the Akron Art Insitute held an exhibit called Young Designers 1953. It featured about two dozen furniture makers, potters, fabric artists, etc, under 35 and "not yet nationally established in the design field," including Arthur Umanoff, Gene Tepper, Jane and Gordon Martz – I think those are the best known. My father (Archie Kaplan, then of New Dimensions Furniture aka Designed for Moderns) was in the exhibit and as a result I have two copies of the catalog -- booklet, really. I'd like to give one to some library or museum, so that a researcher could have a chance of finding it.
I offered it to the Akron Art Museum, successor to the Akron Art Insitute, which accepted so grudgingly that I don't want to give it to them. (I'd expressed the hope that some day it might be digitized, so that people could find it online. They bothered to assure me that that would never ever happen.) I tried the Getty. No reply. It's not the holy grail of mid-century documentation, just a picture and a couple paragraphs on each designer, but it's not doing anyone any good in my bookcase.
I think (based on the fact that I grew up with some Martz pottery and my father said he got it by trading with the Martzes) that the designers went to the exbiit and met each other, so that might be interesting, too.
Can anyone think of a library or museum which might want this catalog? Cooper Hewitt, maybe? In the Frank Bros thread, Minimoma suggested a couple design schools, which sounds promising. Anyone know anyone? Anyone have any suggestions?
Why don't you make high quality scans and post them here? They will get much, much wider distribution and attention than I would imagine they will get in any sort of "brick and mortar" archive.
edit: it is about time I post another catalog from my collection on here. Been threatening to do so for a while now...
leif ericson,
"edit: it is about time I post another catalog from my collection on here. Been threatening to do so for a while now..."
How about the Povl Dinesen catalog I have been asking you to post....
At least post the page that has the lamps you helped me identify so I can store it in my collection folder. I keep all the receipts and information about the pieces I buy so if I ever sell them I have an exact account of what I have into each piece as well as documentation: catalog pictures, press ads, past auction results ect........
Thanks,
Peruche
Thanks leif ericson,
Here is a link to the original post over on the identification board.
http://www.designaddict.com/forum/Identification/Unique-Danish-Table-Lam...
Peruche
Leif, I'll post scans here, though the ones I did on my little scanner aren't good enough quality .. what I mean is, I'll post as soon as I find the time to get decent scans, post, etc ... but I'd like to donate the thing as well. Even my own Los Angeles Public Library is deeply into digitizing .. surely design libraries can follow suit.
Kate Kaplan, since you are in Los Angeles, besides SCI-Arc downtown, also try contacting The Art center College of Design in Pasadena, Woodbury School of Architecture in Burbank and UCLA Graduate program in Architecture or museum libraries at LACMA, MOCA, the Hammer, the Norton Simon Museum and also the Huntington Library to see if anyone will be interested in your catalog.
Or maybe start your own foundation of your father's work by applying some of the grants available to do this kind of thing.
This enticing discussion raises a subject I haven't had enough of, yet: the interplay between East Coast and West in the mid-century period of modernism. If a West Coast institution happily accepts this little catalog (one wonders how many other exhibitions in a similar vein graced American cities in those years . . .) it would be a sign that the West is still open and welcoming of the East-Coast/Continental influence -- as I believe it to have been, then, when Lost Angeles burst open with adventurous housing and craft design. Surely Harvard Graduate School of Design architects were aware of the Case Study program ? Was the favor returned by those wild and wooly Californians ?
Interesting questions, SDR. The designers in this exhibit were from all over the country - none from Los Angeles, but several from San Francisco. The exhibit was in conjunction with a magazine called Living for Young Homemakers .. as I get time, I'll try to see if it sponsored any other exhibits.
Yes, please make it available to all somewhere on-line and then donate it to the Kirkland Museum in Denver.
The Kirkland is a small decorative arts museum in Denver. Right now it is in a prominent deceased artists home but they broke ground on a new facility to display the 70% of their collection that is not on display. Most of their displays are of mid century modern and art deco, but they also have a very small amount of arts and crafts mission style.
I think the Smithsonian or someone named it one of the top ten museums in the country. Shockingly very few people know about the place. It's my favorite museum in the US. It's cozy and welcoming. They play Jazz while you're walking around. You can get closer to the pieces that you can when they are in a traditional museum behind glass so you can educate yourself about quality and authenticity. They have large library tables full of books where you can sit down and read about the designers.
They would probably like your catalog as well as the reasons it needs to be displayed in their collection.
The Kirkland is fantastic and I highly recommend it to anyone in the Denver area.
I've been to museums in Europe, Asia and all across the US. The newly opened Walton Family owned Crystal Bridges is good (and growing) for many reasons. But they are only focused on fine art-paintings. They started purchasing Frank Lloyd Wright homes and moving them there recently, so expect this place to get more interesting. The Chicago Museums, the New York museums...all fabulous. The Orsay...yes, yes wonderful next to the river in Paris. But the Kirkland has a quiet calm and intimacy. There is none of this commercial exhibit garbage that's taken over so many of our other museums. Or the boring trying to make ourselves relevant history of some regional museums. The last major museum exhibit I went to was of impressionists and I KID YOU NOT, they had some woman narrating the exhibit in a cheesy American come to Paris accent. It was tragic. The Kirkland on the other hand is a gem. 🙂
http://www.kirklandmuseum.org
My two cents regarding it going east or west-the museums on the coast have so much. When you think about donating, you might think of donating it somewhere that won't just dump it in a de-acquisitioning auction a few years from now. So many of them are doing that. Taking donations and then dumping it.
My vote would still be for the Kirkland because American Decorative Arts is what they are interested in, what they are building a collection around, etc. But ask any museum you consider donating anything to if they are going to display it so people can see it and learn from it, or will it just be thrown in a warehouse somewhere until sale date?
Thanks, Keewee and SDR. I'm not so worried about a sale of this thing, because I can't see that it has much monetary value, though I might have an easier time placing it if I pretended that it did (RARE!) and tried to sell it ... I am worried about file-and-forget, or plain old discard. Whatever else I do, I'll get better scans and post here, but I start an MFA program (writing) in January and right now I'm up to my eyeballs in Literature. Time consuming.
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