The Century Of Modern Design

One of the world's most important collections of 20th century design, The Stewart Collection incorporates iconic furniture, ceramics, textiles, posters, graphic art, jewelry and everyday objects from the 1930s to today. This book presents items chronologically, highlighting contrasts and parallels between the works.

"Illustrated with over 500 photographs, A Century of Design is unique in providing a designer-by designer review within a historical context, revealing the connections between designers and major design movements from around the world from Art Nouveau to Postmodernism and beyond. Each chapter explains the background and orgins of the century's most important style movements, period by period. The most influential internationally known designers of the 20th century are discussed, their major works are featured and their sources of inspiration outlined. A Century of Design covers everything from telephones to textiles, cutlery to computers."--BOOK JACKET.

Essential reading for all collectors and design aficionados, this book is the ultimate survey of mid- century modern design and architecture now available in a sleek, compact form. A definitive survey of mid-century modern design and architecture in an accessible compact edition, this book offers a rich overview of one of the most popular, collectable, and dynamic periods of design. With rich and diverse examples of everything from furniture and lighting to ceramics and textiles to graphics and posters to interior design and architecture, this sleek compendium of mid-century style includes over 1,000 illustrations representing classic designs and little-seen rarities, as well as entries on nearly 100 major creators, such as Dieter Rams, Robin Day, Isamu Noguchi, Lucie Rie, Charles and Ray Eames, Alvar Aalto, and Oscar Niemeyer. An additional illustrated dictionary features hundreds more influential mid-century designers, manufacturers, organizations, schools, and movements. Organized into three parts—“Media and Masters,” with six sections on applied arts; “Houses and Interiors,” featuring twenty seminal homes and their furnishings; and an “A–Z of Designers and Makers”—and complete with thirteen specially commissioned essays by renowned experts, this illustrated book is a must-have for collectors, design aficionados, and anyone seeking inspiration for their home.

Mid-Century Modern Interiors explores the history of interior design during arguably its most iconic and influential period. The 1930s to the 1960s in the United States was a key moment for interior design. It not only saw the emergence of some of interior design's most globally-important designers, it also saw the field of interior design emerge at last as a profession in its own right. Through a series of detailed case studies this book introduces the key practitioners of the period – world-renowned designers including Ray and Charles Eames, Richard Neutra, and George Nelson – and examines how they developed new approaches by applying systematic and rational principles to the creation of interior spaces. It takes us into the mind of the designer to show how they each used interior design to express their varied theoretical interests, and reveals how the principles they developed have become embodied in the way interior design is practiced today. This focus on unearthing the underlying ideas and concepts behind their designs rather than on the finished results creates a richer, more conceptual understanding of this pivotal period in modernist design history. With an extended introduction setting the case studies within the broader context of twentieth-century design and architectural history, this book provides both an introduction and an in-depth analysis for students and scholars of interior design, architecture and design history.

Modern Schools: A Century of Design for Education is a comprehensive survey of modern K-12 schools from Frank Lloyd Wright to Morphosis an in-depth design study that explores the fundamental relationship between architecture, education, and the design of contemporary learning environments. Its focus is on the underlying design themes and characteristic features that support and enhance basic aspects of learning and, in the process, create an architectural expression that is both meaningful and lasting. The breadth of its scope includes influences of contemporary educational ideas and practices, related design concepts and strategies, and most importantly, the resulting impact of both on real environments for learning. This remarkable survey and project study the first of its kind is an essential and important sourcebook for architects, school planners, educators, and anyone else interested in contemporary school design. The body of work presented, which is international in scope, underscores the unique architectural potential of this important project type, and highlights design themes that remain fundamentally relevant for architects and designers today. Presentation material includes more than 900 contemporary and historical photographs, mostly in color, and more than 200 detailed architectural plans drawings of schools by many of the outstanding design architects of the modern era. Modern Schools: A Century of Design for Education features the work of more than 60 architects worldwide, including twentieth century masters Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvar Aalto, Marcel Breuer, Le Corbusier, and Eliel and Eero Saarinen, as well as contemporaries such as Morphosis, Coop Himmel(b)lau, Behnisch & Partners, and Patkau Architects, among many others.

This sophisticated A to Z picture book for adults is an illustrated journey through midcentury modern design, perfect for any reader with a keen eye for style. With eighty tales of design, laid out in a fun and easy-to-read A to Z format, design lovers will be reading this book to each other before bed. With an irreverent structure, this becomes a picture book for the refined adult. Each letter delves into one facet of this enduring era of design: midcentury modern homes, interior design, graphic design, and illustration, as well as the iconic personalities. We might all recognize the names--Charles and Ray Eames, Farnsworth House, the Egg Chair, Henningsen, Elrod House, the case study houses--but what are their stories? This book delves right into the facts and does so light-heartedly. We learn of the grand inspirations, or sometimes (it turns out) the very simplest of ideas, which fueled these Goliaths of midcentury modern design. The only downside: with your newfound design-savvy, you won't be able to look at your IKEA chairs the same way again. If you didn't know that E stands for Eames, Egg Chair, and Elrod House (or don't know what any of those words actually mean) then this book belongs on your coffee table. And if you can't afford an Eames coffee table, then rejoice in knowing that From A to Eames makes an inexpensive and equally satisfying alternative.

The 1950's house was a scientific triumph, designed in a laboratory and tested on inhabitants of all ages before being built for the masses. Never had homes been so thoroughly contemporary, with antiques and period styles entirely banished. Mid-Century Modern explores the interior decor of this seminal decade, concentrating on all aspects of a home's decoration-walls, flooring, surfaces, lighting, and, of course, furniture. Case studies examine beautiful present-day homes that exhibit mid-century style in an exemplary way, and suggest ideas for taking the 1950's look-complete with collector's pieces-and mixing and matching it with elements from other eras.

Spectacularly beautiful, this authoritative book presents jewelry designs of this century. With almost two hundred full-color photographs specially commissioned for this book and archival pictures of pieces that have disappeared into private collections, the volume features the finest artworks in precious metals and jewels from collections around the world, including creations by Lalique, Cartier, Boucheron, Bulgari, Tiffany, and David Webb. The fascinating text surveys the glittering world of gems with an illustrated introductory essay investigating the development of jewelry design at the end of the 1800s, and the shift from Victorian and Art Nouveau works to pieces stamped with the personality and vision of a single designer. The next chapter thoroughly examines the successive revolutions in style of the twentieth century. The balance of the book is a cornucopia of photographs portraying pieces from the beginning of the century through the 1960s: the grand era of commissions and patrons. Here you will find the Duchess of Windsor's famous necklace of diamonds and rubies as well as a fabulous pin in the shape of a World War II tank, and a veritable menagerie of diamond-studded elephants, enameled tigers, and jade dragons. This thorough history is a dazzling jewelbox of a book.