American Streamlined Design: The World of Tomorrow

May 17 to October 28, 2007

Two Fiesta Pitchers

The works in the exhibition are selected from the Eric Brill collection, which comprises over 800 examples of American industrial design assembled by this one collector over the last three decades and donated to the Liliane and David M. Stewart Program for Modern Design, organizers of the exhibition under the direction of David A. Hanks. “This exhibition explores one of the most fascinating periods of American design history,” says Liliane M. Stewart, “and makes Eric Brill’s extraordinary gift available to a wide international audience.” Continuing her most generous support of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Mrs. Stewart has donated the Brill collection to the Museum to be integrated with the Liliane and David M. Stewart collection of twentieth-century international design.

“Modern design entered the American home not through the front door, but by way of the kitchen, bathroom and garage.” ¹

In the 1930s, the Silvertone Rocket radio, the Airflow fan, the Streamliner meat slicer, the Thor Silver Line electric circular saw and the Flyaway Streamlined roller skates all conjured up images of fast-moving trains, gliding airplanes and sleek ocean liners. These vehicles of transport, with their smooth, clean silhouettes and horizontal lines designed to minimize resistance to wind and air, were the models for the streamlined style that invaded American design in the post-Depression years. The style, which suggested speed and glamour, was widely applied in new forms of architecture, interior decoration and everyday household goods for the home and office.

Athletic Shoes

The exhibition American Streamlined Design: The World of Tomorrow will examine the impact of the streamlined style on many areas of American life. In the 1930s and 1940s, streamlining came to represent modernity, progress, efficiency, cleanliness and glamour. Streamlined consumer goods ranging from the household vacuum cleaner to the family radio were manufactured with the latest industrial materials: aluminum, chromium-plated metal and plastics. The exhibition offers a fresh appraisal of the achievements of the style’s best-known exponents – among them Walter Dorwin Teague, Normand Bel Geddes, Henry Dreyfuss and Raymond Loewy – and places them beside the contributions of lesser-known but significant designers. On view will be 185 works used in the commercial world, the domestic sphere and sports and leisure. A final section will illustrate how streamlined design lives on today in motorcycles, bicycle gear and furniture.

Fan: Airflow

The streamlined aesthetic was most appropriate for kitchens and bathrooms, where modern technology, efficiency in design and cleanliness were wholeheartedly embraced by the American public. All types of kitchen and bathroom appliances took on streamlined appearances: blenders, juicers, toasters, roasting pans, scales and hair dryers.

These rooms drew the attention of leading architects and industrial designers, and a highlight of this exhibition will be Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion bathroom: a tub with shower, toilet and washbasin all contained within a prefabricated unit of copper, plated with a tin and antimony alloy. The first prototype was made in 1930, and Fuller patented the concept in 1940. The Dymaxion was a composite of the words dynamic, maximum and tension – key vocabulary for “the world of tomorrow.”

The streamlined look was gradually introduced into living rooms and recreation rooms, as people found more time for leisure. Record players and radios increased in popularity with their visually appealing curvaceous Bakelite and plastic encasings. The Silvertone Rocket radio (about 1938) looked ready for flight: “as new as tomorrow,” crowed the ad in the Sears, Roebuck catalogue. The cool, elegant look of shiny tubular steel furniture lent itself to streamlined interiors, for both the home and office. Household appliances like irons and vacuums were encased in streamlined shells to make domestic work more attractive – dare we say glamorous! Electric tools were streamlined to reflect their increased efficiency and speed of operation. In the same spirit, the spectacular Arlen Ness motorcycle borrows the streamlined look for today’s people on the go.

Go Chair

The exhibition is accompanied by an award-winning, 280-page catalogue by David A. Hanks, curator of the Liliane and David M. Stewart Program for Modern Design, and Anne Hoy, adjunct associate professor, New York University (on sale at the Museum Boutique and Bookstore for $105). The exhibition will continue its tour of North America through January 2009, showing at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Alabama, the Chicago History Museum and the Wolfsonian-Florida International University Museum, Miami.

The Museum would like to express its most sincere and heartfelt thanks to Mrs. Liliane M. Stewart for her generous gift of the Brill Collection and congratulate her on her recent appointment as an Officer of the Order of Canada.

1. Walter Dorwin Teague, Design This Day (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1940), p. 61, quoted in David A. Hanks and Anne Hoy, American Streamlined Design: The World of Tomorrow (Paris: Flammarion, 2005), p. 115.

 

 

Frederick Hurten Rhead (1880-1942); Two Fiesta Pitchers; About 1936; Glazed earthenware. Produced by the Homer Laughlin China Company. The Liliane and David M. Stewart Collection. Photo Denis Farley.

Scott Patt, Athletic Shoes: Air Max Contact, Designed 2001; Synthetic leather, mesh, tetrapolyurethane, polyurethane, rubber; 12,5 x 31 x 11 cm (each); Fabriquées en Chine pour Nike, Beaverton, Oregon; Collection Liliane et David M. Stewart. Photo Denis Farley

Robert Heller, Fan: Airflow; Designed c.1937; Enamel and chromium-plated steel, aluminum, enamel cast iron; 25 x 32.5 x 39.5 cm; Produced by the Hobart Manufacturing Company, Troy, Ohio. Photo Denis Farley

Ross Lovegrove, Go Chair; Designed 1999; Magnesium-aluminum alloy, polycarbonate plastic; 77.5 x 58.4 x 68.6 cm; Produced by Bernhardt Design, Lenoir, North Carolina. The Liliane and David M. Stewart Collection, gift of Bernhardt Design. Photo Denis Farley