Speed lines on Main Street | American Streamlined Design: The World of Tomorrow

book: American Streamlined Design: The World of Tomorrow | David A. Hanks, Anne Hoy

books:


	• American Streamlined Design: The World of Tomorrow David A. Hanks, Anne Hoy Flammarion, 2005 - 312 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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Design for the The World of Tommorow

The phrase "Art Deco" was only coined in the late 1960's to describe an era of modern design from 1925 to 1940. In an American context, Art Deco is an umbrella term that covers such diverse styles as "International Style", "Moderne", "Art Moderne", "Modernist", "Machine Age", "Depression Modern" and "Streamline". All these terms are inter-related and are no more than attempts to fine tune our understanding of modern design during this period.

Most of the art books and museum catalogues that are written about the American Art Deco era concentrate on superbly crafted objects that were produced for wealthy people. These same museum quality objects show up time and time again in the different books. What separates "American Streamlined Design" from most of the other books on American Art Deco is that authors concentrate on mass produced items that were made for the middle class.

In the 1930's and 1940's, the concept of streamline with its emphasis on clean, swept back lines and futuristic detailing appealed to a nation undergoing an economic Depression and entering into a World War. Inherent in the Streamline's design philosophy was the promise of a better world. In response, a generation of talented industrial designers began to produce thousands of objects that embraced this design philosophy. What makes this book extraordinary is the collection of such ordinary objects as typewriters, bathroom scales and lawn mowers. This book shows just how beautiful everday objects can be. Highly recommended.

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Speed lines on Main Street

Without Eric Brill's vision of a streamlined America this book would not be possible. He collected almost eight hundred products and donated his amazing collection to the Stewart Collection in Montreal. This book is a stunningly beautiful celebration of a very American, egalitarian design style.

The story of Streamline is pretty well documented (I've even done a Listmania about it) but what lifts this book above the others is its coverage of everyday products. Mr Brill could hardly collect buildings, shroud enclosed steam engines or Greyhound buses so he sought out mass-produced products available on any Main Street.

The visual basis of the book is a hundred and eighty products for use in the commercial world, the home (kitchen, bathroom, living room) and recreation. Each has a superb, simple still-life color photo that really makes these products sparkle, captions include manufacturing details and a design analysis of the item. Nicely some of this text has a delightful light heartedness. It is the product photos that I just love about the book, to see a whole-page color shot of a Stromberg-Carlson portable radio, a Skippy-Racer kids scooter (designed by Harold Van Doren) a Juice-King juicer or a DeVilbiss portable compressor in such clarity is amazing.

The six chapters comprehensively explore Streamline with the last one considering the effect the style had on product design over the last decade. The last pages include the usual designer biographies, bibliography (a brief but excellent listing) and index. There is the odd inclusion of ten pages near the beginning of the book devoted to a fulsome description of Eric Brill's residence, the beautiful Mandel House, in Bedford Hills, New York designed by Edward Durell Stone. This is the only architectural text in the book and I assume is only included because Mr Brill lived in this Moderne house. It also includes a rather brief description of the origins of his collection, though I would have liked to read a lot more about his research into Streamline and how he bought these items years after they were first made

The perfect complement to 'American Streamlined Design' is American Modern, 1925-1940: Design for a New Age which has the same very strong visual format with beautifully photographed product shots. Its coverage though is for the more artistically creative items, glass, metal-ware and furniture for instance, rather than mass-produced items. With these two books (both beautifully designed and printed) you'll have as near perfect coverage of Streamline products so far available.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'cusomer images' under the cover.

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The twentieth-century's fast cars, trains, and planes promised to conquer space and time; their aerodynamic styling and metallic bodies embodied a new and modern beauty that enchanted American designers from the late 1920s to the 1950s. Streamlining became popular for everything, including toy scooters, typewriters, power tools, teakettles, Coca-Cola bottles, Lucky Strike packaging, Fiestaware pitchers, Studebaker cars, Greyhound buses, and the 20th Century Limited train.
This book celebrates streamlining as epitomized by the work of Raymond Loewy, Donald Deskey, Henri Dreyfuss, Russel Wright, and Norman Bel Geddes, and introduces other industrial designers, also highlighting the resurgence of streamlining among international vanguard designers from the 1980s to the present.
Patent drawings and period photographs demonstrate the usage of these dynamically styled objects. Two hundred objects drawn from the Eric Brill Collection (recently donated to the American Friends of Canada) and supplemented by the Stewart Collection of 20th Century Design were photographed for this book. A full bibliography, biographies of the designers, and index complete the study.

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