General correspondence files contain all communications that do not pertain to a specific project. Because Friedman's personal life and business were so interconnected, many of his business associates also shared personal correspondence with the designer.,Materials in this collection document Friedman's work from 1967, as a student, until his death in 1995.
Files that document his affiliations with Yale University and the State University of New York at Purchase include administrative memos, proposals, lecture outlines, syllabi, bibliographies, examples of students' work, and design projects Friedman did for each school. A copy of the goals and objectives of the Division of Visual Arts within the School of the Arts at SUNY Purchase written by Friedman is included.
Project files include business correspondence, invoices, sketches, contracts, clippings, photographs, and slides. In the case of his graphic projects, some samples of stationery and brochures are included. Extensive documentation exists for Friedman's projects for Citibank, WilliWear, National Public Radio, and Bonwit Teller. Some correspondence is in German. Friedman's lecture notes, proposals for articles and books, and drafts of many articles are included. Clippings of articles on the designer and his work are arranged chronologically.
Research files consist of articles and Friedman's notes on topics of interest to him, such as typography, structure, simultaneity, and information theory. Photographs, slides, and transparencies of many of Friedman's projects, his sources of inspiration, and the work of his students are included.
Arrangement:
Record Groups include:
1: General Correspondence
2: University Affiliations
3: Project Files
4: Lectures and Writings
5: Clippings
6: Research Materials
7: Photographs and Slides
Biographical / Historical:
Educator, graphic and furniture designer. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, 1945. Friedman recieved a BFA from Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburg, PA. He studied graphic design at Hochschule fur Gestaltung, Ulm, and studied with Armin Hofmann and Wolfgang Weingart at Allgemeine Gewerbeschule, Basel. Friedman returned to America in 1969 and began his career as graphic designer for large corporations.
He worked with the firm Anspach Grossman Portugal as a senior designer from 1975 to 1977. Friedman contributed significantly to what came to be known as "post-modern" or "new wave" typography in the 1970s. He taught graphic design at Yale University, 1970-73. He became Assistant Professor and Chairman of the Board of Study in Design at the State University of New York at Purchase, 1972-1975. Friedman designed catalogs and brochures for both universities. Friedman worked with Pentagram Design in New York City from 1979 to 1984. He designed corporate identity programs, posters, publications, packaging, letterheads, and logos, for clients such as Citibank, and Williwear.
Friedman was a long-time friend of artist Keith Haring, and designed the book, "Keith Haring", 1982. He was the author of "Dan Friedman: Radical Modernism", 1994, and co-authored with Jeffrey Deitch, "Cultural Geometry", 1988, and "Artificial Nature", 1990. He designed the books "New Italian Design", 1990, and "Post Human", 1992. He also designed furniture, lighting, screens, wall elements, and interiors. Many of his furniture designs were done especially for Galerie Noetu in Paris. Among his best known furniture designs are the 1989 Virgin Screen, 1989 Zoid sofa and chair, and the Three Mile Island lamps.
Friedman served as the Frank Stanton Professor of Graphic Design at the Cooper Union in New York city, from 1994 until his death in 1995.
Related Materials:
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Drawings and Prints Department
Hundreds of designs for letterheads, logos, business cards, invitations, greeting cards, furniture, lighting, screens, office interiors, shoppings bags and gift boxes, calendars, packaging, weather pattern diagrams and maps, book covers, and posters
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Applied Arts Department
"U.S.A." table and dome-shaped floor lamp.,.
Friedman's work can be found in the collections of the following museums: Museum of Modern Art, New York City; Museum of Decorative Arts, Montreal, Canada; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Seibu, Tokyo; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA; and Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
Provenance:
This collection was donated to the museum by the designer's brother, Ken Friedman in 1995.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research but is stored off-site and special arrangements must be made to work with it. Contact the Archives Center for information at archivescenter@si.edu or 202-633-3270.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Biographical files cover the period from 1938-1989 and include resumes, clippings, correspondence, certificates, awards, speeches, brochures for exhibitions, and artwork.
The project files cover the period from 1934-1961 and contain clippings, catalogs, brochures, and scrapbooks. This material documents Bach's work as an industrial designer, architect, and painter from 1934-1992.
The files on the Ridgeway Center mall are particularly extensive. Photographs cover the period from 1937-1961 and document Bach's design projects, particularly the Ridgeway Center, his house in Stamford, and the Miami and New York offices of Callaway Mills. Portraits of Bach and his family are included as well.
Glass lantern slides document Bach's interior and exterior design projects. Also included are several signed and numbered prints of Bach's watercolor scenes of the Riviera.
Arrangement:
The Collection i s arranged into three series.
Series 1: Biographical Materials and Project Files, 1934-1989
Series 2: Photographs, 1942-1961
Series 3: Lantern slides (glass), undated
Biographical / Historical:
Industrial designer, architect, and painter. Born in Germany, 1904. Bach studied film directing and design in Europe. He turned to industrial design upon immigrating to the United States in 1926. His design work from 1932-1953 include a Philco radio, furniture for Heywood-Wakefield, carpets for Bigelow-Sanford, and appliances for General Electric. Bach designed and built his own home in Stamford, Connecticut, in 1938.
In the late 1940s, he developed a plan for one of the first shopping malls in America, the Ridgeway Center in Stamford, Connecticut. He remodeled the interior and exterior of Sach's furniture store, 1948-1949, and redesigned the Seneca Textile Building on 34th Street in Manhattan in 1952. Bach moved to Florida in 1959, where he designed the Palm Trail Plaza, a marina apartment complex in Delray Beach, completed in 1961. In addition, Bach was also a noted painter. His watercolors were featured in numerous exhibitions in the United States and Europe.
Related Archival Materials:
Materials at the Smithsonian
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Drawings and Prints Department holds 431 drawings of designs for furniture, textiles, lamps, pianos, clocks, appliances, and retail, office, and home interiors
Provenance:
Collection donated by Alfons Bach in 1993.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research but is stored off-site and special arrangements must be made to work with it. Contact the Archives Center for information at archivescenter@si.edu or 202-633-3270.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
This collection consists ofcorrespondence, scrapbooks, catalogs, brochures, original drawings, photographs, financial records, resumes, legal documents, magazine articles, business records, press releases, artwork, and samples of boxes, bags, and buttons. Files documenting the company's history include a statement of the company's philosophy and records pertaining to the establishment of new stores in various cities. Project files document the furniture, fabrics, rugs, and accessories imported and design by Design Research, Inc. Bound reprints of articles that appeared in Interiors and International Design magazines are included. Clippings and other records documenting the design and construction of D/R stores are provided in the files pertaining to Benjamin Thompson & Associates, Inc. Also found in these files is a printed and bound presentation copy of Thompson's address, "The Craft of Design and the Art of Building", along with other articles by and about Thompson. Additional information pertaining to D/R's association with Marimekko can be found in the Cooper- Hewitt Design Archive's Marimekko Collection.
Arrangement note:
Unprocessed. Consists of six record groups: 1) Company history; 2) Office records; 3) Project files; 4) Clippings and Scrapbooks; 5) Benjamin Thompson & Associates, Inc. for D/R; and 6) Photographs.
Biographical/Historical note:
Retail establishment and product design. Design Research, Inc. (D/R), founded in 1953 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by architect Benjamin Thompson, specialized in the latest post-war products for the modern home. The displays in the stores were considered unique in that they were designed at domestic scale and the products were shown in realistic, homelike arrangements.
Products were sought and selected based on the anticipated preferences of customers, not on traditional retail buying patterns. At the time, the availability of "good design" was limited to wholesale firms such as Herman Miller and Knoll. Thompson was the first to introduce the work of many European and Asian designers to the American retail market, including the work of the design firm of Marimekko for which D/R was the exclusive U.S. represenative. The company also created many of its own products including chairs manufactured by Thonet. D/R later opened stores in New York City, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. Thompson's own architectural firm, Benjamin Thompson & Associates, Inc., designed all of the D/R stores. For the San Francisco store, Thomspon renovated the former Ghirardelli Chocolate factory. Even after the stores officially closed in 1978, D/R remained a model for many merchants.
Provenance:
The materials in this collection were donated to Cooper-Hewitt in 1995 by Benjamin and Jane Thompson.
Restrictions:
Unprocessed; access is limited. Permission of Library Director required for use.
Topic:
Furniture design -- United States -- History -- 20th century Search this
This collection does not represent the entire Parzinger archive. The German firm, K.P.M., has the drawings Parzinger produced for the line of ceramics and a part of the documentation for the work in the United States was damaged or lost in a 1951 flood in the Madison Avenue office. However, enough of the archive remains to document a significant part of the designer's work from the 1940s-1970s. Included in the collection are brochures, ad sheets, magazine pages, chart-like sheets of furniture designs, drawings or blueprints, clippings, photographs, press articles, and pages of notes. The collection does not include business papers which were deliberately excluded for space reasons.
Arrangement note:
Materials are arranged into ten record groups: I. Furniture Designs for Willow & Reed, Salterini, Parzinger Originals and others; II. Silver Design; III. Ceramic/China Design; IV. Designs for Objects made of non-precious metals; V. Objects of Miscellaneous or Obscure Materials; VI. Designs for Enamel Work; VII. Designs for Textiles and/or Wallcoverings; IX. Lighting Fixture Design (electric); and X. Miscellaneous Items. There are also seven 3-ring binders containing photographs of Parzinger's furniture, silver, ceramics, and metalwork from the 1930s--the 1970s. There are notes on the backs of many of the photographs. There are also sketches of his designs for clients. Binder 7 contains photographs of 63 furniture designs by T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings.
Biographical/Historical note:
Tommi (Anton) Parzinger (1903-1981) was born in Munich and received professional design training there at the Kunstgewebeschule (School of Arts and Crafts).He began his career as a freelance designer in Germany and Austria, working in ceramics, wallpapers, lighting, textiles, and furniture. In 1932 he came to the United States as a prize for winning a poster contest for North German Lloyd, the steamship company. In 1935 he settled in New York and became associated with Rena Rosenthal ("smart furniture and accessories shop") as a designer of china, glassware and furniture. Furniture became is primary focus in 1938 he became a designer for Charak of Boston. In 1939 he formed his own business, Parzinger, Inc., 54 East 57th Street, designing silver as well as furniture. Renamed Parzinger Originals in 1946, the firm also had addresses at 32 East 57th Street; 601 Fifth Avenue and 441 Madison Avenue. Donald Cameron became his partner. In addition to his own firm, he designed furniture, fabrics, lighting and a range of accessories for other firms, including Salterini (wrought iron), Hofstatter (furniture), Dorlyn (brass), and Willow & Reed (rattan). He also produced custom designs for interior decorators and many private clients. In 1996 and 1998 his work was shown by Palumbo Gallery, 972 Lexington Avenue, New York City.
Separated Materials note:
The Cooper-Hewitt departments of Drawings and Prints, Applied Arts, and Textiles and Wallcoverings has additional materials on Parzinger in their collections.
Provenance:
All materials were donated to the museum by Donald Cameron in 1998.
Restrictions:
Unprocessed; access is limited; Permission of Library Director required; Policy.
This collection documents Wallance's career from his enrollment in the Design Laboratory School in 1936 to his death in 1990.Included are his designs for tableware, furniture, and household accessories, as well as material on his research and writings. This collection consists of sketches, drawings, photographs, correspondence, and reference materials, in addition to publicity and promotional materials. Extensive documentation exists on Wallance's pioneering designs for stainless steel flatware for H. E. Lauffer Company and his experimental furniture for the U.S. Army, Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center, and the Hard Manufacturing Company. Thorough documentation of his research for his landmark book, "Shaping America's Products," is included. The collection also contains a substantial amount of information on the Design Laboratory School, the first industrial design school in the United States to be patterned after the Bauhaus.
Arrangement note:
This collection is arranged into eight record groups: 1) Industrial Design Projects; 2) "Shaping America's Products"; 3) Other Activities; 4) General Correspondence; 5) Business Records; 6) Biographical Material; 7) Reference Material; and 8) Photographs and Slides. Within each record group, materials are arranged by client, or in lieu of a client, by project name.
Letter size, legal size, and oversized materials, photographs, slides, film, and video are all boxed separately. Where possible, subjects have been cross referenced between the various sizes and types of material.
Biographical/Historical note:
Metalworker, furniture and industrial designer. Born New York City, September 26, 1909. Wallance graduated New York University in 1930 with a B.A. in English Literature. He traveled to northern Europe where he was exposed to the International Style in architecture and design. Upon returning to the United States, he went to work in his father's furniture store and saw the need for more inventive designs in retail furnishings. He attended Design Laboratory School in New York City from its inception in 1936 until it closed its doors in 1940.
From 1941-2, Wallance served as the state of Louisiana's technical and design director for the National Youth Administration, established in 1940 by President Roosevelt to help build a young, technically capable work force. During World War II, Wallance designed mass-produced furniture for servicemen's families living abroad for the Office of the Quartermaster General, Washington. He began designing tableware, cutlery, and accessories for H.E. Lauffer in 1951.
Among his most recognizable designs for Lauffer were Design One, a highly sculptural, brushed stainless steel flatware created in 1953, and Design Ten, a colored plastic flatware created in 1978-79. Both designs are now produced by Towle Manufacturing Company. ln addition, Wallance designed auditorium seating in steel and upholstered polyurethane foam for Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center in 1964 and hospital furniture in steel and plastics for Hard Manufacturing Company in 1965. Wallance is best known for his book, "Shaping America's Products", 1956, which remains a seminal study of the relationship of craftsmanship to industry.
Location of Other Archival Materials Note:
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Applied Arts Department. Approximately 100 items, consisting of models, prototypes, and production pieces of flatware, cutlery, and other items.
Provenance:
These materials were donated to Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, in 1991 by David M. and Gregory J. Wallance, sons of the designer.
Restrictions:
Unrestricted research use onsite by appointment. Permission of staff required to photograph materials.
Project files containmagazine and newspaper clippings, reviews, correspondence, renderings, floor plans, perspective drawings, site plans, sketches, preliminary drawings, patents, stationery, labels, and technical reports. There is an extensive collection of photographs and slides of many of Deskey's packaging designs, interiors, furnishings, and exhibition installations. The files of Donald Deskey Associates include organizational charts, client files, proposals, and financial records. Some of Deskey's personal correspondence, speeches, articles, and family photographs are included. Materials cover the period from 1927-1975.
Arrangement note:
Arranged into six records groups: 1) architecture/interiors projects; 2)Donald Deskey Associates; 3) industrial design projects; 4) reference; 5) Donald Deskey's personal papers; and 6) photographs. A special collection of more than one thousand slides of Deskey's work are boxed separately.
Biographical/Historical note:
Industrial, interior, and packaging designer. Born Blue Earth, Minnesota, November 23, 1894. By 1943, he had established Donald Deskey Associates in New York. Along with Dreyfuss, Bel Geddes, and Loewy, Deskey was one of the great industrial design pioneers in the 1930s.
He is best known for his designs for the furnishings and interiors of Radio City Music Hall in 1932, and for his work for companies such as: Widdicomb Furniture Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan; W & J Sloane, New York; and Estey Manufacturing Company, Owosso, Michigan. Deskey is also known for his familiar packaging designs for Procter & Gamble products, such as Crest toothpaste, Prell shampoo, and Tide detergent.
Donald Deskey Associates also was responsible for lamppost #10, the streetlight still in use today in New York City. Materials from this archival collection were featured in Cooper-Hewitt's 1994 exhibition and accompanying book, "Packaging the New: Design and the American Consumer, 1925- 1975."
Location of Other Archival Materials Note:
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Drawings and Prints Department. Approximately 3,000 drawings for furniture and textile designs.
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Applied Arts Department. Two tables, handles, and a glass bottle and box designed by Deskey.
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Textiles Department. One textile designed by Deskey.
Other sources of archival information on Deskey include, the Procter & Gamble Archive, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Deskey Associates, New York City.
Provenance:
The Deskey collection was donated to the museum in three installments.
In 1975, Deskey deposited at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum,, hundreds of drawings, 3 four-drawer file cabinets of material, and several oversized packages comprising the bulk of his papers covering the period from 1927-1965. These items were officially donated to the museum in 1988.
In 1992, Deskey Associates of New York made an additional gift consisting of, approximately 1,000 35mm slides that documented projects from the 1960s through 1980s, and focused primarily on designs for packaging.
In 1994, Donald Deskey's nephew, Robert Deskey presented the Museum with, 120 postcards, letters, and family photographs.
Restrictions:
Unrestricted research use onsite by appointment. Permission of staff required to photograph materials.
