Ammar Kalo practices architecture and industrial design at his namesake studio in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. His work ranges from architecture, interior design to furniture. The Stratum Chair’s concept and appearance were driven by his desires to “express materiality” and to take advantage of new fabrication technologies. Kalo laminated plywood and CNC milled a complex path...
In 1929, George Sakier was hired as a consultant for the well-established American glass manufacturer Fostoria, for whom he would work for the next fifty years. With a background as an art director of French Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Modes and Manners magazines, Sakier’s commercial savvy as well as his eye for trends served him...
The Egyptian motif of the scarab, a symbol of self-renewal, experienced great popularity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Thousands of glass scarabs were produced by at Tiffany’s Corona factory and inset into jewelry, metalwork, and ceramic vases, as seen here. Tiffany’s Favrile pottery is known for its unique color effects, created by...
Upon his return from military service in Europe in 1919, Henry Varnum Poor settled in an artists’ community in New City, New York where he purchased land and began single-handedly building a home called Crow House, named after the local birds who kept him company while he worked. As a struggling painter Poor was always...
From the archives, an Object of the Day post on an example of iridescent design from the collection.
Herman Miller introduced George Nelson’s Comprehensive Storage System (CSS) in 1959 and produced it until 1973. Available in a variety of wood finishes, the CSS could also be customized to fit the needs of customers, thanks to its modular units that included shelves, drawers, and desk units, such as the CSS in the museum’s collection....
This gilded goblet was made for a special dinner in honor of Andrew Carnegie given by the Engineers’ Club of New York on December 9, 1907. The name of the club and the date of the dinner can be seen along the edge of the goblet’s base. Carnegie had donated $450,000 for the organization’s new...
In July of 1913, Arthur Sanders, a gaffer at Tiffany Studios, was sent on a dream of a business trip. He traveled to Hamilton, Bermuda to study marine life through a glass-bottomed boat. Sanders observed the beauty of the underwater world so that he could later reproduce it in glass when back in Corona, New...
Born in the Bronx, Phyllis Bowdwin is an activist, writer, educator, mixed-media artist, and designer. Inspired by her African ancestry, Bowdwin made this brooch that depicts in diagrammatic form the hull of a slave ship and the arrangement of its tightly packed human cargo during the Middle Passage. In this version, five heads of African...
