George Barbier’s Au Jardin des Hespérides (Garden of the Hesperides) appeared in 1913 in Gazette du Bon Ton. Translated as the “Journal for Good Taste,” it was intended for an elite readership concerned with high-society culture and entertainment, as well as the latest developments in fashion and beauty. The publication was led by the publishing...
The publisher J.M. Dent was an admirer of William Morris’s Kelmscott Press, founded in 1889 and known for expensive, lavish publications featuring illustrations and decorations by artists such as Edward Burne-Jones printed from hand-cut woodblocks. Dent conceived the idea of producing books in the style of the Kelmscott Press but at a much lower cost,...
Helen Hokinson, or “Hoky” as her friends called her, contributed nearly 1,800 cartoons and vignettes and 68 cover designs to The New Yorker in the first half of the 20th century. Her long-lasting association with the magazine began just a few months after it launched, when a drawing of a round, middle-aged woman standing on...
In celebration of Women’s History Month, March Object of the Day posts highlight women designers in the collection. Maria Sibylla Merian (German, 1647-1717) was a remarkable naturalist, famous for her expertise in entomology and the art and details of her scientific illustrations. From a young age, Merian was taught how to draw and enthusiastically explored...
Somersaulting with dopey glee, a group of kangaroos thump around, lapping up wine from gravity defiant glasses. Inebriated marsupials with bottles in their pouches? Such a zany scene is characteristic of the work of beloved graphic artist and designer Ronald Searle (British, active France, 1920-2011). His wry illustrations, ranging from caricature to cartoon and inspired...
“Now that fashion has become an art, a fashion gazette must also be an art revue. So it will be with Gazette du Bon Ton.”—Lucien Vogel, 1886–1954 Pictured alone against a bare backdrop, the young woman of this fashion illustration sports a cloche hat and a sleek black and white coat with a voluminous collar...
Two breakthrough Finnish designers from Beauty—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial discuss their explorations of design, memory, and making with Triennial curator Andrea Lipps. Tuomas Markunpoika made his piece Engineering Temporality to honor his grandmother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. He welded steel rings over a traditional wooden cabinet and then burned away the wood, leaving behind...
In celebration of Women’s History Month, Cooper Hewitt is dedicating select Object of the Day entries to the work of women designers in our collection. Nudged in a single exuberant moment between a decade of the Great Depression and the looming threat of World War II, the 1939 World’s Fair is popularly thought to have...
For her poster campaign for the Ad Council of Japan on the theme “Media Literacy Is an Imagination,” Shiro Shita Saori turned to the classic Japanese proverb of the three wise monkeys, who embody the maxim “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” This poster plays on the first element of the maxim,...
