Description: RUSSEL WRIGHT: CREATING AMERICAN LIFESTYLE 2001 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum First Edition 176 pages and 154 illustrations including 103 color plates Donald Albrecht, Robert Schonfeld, Lindsay Stamm Shapiro: RUSSEL WRIGHT: CREATING AMERICAN LIFESTYLE. New York: Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution with Harry Abrams, 2001. First edition. Yellow boards decorated in black. Photo illustrated dust jacket. Photo illustrated endpapers. 176 pp. 103 color plates and 51 black and white photographs and illustrations. Interior unmarked and very clean. Publishers price sticker to rear cover. Dust jacket lightly worn along top edge and ligghtly shelf worn, so a nearly fine hardcover book in a nearly fine dust jacket. 7.75 x 10.25 hardcover book with 176 pages and 154 illustrations including 103 color plates. This exhibition catalogue is profusely illustrated with detailed illustrations, and jaw-dropping color photographs. Produced to accompany an exhibit illustrating the designer's work and life at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. Comprehensive survey of Wright's ceramic and furniture designs produced by Wright and his company. From the Book: ”A master of modern design, Russel Wright (1904-1976) was a prolific and influential creator of objects for the home, most famously his curvaceous American Modern dinnerware. But Wright was much more than that. He also designed furniture, appliances, textiles, interiors, buildings, and landscapes, and with his wife Mary he invented lifestyle marketing based on a compelling personality, paving the way for such lifestyle interpreters as Martha Stewart and Ralph Lauren. Wright’s unique contribution to mid-century modernism embraced American traditions of practicality and simplicity, as well as new materials and technologies. Drawing on sources as diverse as Colonial America, Surrealist art, and Frank Lloyd Wright, Russel Wright forged a uniquely American vocabulary of form and function and, more than anyone else, shifted the nation’s design taste toward modernism in the late 1930s. "From his earliest lines through American Modern dinnerware, Iroquois China, innovative plastic dishes, and Dragon Rock and Manitoga, Wright’s final home and surrounding landscape, this book presents Wright’s work in stunning new photography, original drawings, and never-before-seen archival documents. Essays provide a thorough and original analysis of his work, its cultural context, and its ongoing influence. Central to the Wrights’ efforts to revolutionize the home was Guide To Easier Living, the best-selling book they coauthored in 1950. It offered readers a declaration of independence from convention, rejecting the dogma of “etiquette despots” like Emily Post. Defining the way Americans live even today, Russel and Mary Wright wrote, “Good informal living substitutes a little headwork for a lot of legwork. It doesn’t need wealth, but it does take thought, some ingenuity and resourcefulness, and more than a little loving care to create a home that is really your own.” Contents: Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction A Man and His Manners: Resetting the American Table From Hollywood to Walden Pond: Stage Sets for American Living Manitoga: A Modern Landscape in the Hudson River Valley Marketing Easier Living: The Commodification of Russel Wright Notes Selected Bibliography Photography Credits Index Includes references to Wrights' work for these organizations: Bauer Pottery Company, Castleton China Company, Conant Ball Furniture Company, Harker China Company, Heywood-Wakefield Furniture Company, Iroquois China Company, Samsonite Furniture Company, Statton Furniture Company, Sterling China Company, Steubenville Pottery, Klise Wood Working Company, etc. It seems like the time is right for the Wrights again--with their American Modern and Iroquois dinnerware being reissued and Dragon Rock in Garrison, N.Y., rechristened as a museum and design center. Russel Wright and his work is coming into sharp focus as one of America's most influential industrial designers-- this volume clearly shows why. From a Guide to Easier Living: "A new way of living, informal, relaxed, and actually more gracious than any strained imitation of another day could be, is in fact growing up, despite the etiquette despots and the die-hards.There is evidence all around that the hard shell of snobbish convention is cracking." Amen. Please visit my Ebay store for an excellent and ever-changing selection of rare and out-of-print design books and periodicals covering all aspects of 20th-century visual culture. I offer shipping discounts for multiple purchases. Please contact me for details. Payment due within 3 days of purchase.
Price: 49.99 USD
Location: Shreveport, Louisiana
End Time: 2023-12-14T21:57:13.000Z
Shipping Cost: 6 USD
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