A technique for Dealing with Artists W. A. Dwiggins
A technique for Dealing with Artists W. A. Dwiggins Press of the Woolly Whale New York, 1941
Copyright 1941 by Melbert B. Cary, Jr. Printed in the U.S.A.
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American captains of industry such ones at least as direct the manufacture and sale of household wares—have been obliged to do that thing that turns the heads of captains grey, namely: to change the tactical scheme in the heat of battle... In the last ten years a curious change has swept across the fancy of the buying public. The people who buy—that is to say, the women of the country—suddenly think they want art mixed in their purchases. A kitchen range cannot any longer be sold merely as a kitchen range. It has to be offered as a kitchen range plus.
The plus is art. Whether the manufacturers and merchandisers themselves are to blame for this radical change in the consumer-fancy is a question: how far, for example, were certain individuals of the group tempted to travel outside the bounds of sound conservative practice into regions of “esthetics”? How far, by so traveling, did they muddle up the merchandising game? ..But the change has occurred, and the result of this change is... chaos. Machines have been used in the manufacture of domestic wares—utensils, materials, tools, les meubles—for one hundred years. Never, in that whole time, has it been necessary at any moment for a proprietor of machines to ask anybody’s advice about how the machines should be used. All problems in the operation were solved by people in his immediate employ. For all matters that concerned the shapes and finishes of his product he could rely on his own judgement. If he thought an article needed to look handsomer he told his people how to make it handsomer. If he wanted floral encrustations on a cast-iron column so blemishes wouldn’t show, he called in the help of the everavailable female relative who had taken lessons in china-painting. If he thought a paint-stripe was needed on a wagon-wheel, he said what color the stripe was to be and where it was to go. His determination of style was final. His taste was as good as any other man’s taste. The country was a democracy.
But now—with this demand for art an essential part of the product—the manufacturer finds himself dangling over an abyss that he can neither plumb nor bridge... The new fancy for art-varnish on merchandise puts a strain on the old system that it can’t stand up under. The manufacturer, by hook or by crook, has got to provide art. He can’t supply it—his office-force can’t supply it—his telephone-girl is flabbergasted—the men in the shop are dazed, insulted, by the simple word—organization helpless, owner to errand-boy—square miles of machines to make things: not a soul on the premises to say how the machines are to make artistic things...
There is only one course for the proprietor to pursue: go outside his organization and call in an artist! He does so. He faces the music. He turns his back on tradition—on his own carefully assembled working force. He calls in an artist. And finds... what? He finds that he is not able to deal with this person on any rational terms whatsoever. He finds that artists talk a foreign tongue—think alien thoughts. That what they aim to do and how they aim to do it are matters absolutely outside his experience, or his comprehension. He finds that he just can’t get along with artists at all. Now, something will have to be done about this. Some way will have to be found to bridge the chasm between artist and merchant-manufacturer. Obviously the material for the structure will be mutual understanding. If the businessman can get some kind of clue to the artist’s mental processes—just a hint—he will be able to whip the artist’s contribution into shape to fit the merchandising scheme, and things will move along comfortably. This pamphlet undertakes to provide the clue.
W I L L I A M D W I G G I N S 6
WHAT IS AN
ARTIST
A R T I S T II
?
The study here undertaken proceeds from the business side of the problem. What we want to do is to arrive at a set of rules for guiding business men in their transactions with artists. The logical first step in the undertaking will be to find out what artists are like, why they behave as they do, what they think, how they perform. Proposition I An artist is an anomaly in the present civilization because he is moved by a craving outside the universal and rational craving to make money. The impulse that moves an artist to use up his energy laboring toward an end not measurable in terms of money may be compared with the passion that might possibly move a business man to perfect an organization or to refine a process—without expecting, for the time being, any economic return from his effort. In the case of the business man such a passion would be kept within bounds, subordinated to this his main effort (i,e., his effort to increase the funds of himself or of his corporation). In the case of the artist the impulsion might not always be so controlled: in the case of the artist his urge to exercise his distinguishing faculty might very likely outrun and displace a craving for money. The factors of prime importance to a man of business are (1) money, its movement toward him or away from him, and (2) men in terms of money, as removing money from him (employees), or bringing money to him (customers). An artist works, not with men and money, but with materials (i.e., actual substances, wood, metal, glass), with sensory impressions, and with ideas.
III Part of the impelling force that moves an artist along his peculiar line of effort is the pleasure he gets from manipulating materials or from marshaling ideas— the pleasure of seeing things take shape under his hand. A man of business may have this same kind of satisfaction, but in a less degree, because with him that kind of satisfaction will be held strictly subordinate to the satisfaction of accumulating funds. IV An artist aims at a practical performance of the fabric he makes. If he makes a chair, his aim is to make a chair that people can sit in comfortably. It is hard for a business man to think of a fabric as fitted for a use, and sound in itself, (except when it is for his own use). The merchant-manufacturer thinks about his product as merchandise—something to sell; the artist thinks about his product as something to be used. One measures it in units of exchange value; the other measures it in units of performance value. 7
MARKET VALUE WHY DOES ART HAVE ?
M A V R K E VI T V A L U E
Art (the product of artists) may occur in an abstract form, such as music or poetry. Abstract forms of art are not of any use to a business man. But art may be “applied” to the practical machinery of life (e.g., architecture) sometimes increasing the value of the machinery. Art in the applied form, therefore, comes within the range of commercial interest because it contributes value to merchandise. It is hard for a business-man to understand why art applied to the practical machinery of life should make that machinery more valuable. The value of an internal combustion engine will not be increased by having its parts designed according to one of the esthetic systems. But the value of the vehicle that the engine moves is increased if artistic taste enters into the vehicle’s design Why? Artistic quality has commercial value because it panders to an owner’s pride. (As in the above instance: the stylish automobile gratifies the owner’s pride). One may stop with that. Other explanations on higher levels of human performance are of less practical value to the businessman.
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VALUE WHAT DO ARTISTS ?
V A L VII U E
If the artist is not inclined to appraise his product (art) in terms of dollars and cents by what standard does he appraise it? What value does he see in it? An artist’s estimate of the value of his product has no relation whatever to the commercial value of art. It is important here only because it throws a light upon the peculiarit ies of artists. An artist finds a value in the pleasant appearance of things. An object is valuable to him if its shape and proportions please his eye. This sense of grace and satisfactory proportion is not a faculty of artists alone; but in artists it is trained and developed more than in non-artists. The intrinsic value of the material of an object is of less moment to an artist than the object’s form, color, etc. Why, and how, the shape of an object valuable to him is another story, not pertinent to this discussion.
VIII An artist values “style” in a design or construction or performance. Style in this connection has a special meaning. There is a best way to strike a golf ball, to play tennis, to swim, to walk. In the realm of sport this best way is universally recognized as form. Transferred to the region of art this best way of doing things becomes style. Style is the simplest, the most graceful, the most forceful way to apply the effort and accomplish the end; style is, therefore, a quality of performance. It is also an end-product: objects have style according to the good fortune of their design. Locomotive engines, automobiles, ships, often have great style. A sense of the value of style is not confined to artists alone. IX An artist finds value in a nice technical performance. The way the paint is laid on the canvas; the way the wood is cut by the carving tool—operations of that kind, when done simply by a sure hand, add value to an object in the eyes of an artist; they are contributory to the quality called style. These are examples of the standards of value that an artist uses in appraising his product.
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THINK DO ARTISTS
T H X I N K
?
It is assumed that an artist’s work calls for no use of the reasoning faculties— that he proceeds solely upon a basis of “feeling,” achieving his ends by intuition. This assumption is incorrect. The artist is a rational creature. His impulse to create work of art emerges first in the region of intuition; and intuitive choices and decisions operate throughout the process is directed and expanded by reason. The end aimed at is a rational end. (See Proposition IV) The fabric that an artist builds must perform in a practical way; otherwise he is not suited. The practicality is a result, partly of intuition, but mostly of rational study of the end to be served. Your proper artist is always half engineer. A sense of weights and stresses, of structural fitness, of the right handling of materials, is a much a part of an artist’s equipment as an intuitive sense of rhythmic spaces and graceful lines. If an artist is actually an artist—not a mere esthete—you may rest easy about his rationality.
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CHOOSE HOW TO AN ARTIST?
C H O O S XI E
Choosing the right artist is, of course, the critical operation of the whole technique of dealing with artists. Artists as a class are not trained in the details of a business procedure. An artist who can fit himself into the requirements of a commercial enterprise easily and at once is a rare specimen. The lack of standardization among artists, and the wide variety of manufacturing and merchandising requirements, make it impossible to lay down precise rules for choosing the right artist. The qualities that you require in any other agent are the qualities you want in an artist—plus his art. You are equipped to judge him as a man. Where you will stick will be in the effort to determine how much art he contains. Art values are beyond your ability to estimate, naturally. How arrive at a determination? If it is possible to be done, find out from organizations that have used artists how he performed in their service. Two or three dependable reports on this point are the only really practical aids toward making a choice.
XII Do not lean too hard on reports from other artists. An artist may have a high standing in the estimation of his fellow artists and yet be something less than perfect when it comes to the observance of requirements that are commonplaces in the commercial world—such as delivery at a specific date. Unless you can find out how he actually performed face to face with a situation like your own, you have no solid facts to go upon. Base your decision on reports from people of your own kind. Lacking a means for arriving at an estimate through channels of report, you are obliged to fall back upon your judgement of the artist as a man.
XIII If the artist strikes you as a person who would be apt to tell the truth, he may very likely tell you the truth about his artistic qualifications to meet your demand. An artist of real ability is usually a simple soul, not so good at one thing, and better, he is likely to tell you so.
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A
XIV Find out, by stratagem, whether or not the candidate is conceited. A tone of confidence in an artist—an assurance about his ability within his function, even when this assurance manifests itself in a crude form—is a favorable sign rather than a drawback. But mere personal conceit, not based on any particular ability, is a sure indication that all attempts at cooperation will fail. The business man’s first impression will be that all artists are conceited. He will have to learn to distinguish between personal conceit—a fatal characteristic—and the kind of cockiness that able artists frequently exhibit—a self-assurance arising out of their independent professional position and their ignorance of the technique of staff organization.
TECHNIQUE
XV If a candidate evinces craftiness and a tendency to evade, set him down as less an artist. Ability to dissemble and evade is an asset in commercial transactions, and the discovery of such qualifications in an artist might easily lead you to believe that he was thereby fitted for your purpose. It is a part of the peculiar hook-up of the art process that such abilities are disabilities for an artist. The exigencies of his function force him to deal with his problems and materials in an absolutely honest and straight-forward fashion. In art there is no such thing as an oblique approach. For this reason:
FOR
DEALING
XVI Count a poker face a liability. An artist who is able to conceal his interest in your project behind a granite façade is very likely concealing other things—a consciousness of his inability to come to level with your requirements, for example.
XVII clothes.
WITH
Do not base an estimate of an artist’s ability upon the state of his
XVIII Do not estimate an artist as lacking ability because he lacks address. Many very able artists are hardly to be distinguished from Boeotians when it comes to putting things into words, or carrying off a manner. Conversely:
ARTISTS 12
CHOOSE
C XIX H XX O O S E
Do not confuse the question of an artist’s art with the purely mechanical consideration of how well the jaws works. Treat the glib artist as you would treat any other candidate who held you bound by the spell of his eloquence. Struggle free, and precipitate the solution by dropping in a few whens and hows. Having chosen your artist, treat him as you would treat a physician that you had consulted on a point of health—not as a plumber that you had called in to stop a leak. Be sure that he understands the case thoroughly—and then take his medicine. Take it as he prescribes it. Do not try to see what result you can get by mixing two of the doses at half strength, and omitting a third. If his prescription fails to reach the spot, consult another doctor.
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HOW TO ENLIST AN ARTIST’S
INTEREST
IN A PROJECT?
I XXIN T E R XXII E S XXIII T
It is highly important to engage an artist’s interest in the project at the outset. This interest will be a large part of his motive power. An artist’s interest in the project may be enlisted by giving him a wide liberty of choices as to ways and means. If the indispensable features of a project can be marked down, and the artist then be given a free hand to accomplish those ends in his own way, the job will interest him. If, however, the artist is fenced in with a palisade of requirements that are not really essential to the main purpose of the the project—such things as your own personal whims, for example, and undigested prepossessions—his interest will begin at zero, and run into minus quantities. After an artist’s interest is caught (by giving him the semblance of a free hand in working out details) modifications may be introduced without risk of a drop in his voltage, if the introduction is managed adroitly. His interest, aroused at the beginning, will carry him past thin places where modifications are introduced. He will not notice that the plan has been changed. Modifications can be made to seem to be merely slight alterations in his own proposals. Do not suggest all the changes at one tim; let them fall in one by one—on different days, if possible. The amount of money that an artist is to receive for his work is not usually as forceful an agent for enlisting his interest as the details of the work itself.
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MAINTAIN HOW TO AN ARTIST’S INTEREST IN A PROJECT?
M A XXIV I N XXV T A I
In the case of a project that calls for considerable time in its execution the initial voltage is sure to drop as the work goes on. The fading interest needs to be revived from time to time. The best way to revive interest is to keep the artist in touch with the progress of the work in the shop or on the site. Trial proofs, trial specimens, photographs of advancing patterns, experimental data, all tend to keep the artist’s interest alive. If there are two or more projects to be undertaken in sequence, carry the artist’s interest over from job to job by sending him full data (photographs of finished work, specimens of the completed article, copies of the printed book, etc., etc.) concerning completed Project No.1, as he enters upon Project No. 2. In every case it is wise to show the artist how his design turns out as soon as the work is completed. When it happens repeatedly that an artist makes designs and sends them off into space and never hears of them again, his work seems to him futile and he loses interest. (See Proposition IV: An artist is interested in the performance of his design.)
N
The dispatch of this “revival” material to an artist needs to be done systematically, as a regular part of the program—not left to the chance of somebody’s remembering to do it.
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HOW TO LOWER THE
CONCEIT OF AN ARTIST?
C O N C E I XXVII T
XXVI To diminish an artist’s importance in his own eyes shape your discourse after this fashion. Suppose that you are talking to a celebrated sign-painter. Ask him: “Do you know Jones’ work in sign-painting? In my opinion Jones is the greatest sign-painter we have. The only others that approach him at all are ----- and ----.” (Not mentioning the artists you are talking to.) Then proceed to describe various of Jones’ successes at great length. Few professionals can stand up to this ordeal. If the artist is of a lower order and will not wilt—but, instead, tries to prove that he also is a great sign-painter by showing you photographs of his master-pieces, run through his prints rapidly, without comment, and then take up the tale of Jones’ sign-painting again. The second injection will lower the artist’s conceit to zero. HOW TO COMMEND AN ARTIST
If you like the work an artist shows you, do not try to express your approval in the form of apt technical comment. Confine yourself to the simple formula: “ I like that”; or grunt in an approving way. Corollary. On the other hand you may use apt technical comments to give expression to a lukewarm interest: “I like the way you have managed the perspective in the the fly’s left foot,” etc. The artist will see that you care very little about it and will readily pass on to a discussion of batting-avarages, or whatever.
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FLATTER HOW TO AN ARTIST?
F L XXVIII A T T XXIX E XXX R
Flattery is effective with artists of minor rank. As an artist’s ability rises in degree the effect of direct flattery diminishes. Some great artists are gluttons for flattery; but usually an artist of large dimensions has been fed so much of it that he can no longer taste it. In many cases no great degree of finesse is required; but speaking calls for a delicate touch and a sure hand. If the first encounter with an artist occurs in his workshop, ask to see his work—using the formula: “I’d like mighty well to see some of the stuff.”— not “Oh, won’t you show me some of your work,” etc. If you meet him in the world outside, use the formula: “So-and-so tells me I ought to get in touch with you and see some of the things you are doing,” etc. At the first encounter do not mention other artists in the same line—or, if the names of other artists are introduced by the artist himself, deal with them briefly. Do not disparage the work of other artists in the same line under the mistaken impression that disparagement of his peers will flatter an artist. After you become acquainted with an artist you may discuss other artists freely. But, even in such free discussion, it is wise to let the artist himself take the lead in dismembering other artists—he may secretly be flattered by your dissection of his contemporaries; but use the knife sparingly.
XXXI When an artist shows you his work for the first time do not try to shape your comments along technical lines. Use the natural language God gave you. If, by a lucky fluke, you hit upon a point that is the artist’s particular pride, do not try to expand or amplify the fortunate stroke. Leave it just as it stands. Artists, flattering each other, use simple phraseology: “That’s bully” or “I like that” so-and-so. The less jaw-jaw the better. 17
F XXXII L A T T E R
An effective form of flattery, in case where the fee charged is really disproportionately small, is to add slightly to the amount of the artist’s charge. Coming in this way, in terms of the business man’s own standard of values, the approval is particularly emphatic.
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PAY
P XXXIII A Y
HOW TO
AN ARTIST?
If an artist keeps up his end of the bargain, delivers his work promptly and gives general satisfaction, you will do well to separate his invoices from the usual sixty days dossier, and treat them as professional bills, e.i., cash on presentation. His receipt of prompt payment for work done promptly will give him a sense of action all along the line and will stimulate him to increased effort to make his end of the job snap.
XXXIV Do not try to discipline an artist by holding up payment for his work. He will be irritated by the procedure, to be sure, but not in the way you intend, because he is not so sensitive in the region of the pocket-nerve as you may have anticipated. (See Proposition I) XXXV If the artist is naive, money can be saved by having him make an agreement with you that you will pay for only such part of his work as you may accept and use. This will relieve you from paying for what is really the most time-consuming and laborious part of a designer’s job, namely, the preliminary study and preparation of alternative sketches and designs to clarify his plan. You can, of course, reject his finished working-drawings when the study is complete, retaining careful memoranda of various valuable points developed. XXXVI If the artist is young an inexperienced tell him that, while you can’t pay much for the design, it will be used widely and seen by millions of people: that the wide publicity will greatly benefit him. If the artist is very young this argument may induce him not to charge any fee at all. XXXVII An older artist—particularly the kind that is engrossed by the technical details of his craft—may be induced to take less than his usual fee if you can contrive to make the commission highly interesting on its technical side (if it involves some novel and experimental manipulation, for example). It will be worth your while to surrender some point that you have insisted on—particularly a point that involves merely pride or stubbornness on you part—if the surrender will add some attractive technical feature to the project. 19
P A Y
XXXVIII An artist of long experience whose work is in great demand will have arrived at a fixed scale of prices and cannot be influenced to change them. He will occasionally do work gratis if the spirit moves him. The spirit that moves him will be some peculiar feature of the project that engages his interest—but the feature will be too peculiar and unexpected for you to be able to contrive it in advance as bait. XXXIX A simple way to get a lot of art (of a sort) for little or no outlay is to set up a Prize Competition for a given project. Some very excellent artists go in for Prize Competitions, but as a general rule the key men in a field have no time to bother and the designs that come in are second grade. Often a second grade design will be better for your purpose than a strictly first class article; and there will be Honorable Mentions to be saved for later use, and many good ideas that you can use not Mentioned at all.
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T Set in Dwiggins’ Electra and Metro type with a special Bold Display let Y ter, as titles and the Bold Oldstyle 9 points for P the main text. This pamphlet has been designed by Loes Claessens E and printed at Willem De Kooning F Amsterdam. Academie and Residence June, 2013 A C E S
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Design is history, http://www.designishistory. com/1850/wa-dwiggins/, William Addison Dwiggins, 20 Maart 2013 Art Directors Club, http://www.adcglobal.org/ archive/hof/1979/?id=264, 1979 HALL OF FAME, 20 Maart 2013
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A short story about Dwiggins Press of the Willem de Kooning Academie Rotterdam, 2013 Copyleft 2011 by Loes Claessens Printed in The Netherlands
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It’s about W.A. Dwiggins A Biography
B Addison ‘William I Dwiggins was a nice man O according to many people. A very hardGworker, he took his work very seriously but R himself lightly and that made A it a pleasure to work with him’. P Dorothy Abbe B H I Y O G R A P H Y WILLIAM DWIGGINS 1880–1956
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Dwiggings was an accomplished type designer, illustrator and a graphic designer. But most important: we know him of coining the term ‘graphic designer’ in 1922 to describe his various activities in printed communications, like book design, illustration, typography, lettering and calligraphy.
At the turn of the century, Dwiggins went to Chicago to study at the Frank Holmes School of Illustration, and by 1904 he had settled, for life as it turned out, in Hingham, Massachusetts, to pursue his career.
In his early years, Dwiggins did most of his work in advertising. And in 1927, he wrote Layout in Advertising. Which later became a very famous book. It was considered the standard text on the subject, so much so that the book was reissued twenty years later.
His heart was in the making of books, however, and this led him to strive to improve the generally poor quality of trade books in America.
He was one of design’s first critical voices. One of his common critiques was that type foundries were not making type that was appropriate enough. Believing that the advent of the machine was in no way incompatible with artistic excellence, Dwiggins set about devising methods to use the new technology to artistic advantage.
He disliked European moderns, like Futura, Kabel, and Erbar. Mergenthaler Linotype charged him to do better, and he did, creating Metro, his first typeface. After designing Metroblack and Metrolight he created four other marketed typefaces: Electra, Caledonia, Eldorado and Falcon. Later Bill Dwiggins relieved the pressure of work by building a miniature theater called: ‘The marionette theater’. Together with his typographical work and other forms of his art, now resides in the Boston Public Library, where three rooms are devoted to the Dwiggins Collection.
In the last two years of his life, Dwiggins’s failing health made it impossible to work any longer, but his good humor never deserted him. He said, “It was a grand adventure; I am content.”
William Addison Dwiggins died at his home on Christmas Day, 1956. ~
K E U K K Ü E C N H E Piet Zwart
&
Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky About their designed kitchens: 'Bruynzeel keuken' and 'Frankfurter Küche'.
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B R U Y N Piet Zwart Z Worked for Wils and Berlage E to Voorburg In 1913 Piet ZwartK moved and got to know the painter from E E and Hungary named: Vilmos Huszár architect Jan Wils. Jan Wils had only established himself as an independent L U architect, after having worked at Berlage for for years. Piet Zwart became a K draftsman at Wills for two years and worked on a number of Wils’ important E early projects. Zwart also worked together with Huszár, who took the final N colors for his account. is, that Zwart never had a thing for boats. It is just so typical of Piet Zwart that he always showed his skills again in other fields. The first task of the Bruynzeel family was designing the furniture for the Stormhoek bungalow in Zaandam. The design of this bungalow was done by Jan Wils, architect of the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam and door factory in Zaandam. The application of color for the furniture and wallpaper of the bungalow was designed by Vilmos Huszár, the creator of the still famous Eagle Vignette from the Bruynzeelfirm. Stormhoek was ment for son Cornelis Bruynzeel (1900-1980) who was the director of the newly built doorfactory. This design was made clear by Piet Zwart using color and perspective. Both buildings are now demolished unfortunately. The working relationship with son Cornelis was special. We worked on the basis of mutual trust and respect. This was also the germ of the later integration of design and industry, a development that shortly began after the outbreak of World War II.
Contact Bruynzeel 1922 (according to AVRO Close Up documentary series “Everything must be new” from 2012) is the year when Zwart and the Bruynzeel family got in contact in the form of a contract for the design of furniture and later known Bruynzeel kitchen. In 1938 his kitchen got produced after three years of research. He designed the layout of Cornelis Bruynzeel Jr.’s New yacht Eagle Intended for the ocean race in 1936. Special about that
The contact Cornelis Bruynzeel, which dated from 1922, contained that Piet Zwart from 1930 was to create commissioned ads for the company and design the monthly blotters he which did until 1950. He also designed a triangular look for liquid was from the factory floor. There is a catalogue containing all known products of Bruynzeel companies specifically described in detail, published in several editions. Piet Zwart has also been involved from the outset in the design and implementation of the wood and paper packaging of Bruynzeel pencils. The collaboration between Piet Zwart and Bruynzeel continued excellent till the 50’ies.
K E U K E N S
De Kunstbus, http://www.kunstbus.nl/design/piet+zwart.html, Piet Zwart, 10 april 2013
Peter Marcuse, http://www.marcuse.nl/page.php?pageID=157, Piet Zwart, een veelzijdig avant-gardistisch vormgever, 10 april 2013
F R Margarete A Schütte-Lihotzky N K F - U The Frankfurt kitchen was a milestone R considered the in domestic architecture, forerunner of modern fitted kitchens, for it realised for the first time T a kitchen built after a unified concept, designed to enable efficient work and to be built atH low cost. It was designed in 1926 by Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky E for architect Ernst May’s social housing project K New Frankfurt in Frankfurt, R Germany. Some 10,000 units were built in the in Frankfurt. late 1920sÜ C H E “They thought I would die of starvation”
Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky in November 1998. A portrait of the 5th Death of the Viennese architect and resistance fighter - with a matter of opinion “It will surprise you,” said Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky occasion of her 100th Birthday, “I before I conceived in a radio interview, the Frankfurt Kitchen 1926’ve never cooked itself. Home in Vienna has my mother cooked in Fankfurt I went to the inn. I designed the kitchen as an architect, not a housewife “. Behind this idea was the pragmatic desire to relieve women doing housework, with its functionality and rationality were considered supreme principles.
Because of the then-popular Taylorist movement studies she had learned that there must be a simple way for every work. And so they developed, inspired by her husband Wilhelm Schütte, who worked on the “minimum subsistence level housing,” the principle to accommodate a maximum features in minimum space. The result was the then revolutionary space-saving kitchen. The Frankfurt kitchen, with the first architect in Austria has become world famous, however, was only one of many projects, which Schütte-Lihotzky had created in the course of social housing.
K Ü C H E N
International Labour F R A N K In Nazi resistance FirstF architect Social Housing
From 1920, the settlers’ movement is active, Schütte-Lihotzky was increasingly confronted with the difficult living conditions of the Viennese contemporary workforce. From this they developed the insight that the misery of the workers covered their living catastrophic situations. Decisive was the fact that the labor-and space-saving concepts were financially affordable for the most vulnerable. In addition to her exemplary housing and social housing in Austria and Germany, she also designed furniture as well as kindergartens and schools - in Istanbul, Paris, London and Moscow.
Margaret (mostly “Grete” called) was born on 23 LihotzkyBorn January 1897 in Vienna, the daughter of a bourgeois family. The implementation of their desire to study architecture was not made easy for her. When she wanted to study further after visiting the KK School of Applied Arts in Vienna, which she had visited 1915-1919 as the first and only woman had both her father, a civil servant, as well as her professor for a continuation of their studies at the College of Applied Arts. “They thought I would starve in 1916, no one could imagine that a woman charged with building a house - not even myself,” she said on the occasion of her 100th Birthday in an interview the Wiener Zeitung. They still refused to be deterred, because the “mathematical precision, the Artistic, Creative, a d especially the social to the architecture” fascinated her.
After studying the architect worked for the “First-profit Siedlungsgenossenschaft the Veterans of Austria” and was in common with Adolf Loos in the site office of the city at peace settlement Lainz Game worked. In 1926 she was called by the German architect Ernst May from Frankfurt Building Department, where she designed facilities for kindergartens, laundries, apartment types for working single women and the Frankfurt Kitchen. There she met the architect Wilhelm Schütte, whom she married a year later.
In 1930 she went with May to Moscow to plan child framed houses and industrial cities. After stints in Paris, London and Istanbul, where she designed the example based on the Montessori educational pavilion kindergartens, returned SchütteLihotzky 1940 he returned to Vienna and joined the anti-fascist resistance of the CPA. In an interview with the student union Boku newspaper of 1995, she said: “We were convinced that Nazism is a disaster for Europe and the world, not only for Austria”. Already after 25 days of activist work, she was arrested by the Gestapo and condemned “by a series of coincidences to ‘only’ 15 years in prison.” With the end of the war it was on 29 April, 1945 liberated by American troops from Aichach prison in Bavaria. Not only that, their decisive for resistance to the Nazi regime by the state of Austria was ignored their work in architecture from 1946 were marked by a boycott of the city of Vienna, because she was not ready to withdraw from the CPA. It was not until her 90th Birthday was showered with honors the great social reform architect. Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky died on 18 January 2000, just five days before her 103rd Birthday, in Vienna. (Dabu)
U R T H K E Ü R C H E
K I T C H E N S
Los Angeles Times, http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jan/22/news/ mn-56593, Margarete Schuette-Lihotzky; Pioneering Architect, 12 april 2013 New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/arts/27ihtdesign27.html?_r=0, Modernist Triumph in the Kitchen, Alice Rawsthorn, 12 april 2013
http://www.stuttgarter-gesellschaft-kunst-denkmalpflege.de/05_FK/05_afk. htm#eng, Zu einer Typologie der Frankfurter Küchen 1926 – 30, 2 april 2013 Die Standard, http://diestandard.at/1920037, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky: "Sie haben gedacht, ich würde verhungern", 12 april 2013