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The Making of Modern
Yale’s art gallery gets a collection of groundbreaking midcentury design.
January/February 2012
by Julie V. Iovine ’77
Photos ©Yale University Art Gallery
Julie V. Iovine '77, the executive editor of the Architect's Newspaper, writes frequently on architecture and design for the Wall Street Journal.
In the 1970s, when others were collecting Chuck Close
’64MFA, Christo, and David Hockney, John C. Waddell ’59 started buying Donald
Deskey, Walter Dorwin Teague, and Walter von Nessen. Those last three names
aren’t as famous as the first three, but they represent some of the leaders in
American design of the modern period, a field in which Waddell ultimately
became one of the three most important collectors. After giving collections of
photography and decorative arts to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he has now
promised an extensive collection of over 150 objects designed between 1925 and
1940 to the Yale University Art Gallery, propelling it to the forefront of
institutions with far-ranging American decorative arts collections.
To celebrate Waddell’s gift, the gallery has published
a book combining the items from his collection with its other impressive
holdings in modern textiles, silver, glass, metal, and furniture pieces. A
Modern World: American Design from the Yale University Art Gallery, 1920–1950 (Yale University Press) adds an invaluable resource to the field of American
decorative arts, tracking the adoption of modernism in this country through
objects both unique and mass-produced. From American Airlines’ silverplate
flatware—with handles shaped like DC-3s—to an astonishing 1939 manufactured
glass chair by Louis Dierra, the book is a significant resource for scholars.
It’s also a dream to dabble in for anyone interested in the stories objects
tell. (An installation of some of Waddell’s gifts, focused on the 1930s, is on
display at the gallery through March.)
Even the gaps in the collection underscore its
strength. It includes some seven pieces by Paul T. Frankl, an emigré architect
from Vienna turned popular furniture designer, but not the skyscraper bookcase
for which he is most known. Similarly, there’s the plywood leg splint by
Charles and Ray Eames that launched a thousand bentwood chairs, but only two
other items by the inimitable duo. The message is clear: the emphasis here is
on early groundbreaking designs, not star-turns. American manufacturer Reed
& Barton’s modern organic candelabrum, designed by Robert H. Ramp, is a
stunning case in point. Both sleek and sinuous and made of electroplated
nickel, it is the result of a 1948 initiative by Boston’s Institute of Contemporary
Art to pair young designers with manufacturers.
A Modern World does not
treat its subject as art objects under glass but rather as articulate players
in the drama of how modernism was absorbed into American culture. Reading that
the Museum of Modern Art invited Amelia Earhart to choose her favorite piece in
the Machine Art show of 1934 (a steel spring), or that Macy’s decided in 1927
to educate shoppers on how to identify well-designed modern objects (via an
in-store exhibition that attracted over 50,000 people), one learns about a past
that was curious and receptive about design innovations. Even the
much-ballyhooed genius of Apple Computer today, with its philosophy of getting
ahead through design, was anticipated in a 1934 magazine article that noted:
“The basic case for industrial design may be oversimplified thus: whenever two
products are equal in point of utility and price, the one that looks most
attractive to the purchaser will be bought first.” So true. But we also must
count on forward-looking collectors like Waddell, who have the eye to recognize
and follow how constantly society changes its definition of attractive. 
Click image to enlarge
A three-branched candelabrum for Reed & Barton by
Robert H. Ramp, first offered for sale in 1950, was the result of a
collaboration involving manufacturers, young designers, and Boston’s Institute
of Contemporary Art.
Click image to enlarge
The Yale University Art Gallery has both a specimen of the object itself and a design sketch by Ramp.
Click image to enlarge
A portable phonograph, made by RCA Victor around 1935
and rendered in aluminum, chrome, velvet, and plastic, is one of the items
promised to Yale by John C. Waddell ’59.
Click image to enlarge
The Bell Model 302 telephone became so ubiquitous as to
seem invisible, but when it was introduced in 1937, it was an ergonomic
innovation, based on extensive research by designer Henry Dreyfuss.
Click image to enlarge
Equally familiar is designer William Archibald Welden’s
line of Revere Ware cookware in stainless steel, copper, and Bakelite plastic.
Introduced in 1939, the gently curved pots and pans are still being
manufactured today.
Click image to enlarge
Textile designer Angelo Testa produced bold, brightly
colored prints to accompany modern architecture. This pattern on linen from the
1950s, called “IBM disks” was inspired by computer tape reels and was probably
made for an IBM business office.
Click image to enlarge
A five-piece vanity set, designed by Gustav Jensen for
du Pont around 1931, imitates ebony and ivory, but also suggests the expressive
possibilities of plastic itself.
Click image to enlarge
Designer Russel Wright designed this birch armchair in
1935 as part of a line of furniture he called “American Modern”—intended, he
wrote, “to express in the twentieth-century manner the simplicity and frank
construction of American Colonial furniture.”
Click image to enlarge
Predating the well-known molded plywood chair designs
of Charles and Ray Eames is a similarly made leg splint the designers developed
in 1942 for the US Navy. The splint was an improvement over the rigidity of
traditional metal splints, which often caused additional trauma to patients.
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