Author : Dianne O. Pierce
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (74 download)
Book Synopsis Design, Craft, and American Identity by : Dianne O. Pierce
Download or read book Design, Craft, and American Identity written by Dianne O. Pierce and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In 1939, in the significant moment just before the involvement of the United States in World War II, influential and successful industrial designer Russel Wright conceived a project intended to engage fellow designers, craftspeople, manufacturers, and key department stores in a mission to secure the pre-eminence of American design for a national audience. The "American-Way" project, as Wright called it, brought together craft and industry in the design of objects for middle-class Americans' homes. It was an ambitious marketing scheme, but far more than that, the American-Way project was a philosophy of American-ness in design when the country was struggling to define itself in all arenas. Almost forty designers, including Gilbert Rohde, Marianne Strengell, Raymond Loewy, and Wright himself, as well as some thirty-six prominent craftspeople, joined to take American design into every aspect of the domestic interior. The venture brought issues of meaning and moral intent such as Modernism's implications for everyday Americans, the primacy of native design, and the necessity of "good" design for all, to the American consumer. Further, American-Way sought to combine the machine and the hand in an effort to coalesce these two polarities of the industrialized world. This paper examines the ideas and objects of the American-Way project for what they express about America's mid-century cultural and design contexts. Situating the project within the career and ideological framework of Russel Wright, the paper examines the structure and intent of the American-Way program, analyzes a representative sample of its designs, and details its outcomes. Building on previous scholarship on Russel Wright's prolific industrial design career, this paper examines the American-Way project as a tangible expression of Wright's ideas about native American design, American mid-century lifestyle, and good design for all of the buying public. It further places the American-Way project at the center of significant movements in design in the pre-World War II period."
