MODERN TIMES
American Gifts
Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts has been
thrust into the forefront of American
modern decorative arts with the gift
of the John Axelrod Collection, nearly
400 pieces of furniture, silver, ceram-
ics, glass and metalwork by the most
renowned American designers, crafts-
men and manufacturers of the 1920s
through the 1940s. Amassed over 30
Traveling through Arts & Architecture
years by the Boston-based Axelrod, the
For lovers of midcentury modernism, nothing would beat the excitement of traveling back
collection includes such masterpieces as
in time to when the modern was new. Taschen is now providing a simulacrum of that
Donald Deskey’s painted room screen,
experience with the publication of a facsimile edition of Arts & Architecture, the design
Paul Frankl’s Skyscraper desk and book-
magazine founded by John Entenza in 1945. Best known for its sponsorship of the Case Study
case and Kem Weber’s Airline armchair,
House program, which nurtured the creation of groundbreak-
as well as rare examples of Gilbert
ing affordable modern designs by such architects as Richard
Rohde desk clock designs and ceramics
Neutra, Richard Schindler, Eero Saarinen, Craig Ellwood, John
and sculpture by Viktor Schreckengost.
Lautner, Charles Eames and Pierre Koenig, the magazine was
Rare pieces include Wilhelm Hunt
much more. With covers by Herbert Matter, Harry Bertoia,
Diederich’s firescreen and Warren
Alvin Lustig and Luis Barragán, it proclaimed its bold aesthetic
MacArthur’s aluminum magazine rack,
ideals; it introduced the now classic work of countless furniture
with mass production represented by
and interior designers; and it helped establish the legitimacy of
such items as Walter Von Nessen’s
the modern approach as it was developing on the West Coast.
metalwork for Chase Copper and Brass
The boxed set covers the magazine’s first 10 years (1945–
Company, Walter Dorwin Teague’s
54): 118 magazines in 10 boxes with more than 6,000 pages,
glass vases for Steuben and Norman
including a supplement with thumbnails of each cover and a
Bel Geddes’s seltzer bottles. The col-
comprehensive table of contents. A future edition will cover
lection will be housed, along with fine
the balance of the issues, from 1955 to 1967. Priced at $700,
art from the same period, in the new
Arts & Architecture 1945–54 has been limited to 5,000 num-
American Wing, designed by the British
bered copies. For information, visit www.taschen.com. –AT
firm of Foster and Partners, currently
under construction and due for comple-
tion in late 2010. —AT
Nakashima Archives Gifted
to Michener Art Museum
Admirers of George Nakashima (1905–90) will be happy to
learn of an important new resource: the designer’s archives of
letters, drawings, photographs and awards, donated last fall
to the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Bucks
County, Pennsylvania, by his children, Mira Nakashima-Yarnall,
a designer, and Keven Nakashima. George Nakashima’s free-
ts, Boston. edge furniture, which allowed the natural, unsawn contours
of the stumps, logs and other natural wood forms he worked
with to dictate its shape, drew on his deep respect for nature.
Born in Spokane, Washington, to Japanese parents, Nakashima
trained as an architect at the Massachusetts Institute of
tesy Museum of Fine Ar Technology and under Czech architect Antonin Raymond in
Japan. He learned traditional Japanese woodworking skills
while in an Idaho internment camp during World War II. At
war’s end, Raymond brought him to Bucks County, where
Nakashima opened his workshop; run by his children, it is still
in operation today. —SM
Lent by John Axelrod; photograph cour
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Helvetica on screen and more.