Above Sculpted Orpheus Fountain, designed by Carl Milles,
with the Cranbrook Art Museum in background.
Left Eliel Saarinen, left, with Eero Saarinen, on the steps of
the peristyle at the Cranbrook Art Museum in 1941.
Below left J. Robert F. Swanson and Henry Scripps Booth
designed the Cranbrook Architectural Office Building (now
the Cranbrook Academy of Art Administration Building), the
first building for the Academy of Art, in 1925. In 1932, at the
time of this photograph, the building housed the original Art
Museum as well as the Cranbrook Architectural Office. Many
architectural fragments, such as the column seen here, were
purchased by George Booth and incorporated into the interi-
ors and exteriors of numerous Cranbrook buildings.
Department of Weaving.” Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier and
Alvar Aalto were all guest lecturers at the school.
Affectionately called “Pappy” by students and instructors,
Saarinen was a larger-than-life figure. Architect Ralph Rapson,
who died in March 2008, remembered Saarinen’s negative
reaction to drawings of a building design Rapson had been
working on. “Pappy used a cane and he just took it and wiped
all the papers off the drawing board and rolled out a huge roll
of blank paper and started drawing,” said Rapson. “He didn’t
speak much, but when he did, you listened.”
Saarinen’s broad view of design held sway. “If you’re going
to do an ashtray, you have to know what table it’s going to be
on,” Lily Swann Saarinen recalled his saying to incoming stu-
dents; she had enrolled in 1936 to study sculpture with Milles
and met and married Saarinen’s son, Eero. “And if you’re going
to do a table, you have to know what kind of room it’s going to
when they arrived, they worked on their own or apprenticed to
be in. And if you’re going to do a room, you have to know what
resident artists — Cranbrook’s ad hoc “instructors” — who con-
kind of house it’s going to be in. You always have to think of the
vened en masse at semester’s end to review each student’s work,
next largest thing to what you’re commissioned to do.”
whether in architecture, weaving or ceramics. “It wasn’t a matter
The freedom to determine their own course of study sur-
of taking five classes,” says Reed Kroloff, the new director of the
prised some of the students, including Florence Schust, who
Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum, formerly dean of
studied architecture under Eliel. (She later married Hans Knoll,
Tulane University’s architecture school and editor of Architecture
founder of Knoll Associates.) She remembered waiting to be
magazine. “Everyone was a practicing artist or designer. At that
told what to do — until she realized that Saarinen wanted her to
time, it was special. No one else did it.”
figure it out for herself.
Saarinen recruited stellar artists, craftsmen and architects as
Informal get-togethers were as much a part of the learning
instructors; the roster from the late 1930s and ‘40s is a veritable
experience as the work. To encourage mingling, Saarinen invited
“Who’s Who” of the midcentury modern design era. Saarinen directed
students from the various departments to evening discussions.
the architecture and design department, with son Eero as assistant.
He didn’t like “stuffy coffee parties,” said Swann Saarinen. “[He]
Charles Eames headed design and Harry Bertoia ran the metal stu-
thought we should have cocktails…He’d have his architect
dio. Other instructors included Hungarian painter Zoltan Sepeshy
boys over, and then we’d all be asked eventually.”
(painting and drawing), Swedish sculptor Carl Milles (sculpture),
This camaraderie encouraged instructors and students
Finnish ceramist Maija Grotell (ceramics and pottery) and Marianne
to collaborate on projects as well as experiment in different
Strengell (weaving). Loja Saarinen was unofficially “in charge of the
fields. “Eliel’s ideas fitted Booth’s ideas of a great big barn
48 www.modernismmagazine.com