Above Design for the south gate of Cranbrook House by George
Booth, 1916. Booth, who was trained as a metalsmith, commis-
sioned Samuel Yellin of Philadelphia to work up and fabricate
the final design; it is still in use today. The Cranbrook campus is
known for its many and diverse gates by Booth, Eliel Saarinen,
Eero Saarinen, Walter Nichols and, most recently, Gary Griffin.
Right Ben Baldwin, left, and Harry Weese with their tea wagon
design for the MoMA Organic Design in Home Furnishings
Competition in 1939. The wagon featured small airplane tires,
perforated metal trays and a wicker basket. The background
competition board shows their winning designs in the outdoor
furniture category, including a canvas porch cot, sling seat and
steel porch chair.
where a whole lots of artists got together and shared their commissions and participating in competitions, particularly those
talents,” said Swann Saarinen. “One would be reading in one resulting in production. This led them to experiment with new
corner, and one would be doing metal in another corner, and manufacturing techniques, many of which had been developed
one would be doing drawing and sculpting and so forth. There’d by the aircraft industry during World War II. “The fundamental
be groups, and they’d all be working together and help each description of Cranbrook is the search for form and design as
other.” Michael McCoy, partner in McCoy & McCoy Associates a mediation between people and technology,” says Cooper
and co-chair of Cranbrook’s design department with his wife, Woodring, a Cranbrook alumnus and past president of the
Katherine, from 1971 to 1995, says, “They all traded ideas and Industrial Designers Society of America says. “So Cranbrook, in a
collaborated. But they were also highly competitive. There was a way, became an experimental lab for design.”
lot of group criticism. That’s where a lot of innovation happens.” Nowhere was this more evident than the Conversation chair,
Both faculty and students benefited from the exchanges; Charles which Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames submitted to the 1940
Eames is a prime example. Arriving at Cranbrook to study architec- Organic Furniture Competition at the Museum of Modern Art
ture in 1938, he became head of the Department for Experimental in New York. Adapting compound molding techniques for ply-
Design within the year, but he spent most of his time, “in the wood that had been developed in the early 1900s in Europe
photography, metal and ceramics studios,” according to Rapson. for the aircraft industry, they managed to overcome the ten-
“He was always off collaborating and making new things,” says dency towards cracking that had stymied other furniture design-
McCoy. “That multi-disciplinary, free-flowing atmosphere was a big ers, to become the first to successfully bend plywood in three
draw. He didn’t have to worry about his own department.” Before dimensions to craft furniture. Eames and Saarinen enlisted
Cranbrook, Eames was “more traditional,” adds McCoy. “Within a the help of Haskelite in Chicago, a manufacturer that used
year, that changed. You see a radical shift.” compound-molding to make light yet extremely strong indus-
Students and instructors were expected to hone their prob- trial products, such as plane fuselages, boats and car door
lem-solving skills and develop professional networks by seeking panels. They also got Lily Swann Saarinen and Ray Kaiser (later
www.modernismmagazine.com 49