Modern Design
Design shaped by modernism from the early 1900s to the 1970s, favouring function, industrial production and new materials over applied ornament.
No works indexed yet · 10 related artists
No open-access works for Modern Design are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
Modern design grew from the conviction that objects for a modern age should look like what they are and be made the way modern things are made. The Deutscher Werkbund, founded in 1907, brought artists and manufacturers together, and that year Peter Behrens began designing lamps, kettles and even the trademark for the electrical company AEG. The Bauhaus, open from 1919 to 1933, taught designers to work with industry.
The idea took different accents abroad. In the 1930s American designers such as Raymond Loewy streamlined refrigerators and locomotives. After 1945 Italian firms like Cassina worked closely with architects, Gae Aulenti designed the bat-winged Pipistrello table lamp (1965), and the woodturner Edward Moulthrop showed that modern form could also be made by hand. Diego Giacometti's bronze tables and lamps, with their small animals and branches, reveal a more poetic side. Look for honest materials, visible structure and forms that follow use.
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