Saturday, March 21, 2026

Deco

Anonymous American Designer
Olympiad of the Air Medal
1930
copper alloy
National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC


Anonymous American Designer
Western Union
ca. 1930
offset-lithograph (pamphlet cover)
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Anonymous Argentine Designer
Hoteles Nogaró, Buenos Aires
ca. 1925
lithograph (poster)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Table Mat
ca. 1925
stencil-printed cotton velveteen
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Table Runner
ca. 1925
stencil-printed cotton velveteen
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Otto Teegen
Design for Dust Jacket
ca. 1930
gouache on paper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Flowers and Beads
ca. 1925
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Lattice
ca. 1928-29
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Stripes
ca. 1928-29
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Geometric Pattern
ca. 1930
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Geometric Repeat
ca. 1930
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Art Deco Border
ca. 1930
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Blossoms in Compartments
ca. 1925-35
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Deer and Foliage
ca. 1936
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Floral Border
ca. 1930
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Evening Bag
ca. 1920-30
metal mesh with synthetic lining
Anacostia Community Museum,
Washington DC

Anonymous French Designer
Matchbox
1926
enameled gold, diamonds
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

20 December 1945

    My eye was weeping all on its own, apart from me, the water coursing down my cheek, and my heart was frightened.  I felt abandoned.  The watering of my eye seemed as gruesome as the dripping walls of the lavatory in an Industrial Revolution slum.

18 January 1946

    At home when I drank lemon tea and ate three good chocolates, I read more of Haydon's life, and I thought of his writing in 1823, my writing in 1946 – private thoughts, like toy mice dancing in each century, then lying silent, squashed flat between the pages of a book, piled over and topped for ever with later layers of dancing mice. 

12 May 1946

    The quiet content came bubbling up, was with me every day then; and I remember how reluctant I was to go back to London and be with my father in Adam Street and Ryder Street, to have to go to Quaglino's and the Monseigneur Grill with him and to his club.  Everywhere irked by the bodies and minds jostling one's own.  Oh the dirtiness of herding together.
    Yet it is most important to have people near one that one need hardly see.  Without this consciousness of other human beings I think almost all of us are liable to be swamped by the power of matter.  One's strength is not enough to bear this with no other help near. 

– from The Journals of Denton Welch (who was born in 1915, gravely injured in 1935, then wrote the journals between 1942 and his early death in 1948), edited by Michael De-la-Noy (1984)