"Donald Deskey: Decorative Designs and Interiors" 1987 Hanks, David A. W/ Toher, Jennifer

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HANKS, David A. w/ TOHER, Jennifer

[214] pp.

E.P. Dutton

1987

11 1/4" x 8 3/4"

Donald Sidney Deskey (November … Read more HANKS, David A. w/ TOHER, Jennifer

[214] pp.

E.P. Dutton

1987

11 1/4" x 8 3/4"

Donald Sidney Deskey (November 23, 1894 – April 29, 1989) was an American industrial designer.

Biography
He studied architecture at the University of California, but did not follow that profession, becoming instead an artist and a pioneer in the field of Industrial design. He attended the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris, which influenced his approach to design. He went on to establish a design consulting firm in New York City and later the firm of Deskey-Vollmer (in partnership with Phillip Vollmer), which specialized in furniture and textile design. His designs in this era progressed from Art Deco to Streamline Moderne.

Donald Deskey. Table Lamp, 1927-1931
Deskey first gained attention as a designer with his window displays for the Franklin Simon Department Store in Manhattan in 1926. In the 1930s, he won the competition to design Radio City Music Hall's interiors. He also sold geometrically painted objects through the fashionable shop of Rena Rosenthal, and did custom design work for her. In the 1940s, he started the graphic design firm Donald Deskey Associates and made some of the most recognizable icons of the day, including the Crest toothpaste packaging, the Tide bullseye, as well as a widely used New York City lamppost model. In 1940, Deskey developed a decorative form of plywood, which had a unique striated, or combed, look. Produced under the name Weldtex, it became very popular in the 1950s.

His company is still in operation in Cincinnati. A collection of his work is held by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. See less