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Handkerchief (USA)
This is a Handkerchief. It is dated 1939 and we acquired it in 1939. Its medium is silk and its technique is screen printed. It is a part of the Textiles department.
The 1939 World’s Fair at Flushing Meadows Park in Queens was themed the ‘World of Tomorrow.’ Visitors came away with visions of radio-controlled highways, mechanical milking machines, and the 7-foot-tall Westinghouse robot. Many also left with Fair memorabilia, from the pins given away at the Futurama exhibition that read ‘I have seen the future,’ to more costly souvenirs, such as silver spoons, porcelain dishes, and the silk handkerchief featured here.
Printed in orange, green, and brown on a yellow ground, this handkerchief illustrates several of the Fair’s most celebrated structures. On the left is the Fountain Lake Amphitheatre, and on the right is the famous Heinz dome. In the central medallion are the 610-foot tall Trylon and 200-foot wide Perisphere, an exhibition building that housed a model city designed by Henry Dreyfuss. These structures formed the focal point of the fair’s central promenade, and were reproduced by the millions on Fair memorabilia.
This object was featured in our Object of the Week series in a post titled A Souvenir from the Fair.
This object was
donated by
Unknown.
It is credited Gift of Anonymous Donor.
- Drawing, Design for Sportshack
- brush and gouache, black ink, airbrush over stencil, graphite on illustration....
- Gift of Donald Deskey.
- 1988-101-1515
- Book, Your World of Tomorrow
- offset lithograph on paper.
- Smithsonian Libraries, T785.B1 Y58 1939.
- 113.2018.1
- Design Fictions
- digital print.
- New York World’s Fair, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York....
- MOBILITY.038
Our curators have highlighted 1 object that are related to this one.
![A double-page spread of a booklet with a band of text along the top, below which are black and white industrial photographs of a diorama of a futuristic city viewed from an expansive, aerial perspective. The photographs appear grey-scale with sepia undertones. The fictional landscape in the photograph on the left is centered on a park with a wide, meandering river running through it, viewed diagonally, growing smaller from the bottom left corner upwards. Above the park, in the far distance, the topography of a city is seen in a cluster of skyscrapers and other buildings. Thoroughfares, bridges, and street lanes are visible but not rendered in fine detail. The right photograph appears to be the cityscape found in the background of the left photograph, but rendered in more detail. It illustrates a number of skyscrapers interspersed with low-rise built structures, surrounding a geometric, rectangular park, perhaps Central Park. On either side of the skyscrapers the land appears largely flat, but built on, perhaps with residential housing, interspersed with a few areas of foliage and idle land. The text above the left photograph states [“Through an ingenious system of traffic flow and direction from the various converging roadways, and by means of the ascending and descending ramps, a four-tier approach to the great bridge is formed. There is no interference or cutting in of traffic lanes. Cars may be driven on and off the bridge without risk of collision and with speeds maintained. / “And directly ahead we again see the river city with its four-tier bridge approach. But now we near the great metropolis of 1960. We will bank high over the city for a spectacular view of its many wonders. / “In 1940 this American city actually existed. Its population then was approximately a million per-sons. Today--in 1960--it is much larger, divided]. It continues on the right page [into three units, residential, commercial and industrial. Nine miles out from the city is a vast airport. /'Here is an American city replanned around a highly developed modern traffic system and, even though this is 1960, the system as yet is not complete. Whenever possible the rights of way of these express city thoroughfares have been so routed as to displace outmoded business sections and undesirable slum areas. / “The city of 1960 has abundant sunshine, fresh air, fine green parkways, recreational and civic centers -- all the result of thoughtful planning and design. There are approximately 38,000,000 motorcars in this America of 1960 -- almost a third more than in]. The text is surrounded by a red lined border above and below it on both pages.](https://images.collection.cooperhewitt.org/345160_cf7df43d9df1900e_n.jpg "Book, Futurama, 1939")
- Book, Futurama, 1939
- offset lithograph on paper.
- Smithsonian Libraries, T785 K1G32 1939.
- 113.2018.2
Its dimensions are
H x W: 48.3 x 49.8 cm (19 x 19 5/8 in.)
It is inscribed
Licensed by World's Fair Corp. Made in U.S.A.
Cite this object as
Handkerchief (USA); silk; H x W: 48.3 x 49.8 cm (19 x 19 5/8 in.); Gift of Anonymous Donor; 1939-18-1
