Donald Deskey

We have 2,131 objects that Donald Deskey has had a hand in. Here's the break-down:

• Office of, 1851 objects
• Design Director, 162 objects
• Designer, 81 objects
• Artist, 22 objects
• Client, 6 objects
• Attributed to, 4 objects
• Architect, 3 objects
• Draftsman, one object
• Studio of, one object

These are a couple of those things by Donald Deskey in our collection:

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  please don't steal our pictures, yeah?
  Drawing, "Woman Wearing a Coat with Fur Collar and Cuffs", 1927–28 This object's accession number is 1975-11-60 and is dated 1927–28 This is from the Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design department We have 2 images of this object This object was designed by Donald Deskey

  
  
• 

  please don't steal our pictures, yeah?
  Drawing, "Hooked Rug Design: Geometric Pattern", 1930–39 This object's accession number is 1975-11-44 and is dated 1930–39 This is from the Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design department We have 2 images of this object

  
  

Cooper Hewitt

Industrial, interior, and packaging designer. Born Blue Earth, Minnesota, November 23, 1894. By 1943, he had established Donald Deskey Associates in New York. Along with Dreyfuss, Bel Geddes, and Loewy, Deskey was one of the great industrial design pioneers in the 1930s. He is best known for his designs for the furnishings and interiors of Radio City Music Hall in 1932, and for his work for companies such as: Widdicomb Furniture Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan; W. & J. Sloane, New York; and Estey Manufacturing Company, Owosso, Michigan. In addition, Deskey is known for his familiar packaging designs for Procter & Gamble products, such as Crest toothpaste, Prell shampoo, and Tide detergent. Donald Deskey Associates also was responsible for lamppost # 10, the streetlight still in use today in New York City. Materials from this archival collection were featured in Cooper-Hewitt's 1994 exhibition and accompanying book, "Packaging the New: Design and the American Consumer, 1925-1975".

Wikipedia

Donald Deskey (23 November 1894 – 29 April 1989) was a native of Blue Earth, Minnesota. 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. In Paris he attended the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, which influenced his approach to design. He established 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.

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He first gained note as a designer when he created window displays for the Franklin Simon Department Store in Manhattan in 1926. In the 1930s, he won the competition to design the interiors for Radio City Music Hall. In the 1940s he started the graphic design firm Donald Deskey Associates and made some of the most recognizable icons of the day. He designed the Crest toothpaste packaging, the Tide bullseye as well as a widely used New York City lamppost model. Also in 1940, he developed a decorative form of plywood which had a unique striated, or combed, look to it. It was produced under the name Weldtex and was 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. He died in Vero Beach, Florida, the town to which he had retired in 1975.

References

External links

• Donald Deskey at IDSA
• Donald Deskey at The American Artists Bluebook
• Obituary, New York Times
• Ottoson.Weldtex: The Plywood Panel That Grows Old Gracefully, 2009 April. copyright protected.

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