Cooper Hewitt says...
Donald Deskey attended the Mary Hopkins Institute of Art, in San Francisco, in 1914, and studied architecture at the University of California, in Berkeley, from 1915 to 1917. Deskey spent the early 1920s in Paris, studying painting with Fernand Léger and training at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Deskey attended the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes and in 1926, Deskey visited the Bauhaus. The impact of this visit helped him bring the concept of tubular metal furniture to America. Later that year, Deskey settled in New York and along with other leading industrial designers, including Norman Bel Geddes and John Vassos, Deskey worked in window display for New York City department stores. The success of Deskey’s windows for Franklin Simon brought him a commission in 1926 from Saks Fifth Avenue to decorate their show windows and contribute to their graphic identity. Deskey’s first major public interiors were the soda fountain, which featured the first tubular steel furniture in America, and beauty parlor for the newly constructed Abraham & Straus store in Brooklyn in 1928. Deskey's colorful and decorative screens and accessories sold through fellow industrial designer Paul Frankl's New York City shop starting in 1927. He opened his own office with Phillip Vollmer (Deskey-Vollmer) from 1927 to 1931, specializing in furniture and lighting. In 1928, along with other prominent designers, he co-founded the American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen (AUDAC) in New York. He formed Donald Deskey Associates in the mid-1940s, and was one of the fifteen founders of the Society of Industrial Designers in 1944. Deskey is best known for his designs for the furnishings and interiors of Radio City Music Hall in 1932, on which he collaborated with textile designer Ruth Reeves, who studied alongside him with Fernand Léger in Paris. He is also well known 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 several Procter & Gamble products: Crest toothpaste, Prell shampoo, and Tide detergent. Donald Deskey Associates was also responsible for lamppost # 10, the streetlight still in use today in New York City.
