THE LOCOMOTIVE [ITS ESTHETICS]
Raymond Loewy
Raymond Loewy: THE LOCOMOTIVE [ITS ESTHETICS]. New York and London: The Studio, Ltd, 1937. First edition. Quarto. Tan cloth stamped in dark brown. Unpaginated. 125 black and white photographs. Elaborate period design and typography. Original cloth lightly soiled from handling. Bookplate to front endpaper. Inkstamp and ink notation to title page. One signature slightly pulled. A very good or better copy of this Streamline Moderne classic.7.5 x 10 book with 125 photographs selected by Loewy showing the aesthetics of the locomotives' evolution. Published as part of "The New Vision' series by the Studio in London, THE LOCOMOTIVE is an excellent example of streamline moderne graphic design and typography -- we should expect nothing less from Raymond Loewy, who assembled this book at the height of his involvement with the Pennsylvania Railroad.
The name Raymond Loewy is synonymous with industrial design. Loewy was one of the "big four" industrial designers, along with Walter Dorwin Teague, Norman Bel Geddes and Henry Dreyfuss. Loewy arrived in New York from France in 1922 with little more than his military uniform (which he had redesigned) and a $40 pension, but a sketch he'd made en route earned him an invitation to Conde Nast and other publishers to work as an illustrator. Soon celebrated as an expert on the new fashion of art deco, Loewy moved from illustration to window dressing for Macy's to his first industrial design, a duplicating machine for the British Gestetner company. By the end of the 1940s Loewy International proclaimed itself as the largest design agency in New York, responsible for the look of everything from lipsticks to locomotives.
A sample spread from this volume can be viewed here.
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