PIONEERS OF THE MODERN MOVEMENT
FROM WILLIAM MORRIS TO WALTER GROPIUS

Nikolaus Pevsner

6.25 x 9 hardcover book with 240 pages and 84 black and white plates. Examination of design movements from the late 19th century through the pre-World War I period. First edition of a much-reprinted text Ñ a standard, now classic, work. Posits that William Morris laid the foundations of the modern style whose character was later defined by Walter Gropius. Included in his discourse are the works of Tiffany, Borrardus, Louis Sullivan, Burnham & Root, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Mies van der Rohe.

Contents:

• Theories of Art from Morris to Gropius
• From 1851 to Morris and the Arts and Crafts
• 1890 in Painting
• Art Nouveau
• The Engineers of the Nineteenth Century
• England, 1890 to 1914
• The Modern Movement before 1914
• Notes
• Table of names and Dates
• Index

One of the most widely read books on modern design, Nikolaus Pevsner's landmark work today remains as stimulating as it was when first published in 1936. Pevsner saw Modernism as a synthesis of three main sources: William Morris and his followers, the work of nineteenth-century engineers, and Art Nouveau. The author considers the role of these sources in the work of early Modernists and looks at such masters of the movement as C.F.A. Voysey and Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Britain, Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright in America, and Adolf Loos and Otto Wagner in Vienna. The account concludes with a discussion of the radical break with the past represented by the design work of Walter Gropius and his future Bauhaus colleagues. Nikolaus Pevsner (1902-1983), a distinguished scholar of art and architecture, was best known as editor of the 46-volume series The Buildings of England and as founding editor of The Pelican History of Art.

James Prestini [1908 - 1993] studied mechanical engineering at Yale, and then continued his study at the Institute for Design in Chicago, where he was exposed to the unified Bauhaus philosophy of art and craft: "Craft is the body of structure. Art is the soul of structure. Optimum creativity integrates both."

Prestini blended craft with function, most notably with his turned lathe bowls, using straight-grained woods to create thin bowls with an appearance similar to glass and ceramics. He also produced experimental furniture and over 400 sculptures over a 50 year career while a professor of fine arts at the University of California, Berkeley.

He was part of a design team that won the Museum of Modern Art's furniture competition in 1948 with a jointless chair made from durable wood pulp.

In 1950 Edgar Kauffman, Jr. of the Museum of Modern Art commented on Prestini's contribution to modernism: "This feat has been Prestini's, to suggest within the limits of simple craft the human pathos of art and the clean, bold certainties of science. He has made grand things that are not overwhelming, beautiful things that are not personal unveilings, and simple things that do not urge usefulness to excuse their simplicityÉArt or not, craft or not, bowls or plain shapes, they speak directly and amply of our day to our day."

At least 260 of his sculptures are in the permanent collections of museums including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and the Berlin Bauhaus-Archiv.

Charles Niedringhaus graduated as one of 5 students in the first graduating class of the Institute of Design in 1942. As a student, he served as Institute Director Moholy-Nagy's asssitant in the Basic and Product Design Workshop, as well as assisting the Director in two seminars on Contemporary Art and Design problems. The student Niedringhaus designed and built a prototype machine dubbed the "Smell-O-Meter." This device proved less useful than the machine he co-developed with Nathan Lerner for forming plywood that was used in making most of the school's furniture.

After graduation, Niedringhaus' skills in furniture design and production quickly came to the attention of Hans Knoll -- always on the lookout for designers to work for what was then Knoll Associates. Niedringhaus began his long and fruitful career with Knoll when he assisted Herbert Matter with the production of the KNOLL INDEX OF DESIGNS in 1950. Then Niedringhaus and Florence Knoll were granted a patent on July 21, 1953 for their design of a sofa/daybed on angular steel frame.

Throughout his long career with Knoll, Niedringhaus often acted as an artistic liaison linking the inspired visions of designers such as Isamu Noguchi with Knoll's engineers, draughtsmen, and marketing departments. This confluence of art and business was fundamental to Knoll's identity and success. That same confluence of art and business first encountered as Moholy-Nagy's student in Chicago helped Charles Niedringhaus secure his rightful spot in the pantheon of American Modernism.

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