Good design is more than just form meeting function. A new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, The Value of Good Design, is attempting to define what "good" design is made of by showcasing more than 100 pieces from the 1930s to 1970s.
Expect to find cars, 1950s clocks, and old telephones in this exhibition, which focuses on prewar and postwar design. The second half of the century was a time when designers looked to the future with optimism. “There was a sense of the democratizing potential of design,” Juliet Kinchin, who co-curated the exhibit with Andrew Gardner, tells AD PRO—“an idealistic belief that functional, low-cost design could enhance our lives, more than ever before.”
Among the variety of furniture and housewares included is a prototype for the 1948 Chaise Longue by Charles and Ray Eames. Not to be confused with another iconic Eames lounge, this one, which was inspired by a female nude by French artist Gaston Lachaise, became a key piece in one of MoMA’s earliest design exhibitions in 1950.
There are also the Butterfly Stools made by Japanese designer Sori Yanagi, an avant-garde pioneer who fused Bauhaus functionality with mingei, a Japanese folk art and craft movement. Yanagi's take on mingei remained minimal and practical. This kind of unique approach, which universally speaks to a mass audience, is the root of one kind of "good" design.
Also featured is the violet, pink, and blue colored glassware of Finnish designer Saara Hopea, who won an award for her stacking glasses at the Milan Triennale in 1952, quickly establishing herself as a defining voice of Nordic minimalism. A seafoam green wall clock by Swiss designer Max Bill, who ran an experimental design school in Ulm, Germany, became an early example of mass-produced design from Europe in the 1950s, which rivaled American streamlined modernism.
Some of the best pieces include a portable Sony television designed in Tokyo in 1946 and an early Fiat 500, one of the first affordable city cars to hit Europe. There is also a lounge chair made by French designer Charlotte Perriand, a collaborator of Le Corbusier, who made works from bamboo after a stint in Japan.
"Good design is a reflection of its time," Kinchin says. "A well-designed product may appear different from one moment to the next. Some midcentury designs have outlived their use, but what I appreciate is design for so many different people at all levels of society.”
When it comes to good design today, one thing remains the same, according to the curator: “I think it is still valid to aim for design that is humane, affordable, useful, and beautiful,” she says. “We hope the exhibition will be engaging, encouraging visitors to pause and think about whether ‘useful objects’ like cookie cutters and plastic dog bowls, as well as more glamorous midcentury furniture and textiles, have stood the test of time."