Cool Collage: Vintage Refrigerator

Reading a refrigerator is usually a semiotic/archeological affair that involves decoding brands of gourmet mustard and carbon dating takeout containers. Well, here’s a fridge you can read without even opening it.

Up for auction next month is a circa 1960 classic GE model, plastered with some 50 years of bumper stickers. Daniel Donnelly, the Alexandria, Virginia furniture dealer and architectural salvager, admits that its intrinsic value might not measure up to its size, but he just couldn’t resist the "liberal-minded" monolith. He described its original home just as you would imagine it—mid-century Knoll, Eames, and Danish furniture, and packed with accumulated artifacts from the family's years of foreign travel.

Up with People!

And yes, it works! Also in this auction is a great assortment of Steve Frykholm posters for Herman Miller.

Knoll Printed Matter (Part I)

Easing into 2011 with some visual, gourmet comfort food.

Way in advance of spring, and the opening of the exhibition, Knoll Textiles, at the Bard Graduate Center on May 18, I trust these Herbert Matter-designed ads, posters, and catalogs for Knoll will whet your appetite for both (spring and the show).

Matter was a design consultant to Knoll from 1946-1966. The Swiss-born designer and photographer was a pioneer of photomontage, among other darkroom techniques and a master of merging type with image. His is the Knoll identity you know so well, that you recognize it without seeing a piece of furniture or reading a word of text.

I can’t say exactly when during the next few months I’ll be posting “Part II,” but I can safely predict that there will be one. The selection here represents only a fraction of Knolliana produced over the years. And that’s before we even get to the textiles ...






































Sources: Another Design Blog, Yale Library