Donald Deskey, an innovate industrial designer was among the leading figures to introduce modern design to the United States in the late 1920s. Born in 1894, in Blue Earth Minnesota, studied architecture at the University of California Berkeley and then painting at the California School of Design, the Art Institute of Chicago and Art Students League in New York. While in Chicago and New York, Mr. Deskey began to work as a commercial artist for several advertising agencies, leading to a 20-year association with Procter & Gamble. His designs have graced many household products from the Crest toothpaste packaging (which has remained the same since its creating in the 1950s) to designs for Cheer, Prell and Jif peanut butter, shaping the look of American everyday living for years to come.

Moving in to furniture and textile design Donald Deskey won the competition to design the Radio City Music Hall in 1930. He worked on this important commission from 1931-1939. Mr. Deskey was also adept at luxurious interior design, creating interiors for such prominent clients as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and Helena Rubinstein. He has been named one of the top 20 design influences of the 20th century by Architectural Digest.

Chest of drawers, this six-drawer chest constructed of sienna micarta and walnut, with cast aluminum drawer pulls and formed legs. Mr. Deskey created this piece for the manufacturer Charak Modern in 1958.

This pair of Art Deco Andiron, showcases Deskey’s passion for working with various metals, these examples in polished brass and painted iron, c. 1940s.
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Pierre Chareau (1883–1950), a French architect, interior and furniture designer born in Bordeaux, France attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from the age of 17 to a family of shipbuilders. Together with Le Corbusier, Pierre Chareau was one of the first modern architects of France to experiment with new materials such as glass and steel. His major architectural work and Modernist landmark, the Maison de Verre (1928-1931) in Paris, consists of three floors, with a central courtyard – its metal frame structure supported framed panels of glass. The rooms were separated by wood or metal closet doors that slid or rotated, while the structural elements remained visible, transforming the house’s functional elements into decorative ones – the house was conceived as a total space. Although trained as an architect, Chareau’s primary interest was furniture design. Pierre Chareau’s furniture was often dynamic – designed to perform multiple functions, pivoting, expanding, transformable. The influence of Neoplasticism, Cubism and De Stijl is seen boldly in his work. In 1939 Chareau, forced to leave Paris came to the United States and in the mid-1940s the artist Robert Motherwell commissioned him to design a small studio house in the Hamptons, demolished in 1985.

This important Chareau lamp, model LP 180, boasts 2 quarter circle alabaster shades atop a trapezoid plied metal base, c. 1923.

A play on contrasts, this Chareau desk combines his signature metal with precious woods, c. 1927.
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