dance, art & okc

GEORGE NELSON: ARCHITECT, WRITER,

DESIGNER, TEACHER AT OKLAHOMA

CITY MUSEUM OF ART

By Nancy Condit

An exhibit of George Nelson's work is currently on

display at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. Photo provided

In the second half of the 20^th century, George Nelson was a multi-faceted artist responsible for many of the modernist office and home furniture designs through both his designs for his own George Nelson studio and as design director at Herman Miller, a

US manufacturer of modern furniture design. At Herman Miller, Nelson had a major influence on the product line and public image of the company for over two decades.

Many of those designs are currently on display in George Nelson: Architect, Writer, Designer, Teacher, an exhibition organized by the Vitra Design Museum,Weil am Rhein, Germany, and sponsored by Herman Miller, at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art in Oklahoma City through May 8^th. The exhibit includes over 120 three-dimensional objects, including examples of chairs, benches, desks, cabinets, lamps, and clocks as well as over 50 historical documents, including drawings, photographs, architectural models, and films. Jennifer Klos is coordinating curator for the exhibit, and associate curator of the museum.

In the gallery talk earlier this year, Christine Hoehn, assistant professor of interior design and Scott Williams, assistant professor of landscape architecture, both at the University of Oklahoma, noted that Nelson (1908-1986) graduated with a degree in architecture from Yale. He went to the Academy of Rome, and stayed for a couple of years as a journalist. He met some of the greats, including Mies van der Rohe, and Buckminster Fuller, with whom he later became friends.

Nelson's Storagewall, designed in 1944.

Photo by Nancy Condit

At the same time that Nelson was negotiating to join Herman Miller, his “Storagewall” was on the pages of Life in 1945. “He thought designs should reflect the way people live, that closets were very inefficient, and designed storage units,” Williams said. Clients could select their own modules. Some were open shelves, and some covered with sliding panels. Modularization also appeared in his office products.

Nelson was equally influential in his writing, John Berry, who knew Nelson and was liaison between Nelson, and designers Ray and Charles Eames, said in his April 6^th talk at the museum.

Nelson worked by five principles, which he wrote in 1948:

What you make is important.

Design is an integral part of the business.

The product must be honest.

You decide what you will make.

There is a market for good design.

Decorative clocks designed by Nelson. Photo by Nancy Condit

Berry told of one evening and night Nelson spent drinking and designing with Isamu Naguchi and Buckminster Fuller as the three kept pushing each other to produce decorative whimsy clocks like the ball clock with extending rays ending in wood balls, and the eye clock with black lashes.

“Nelson detested consumerism and was ashamed of his part in it, but was interested in the intellectual aspect of design – addressing or solving problems using the materials of the time,” Williams and Haynes said.

A model of Nelson’s design of a multi-level house, “The Jungle Gym,” at the American National Exhibition in Moscow in 1959 -- the height of the Cold War -- showed commissioned Americans in the open-sided home, using the fully automated kitchen, showing contemporary furniture, and so forth. The home is credited with spreading the idea of the American way of life to the U.S.S.R.

The furniture is very pared down, very mid-century, Hoehn and Williams said. “The exhibit is a representation of the commercialization of design – the whole team contributes to the design.”

“Nelson looked at what the user needed,” Williams said.

Nelson was most well known for his office furniture designs with Herman Miller, Inc., which started with the table-desk as a module in the Storagewall, and continued to the L shaped desk and the action desk. The Pretzel Chair was so light, yet durable, that people brought their pencil, paper and bentwood pretzel chair to meetings.

Sara Sara Cupcakes uses Nelson Bubble Lamps. Photo by Nancy Condit

Nelson’s iconic red “Marshmallow Sofa,” 1956, was made of multiple circles of foam forming the seat and back. The coconut chair’s triangular laid-back form invited loungers to sit any way they chose. The Bubble Lamps were inspired by the silk covered Scandinavian framed lamps. Nelson used sprayable plastic to cover a spinning frame, which created a shell for a much less expensive series of lamps.