First edition of this landmark work by Austrian/American architect, designer, and author Paul T. Frankl (1886-1958), an exemplary combination of incisive text and striking graphic design. Published in 1930 by Harper & Brothers. Born in Vienna and educated in Austria and Germany, Frankl emigrated to the United States in 1914, becoming one of America’s most important and influential modernist designers and thinkers, known for his paradigm-shifting Skyscraper furniture of the late 1920’s as well as a series of books beginning with New Dimensions in 1928. His second book, Form and Re-Form, stands as a foundational text in the creation and dissemination of an American modernist vocabulary in interior design, furniture design, and the decorative arts. Theauthors of The Machine Age in American 1918-1941 (Brooklyn Museum, 1986) called it “Quite simply, one of the finest printed artifacts of the American Moderne Movement… remarkable for the lucidity and perceptiveness of its text and illustration,” going on to observe that “Frankl integrates the arts, showing architecture, photography, and all aspects of the decorative arts; he credits Frank Lloyd Wright with being the first modern American architect; he emphasizes the important contributions of European immigrants; he talks about new materials and their significance to progressive aesthetics; and he promotes American work in general.” Alongside his own Skyscraper furnishings and his Speed chair, Frankl showcases designs and interiors by Frank Lloyd Wright, Henry Varnum Poor, Frederick Kiesler, Winold Reiss, Pola and Wolfgang Hoffmann, Joseph Urban, William Lescaze, Donald Deskey, Gilbert Rohde, Eugene Schoen, Ilonka Karasz, Ruth Reeves, Walter von Nessen, William Hunt Diederich, Raymond Hood, Herbert Lippmann, and Richard Neutra, among others. And in his introductory chapter, Frankl captures the American zeitgeist and its invigorating potential: “Implicit in the chapters which follow, and in all the illustrations, is the thesis that contemporary expression in the decorative arts is the logical and necessary outcome of a new spirit manifest in every phase of American life. This spirit finds expression in skyscrapers, motor-cars, airplanes, in new ocean liners, in department stores, and great industrial plants. Speed, compression, directness—these are its attributes…We are living in a Machine Age. Beauty in furniture and furnishings is now being created en serie. New materials and new media invite the imaginative and ingenious hands of a new generation of designers. We find ourselves at the dawn of an age of standardization. But our new spirit may transmute standardized living into an individual and infinitely varied beauty.” 8vo (5.75” x 8.75”), black cloth stamped in gold, printed dust jacket, 203 pages, b/w images throughout. Slight lean to spine. Minor foxing to pastedowns and edges of textblock. Light bumping and rubbing to extremities, with fraying to cloth. Chipping and soiling to price-clipped dj, with limited open tears to spine ends and top edge. Notwithstanding, the finest copy of this book I’ve encountered, possessing a nearly complete example of the scarce dust jacket which protected the fragile gilt lettering to the black cloth. A museum-quality example thus.
First edition of this landmark work by Austrian/American architect, designer, and author Paul T. Frankl (1886-1958), an exemplary combination of incisive text and striking graphic design. Published in 1930 by Harper & Brothers. Born in Vienna and educated in Austria and Germany, Frankl emigrated to the United States in 1914, becoming one of America’s most important and influential modernist designers and thinkers, known for his paradigm-shifting Skyscraper furniture of the late 1920’s as well as a series of books beginning with New Dimensions in 1928. His second book, Form and Re-Form, stands as a foundational text in the creation and dissemination of an American modernist vocabulary in interior design, furniture design, and the decorative arts. Theauthors of The Machine Age in American 1918-1941 (Brooklyn Museum, 1986) called it “Quite simply, one of the finest printed artifacts of the American Moderne Movement… remarkable for the lucidity and perceptiveness of its text and illustration,” going on to observe that “Frankl integrates the arts, showing architecture, photography, and all aspects of the decorative arts; he credits Frank Lloyd Wright with being the first modern American architect; he emphasizes the important contributions of European immigrants; he talks about new materials and their significance to progressive aesthetics; and he promotes American work in general.” Alongside his own Skyscraper furnishings and his Speed chair, Frankl showcases designs and interiors by Frank Lloyd Wright, Henry Varnum Poor, Frederick Kiesler, Winold Reiss, Pola and Wolfgang Hoffmann, Joseph Urban, William Lescaze, Donald Deskey, Gilbert Rohde, Eugene Schoen, Ilonka Karasz, Ruth Reeves, Walter von Nessen, William Hunt Diederich, Raymond Hood, Herbert Lippmann, and Richard Neutra, among others. And in his introductory chapter, Frankl captures the American zeitgeist and its invigorating potential: “Implicit in the chapters which follow, and in all the illustrations, is the thesis that contemporary expression in the decorative arts is the logical and necessary outcome of a new spirit manifest in every phase of American life. This spirit finds expression in skyscrapers, motor-cars, airplanes, in new ocean liners, in department stores, and great industrial plants. Speed, compression, directness—these are its attributes…We are living in a Machine Age. Beauty in furniture and furnishings is now being created en serie. New materials and new media invite the imaginative and ingenious hands of a new generation of designers. We find ourselves at the dawn of an age of standardization. But our new spirit may transmute standardized living into an individual and infinitely varied beauty.” 8vo (5.75” x 8.75”), black cloth stamped in gold, printed dust jacket, 203 pages, b/w images throughout. Slight lean to spine. Minor foxing to pastedowns and edges of textblock. Light bumping and rubbing to extremities, with fraying to cloth. Chipping and soiling to price-clipped dj, with limited open tears to spine ends and top edge. Notwithstanding, the finest copy of this book I’ve encountered, possessing a nearly complete example of the scarce dust jacket which protected the fragile gilt lettering to the black cloth. A museum-quality example thus.
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