Multiple Choice: From Sample to Product
Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
Nov. 9, 2007 - April, 6 2008
We headed back uptown for a small and somewhat sterile show in the Cooper-Hewitt basement about sample books. You know sample books. They're those pattern books you might find in furniture store or party rental place with pages of different fabric designs.
Here's what I learned. Sample books have been around for more than 300 years, beginning in Europe, and contain a wide variety of intricate, colorful and often beautiful print patterns for textiles, ceramics and wallpaper.
The show starts with a case of wallpaper samples, including a couple by designers I've heard of. One is an 1887 book by William Morris, an artist-writer-activist (as the display text put it) responsible for the anti-industrialist Arts & Crafts movement. Also on display are a 1929 book of "radically minimalist" designs by the Bauhaus, and a 1959 book by Le Corbusier, who advocated for washable wallpapers. A name not familiar to me was Blue River, whose screen-printed vinyl and mylar patterns were of the eye-popping 60s psychedelic variety.
One obvious drawback to a show about books is that you aren't able to hold the books and look through them. To address this deficiency, there's a continuous projected video of someone flipping through pages of patterns. But since there are dozens of books exhibited, it's not practical to wait around for one you're interested in. Better would have been something interactive. Type in the book's name and bingo.
The exhibit text attempts to tie things together with some historic highlights meant to show how the sample book mirrors the history of commercialization and industrialization of design. However, the viewer's left with a few too many loose threads, as it were.
We do get a few tidbits. The show mentions the influence of Islamic design in 15th Century European household textiles and the late-19th-Century popularity of the paisley, which was borrowed from Kashmir. Intriguingly, we learned that 18th Century France enacted perhaps the first anti-piracy legislation. (Knockoffs are nothing new.) And that facing competition stemming for a huge demand for Indian printed textiles, Britain built factories for domestic production -- an important moment in the start of the Industrial Revolution.
On whole, the show was a snooze. We brought along our friend who has a design degree and creates print patterns professionally, and it didn't rock her world either.
What would have improved things? Perhaps with one or two illustrative examples using historic documents. Such as a contract showing how one English merchant ordered 2,000 paisley waistcoats in 1873 for the such-and-such department store. And second, including a few more names of famous designers or design houses, as well as images of people wearing, living with or eating off of these patterns. In summary, the show could have used some humanizing.
Even if you don't go in person, there's good, but not comprehensive, Web site. In addition, the Cooper-Hewitt blog has a behind-the-scenes look at the show's installation.
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