Finding a New Deal Fresco
Back in the 1970s, the post office in Melrose Park, IL underwent extensive renovations for repurposing as a public library. In doing so, a 1937 mural by Edwin Boyd Johnson titled Air Mail was presumably destroyed and lost forever. When library officials were recently asked about the virtually forgotten painting, however, they went on the hunt and eventually uncovered its remains. Their New Deal fresco originally consisted of a central male figure holding an air-mail letter soaring over a background of buildings with a transcontinental airplane on the left, but renovations demolished the center third portion. What r

Shedding Light on Star Dust
Yesterday I began a conversation about the Forest Furniture Company's Suite 515 (previously known as Star Dust) line of furniture. What I shared in that short blog post was only a portion of what I have learned thus far, so today I just launched a brand new feature on Suite 515 called The Star Dust Saga as a follow-up to an email I sent out to the Russel Wright email list earlier this morning. This short article not only tells the story of what is known thus far of Suite 515's history, but also makes my resear

The Star Dust Saga: An Introduction
Earlier today I ran across a beautiful set of dressers in a thrift store that's design was obviously influenced by Conant Ball and Heywood Wakefield. What was really interesting, however, were the markings on the back of the pieces: 410 Star Dust. If you collect Russel Wright designed furniture, than you're most likely familiar with the line of furniture Wright collectors for years have been calling 515 Star Dust. There is a lot of misinformation on the internet about these

Happy Birthday, Eva
Today marks the 103rd birthday of Eva Zeisel, one of the greatest Modernist designers in my humble opinion. Zeisel is still actively at work designing the curvilinear forms she has become so well known for, and we wish her many, many more years of happiness and productivity. To celebrate this day, Zeisel collector and scholar Steve Basile has created a breathtaking gallery of Zeisel's work as it was presented in the Eva Zeisel Centenary Retrospective Exhibit at the Mingei International Museum in San Diego, California, back in 2007. Including some of her earliest work and continuing through to contemporary designs, this gal

Meet Evelyn and Jerome Ackerman
I'm endlessly fascinated by craftspeople who are dextrous in many mediums ... people whose work teeters on that fine line between the functionalism of design and the esoteric realm of fine art. And now thanks to my friend Bryan at Potteries of California, I am finally getting myself acquainted with a husband and wife team of midcentury Fine Craftspeople working in the Modernist genre that I hadn't heard of before. Evelyn and Jerome Ackerman produced their art and design across the boundaries of virtually every medium: painting,