October 21, 2004
Chicago Bauhaus & Beyond members were invited to Richard Wright's auction gallery along with others for
a fantastic panel discussion and booksigning of the new book, Baldwin Kingery, Mid-century Modern in Chicago, 1947-1957.
This book, by John Brunetti, was conceived by Kitty Baldwin Weese in order to document and share the experience of the successful downtown Chicago retailer. Located at Ohio Street and Michigan Avenue, Baldwin Kingrey operated as a design center offering imported modern European furniture at affordable prices. Chicago was a hotbed of ingenuity and scholarly applications to design, with many of the celebrated creators of the 20th century modern movement active here.
This story is illustrated with many photos and well-researched text, through many interactions between designers, professors and students of schools including the New Bauhaus and the Institute of Design.
Panelists included John Brunetti, Kitty Baldwin Weese, Don Dimmet, Ben Weese, Marcia Weese, John Albergo, and Lisa Albergo, each with personal memories of how this business operated. The casual panel discussion reminded attendees of America's post-WWII optimism and the creativity which spawned from running a business in a true spirit of fun, which was a great recipe for success.
Panel discussion
Richard Wright and John Brunetti
Kitty Baldwin Weese
Joe Kunkel, CBB President, and Karen Lilly Mozer, Art Institute of Chicago, Architecture & Design Society President
Claire Warner, Wright Consignor Services Specialist, and Kitty Baldwin Weese
We are pleased to sell this interesting book, describing a truely unique Chicago experience!
Please send $45 (per book including shipping within the US) to:
Chicago Bauhaus & Beyond
Re: Book Order
P.O. Box 364
Flossmoor, IL 60422
October 6, 2004
Christie's Chicago hosted a fantastic event on Georg Jensen silver for Chicago Bauhaus and Beyond in their beautiful gallery in the landmark 2.8 million-square-foot highrise John Hancock Center, on the 38th floor overlooking Lake Michigan.
Special thanks to CBB member Paula Kowalczyk of Christie's for hosting the event, and to Jennifer Pittman, Vice President and Specialist, Silver Department, for her excellent gallery talk, At the Forefront of Modernism: The Master Designers of Georg Jensen Silver, covering the history and importance of pieces on display.
The elegant setting and reception included private viewing highlights from the upcoming auction: 100 Years of Georg Jensen: Magnificent Silver from the Rowler Collection. Over 50 incredible items were on display from the collection of more than 500 pieces.
A genius of silver design in his own right, Georg Jensen had an uncanny ability to employ designers whose avant-garde creations propelled the firm to stylistic leadership throughout the 20th Century.
|
|
CBB Logo Receives Recogntion! 
Our logo, designed by CBB member Allen Porter, has received prestigious recognition in the LOGO 2004 competition, and will be included in the upcoming hardcover book, The Big Book of Logos 4, by David E. Carter. Our logo was selected from over 7000 entries from 37 states and 20 countries. Thank you, Allen!
IIT Tour and Archives
CBB hosted a tour of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) campus on August 22, 2004,
including an overview of their Archives from the New Bauhaus/Institute of Design. The guided tour was led by Justine Jentes (Director of Marketing) and Paul Millman (Director of Development) of the Mies van der Rohe Society (visit their website and join!). The lecture was led by University Archivist and CBB member, Catherine Bruck. We thank them for their generous hospitality and insightful information! What a wonderful tour we had!
Our afternoon included a guided detailed campus tour including the McCormick-Tribune Campus Center by Rem Koolhaas, State Street Village (new dorms) by Helmut Jahn, the Commons, Robert F. Carr Memorial Chapel of St. Savior, and S. R. Crown Hall all by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
Then we met in the Galvin Library/IIT Archives, where Catherine led a "show and tell" about the Institute of Design collection in the Archives. We enjoyed seeing and touching some of the many amazing and rare objects in the collection, including early photographs, original student projects, vintage publications, artwork and more, from the very early days of the New Bauhaus / Institute of Design.
The day ended with fellowship and a delicious dinner at Panang Restaurant in nearby Chinatown.
- click any photo for a larger view -
The News Sun newspaper article and interview with Gary Gand:
Modernism passion
Couple helps found
appreciation society for once-popular design
STAFF WRITER
RIVERWOODS Even Chicagoans who aren't up on their schools
of architecture know a Modern design when they see it, even if they aren't
quite sure what they're seeing.
Or, as Gary Gand of Riverwoods sums up
Modernism, "So much of it is here, but people aren't aware of it."
For starters, there are the big two the
John Hancock Center and the Sears Tower, steel exterior-framed giants designed
in the spirit of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the Modernist legend who coined the
defining term "less is more."
There are also McCormick Place on the
lakefront and Marina City on the Chicago River. Downtown commuters know the
stoic Daley Center and Dirksen Federal Building, and travelers have passed
through O'Hare's atrium-like United Airlines Terminal.
Closer to home, there's the Johnson Wax tower
in Racine, which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1936. In Highland Park,
the North Shore Sanitary District water tower on Cary Avenue has a Modern
design that earned it a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.
Modern
furniture
But Modernism is literally all around the
Postwar American landscape, from the contoured furniture in our dens to the
stainless-steel appliances in our kitchens to the pole lamps in our living
rooms. In fact, suburban tract housing in general is defined as an example of
Modernism.
Gand and his wife Joan are not only
aficionados of Modern architecture and design, but they're looking to share
that passion with the world. Along with Joe Kunkel of Olympia Fields, the Gands
founded Chicago Bauhaus & Beyond, a non-profit organization devoted to
examination, discussion and preservation of Modernist homes, furnishings and
works of art.
Speaking from his Riverwoods home itself a
prime example of mid-20th century Modern architecture Gand said he hopes CBB
can, in part, become to Modernism what organizations like the Frank Lloyd
Wright Building Conservancy became for aging Prairie Style homes.
"The Frank Lloyd Wright folks have built
an awareness of the Wright homes, and they've saved them. Now, you can't touch
one of those things, and they're going to be here forever," said Gand, who
bemoans the "warped sense of time in America" that leads to teardowns
rather than restorations.
"What happened was, we were bemoaning
the fact that these great Modernist houses are being torn down for a number
of reasons, but the main reason is people don't know about them. (We) decided
that if we can make people understand that (Modernism) has value, maybe
attitudes can change and we can promote it rather than demote it."
The Gands have put their money where their
mindset is. They've spent nearly two decades nurturing a 1955 Modern home
designed by Keck & Keck, a firm founded by brothers who made their name
designing a House of Tomorrow at the 1933 Century of Progress in Chicago.
"We bought it in '86 when we were looking
for a tract mansion or a fixer-upper. We had lived in a fixer-upper in
Northbrook for 10 years and there was nothing left to fix," Gand said.
"As soon as we walked in and looked out the back, we said 'this is it.'
Our Realtor about fell on the floor."
Modular
rooms
The home sold itself with, among other
things, its distinctively Modern floor-to-ceiling windows all of which have a
southern exposure, to create a "passive solar" heating benefit and
modular rooms. Just as Mies van der Rohe used cubes of glass and steel to
design the Illinois Institute of Technology campus in the 1950s, the Kecks
designed their homes as a series of 13 1/2-by-13 1/2-foot blueprint cubes.
This simplicity of design allowed the Gands
to easily expand the home from its original 2,000 square feet to about 3,000
simply by adding more cubes of floor space. But their devotion to Modernism
also extended to the interior design, as reflected in their first furniture
selection.
"Joan's mom had an Eames chair, which is
a bent plywood chair (that) they call a potato-chip chair because it looks like
a bunch of potato chips put together," he said. "We set it in the
corner and it's been there ever since."
Over the next two decades, the Gands filled
the house with classic examples of Modernism, as seen on the Web at
www.jetsetmodern.com/keck. Included are "womb" chairs, "steering
wheel" clocks and cone lamps products of a design movement that saw its
American heyday, Gand said, from the end of World War II until the Kennedy
assassination.
While the fact that they founded an
appreciation society is a testament to their willingness to popularize
Modernism, the Gands might admit that there is one drawback to something
becoming too well-known.
"At the time that we started collecting,
it was harder to find," Gary Gand said. "But it was also a whole lot
less expensive."
04/15/04
Chicago Modernism Show
Chicago Bauhaus and Beyond had a booth at the First Annual Chicago Modernism Show, April 2-4, 2004. We were delighted to inform hundreds of Modernists about our new group, and were excited at the reception we received. We more than doubled our membership that weekend!
Our logo, designed by Allen Porter, a former student at the Institute of Design and professional graphic artist, designer and teacher, was prominently displayed, along with six great photos of people and places related to Chicago-area 20th century modernism. The vintage photos were by Hedrich-Blessing and were obtained from the Chicago Historical Society. Included were photos of: Edward Dart's house (1952); the interior of the Fagan House by Keck & Keck, with interior design by Marianne Willish including a glass art screen by Archipenko (1948); Frances Higgins in her art glass studio (1953); a scale model of Bertrand Goldberg's Marina City (1960); an interior view of A. Quincy Jone's experimental modernist house in Research Village (1955); and an exterior view of Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House (1951).
We also featured a slideshow of more photos by Joe Kunkel, Joan and Gary Gand, and others, presented by John Champion. We sold T-shirts with our logo, signed up new members, grooved to vintage retro lounge tunes, and had a great time!
Allen Porter and Joe Kunkel
Pioneer Press Newspaper Article
In the news again! Chicago Bauhaus and Beyond was featured in the north suburban Pioneer Press newspapers on March 25, 2004. Below is a copy of the article:
Our Inaugural Meeting at the CAF
Our first event was graciously hosted by Bastiaan Bouma at the Chicago Architectural Foundation on February 8, 2004. Presenters included:
Joe Kunkel, owner of jetsetmodern.com, an online publisher and retailer of vintage 20th
century design
Joan and Gary Gand, avid collectors of 20th century modern design and Italian glass
Allen Porter, former
student of the New Bauhaus/Institute of Design and prominent graphic
designer, photographer, and teacher.
 |
| Some of our founding members gather for our inaugural meeting. |
Kunkel and the Gands presented an
overview of the organization, and Porter described the Architectural Panel, a similar group which was active in
Southern California in the 1960s. Porter also gave all attendees a copy of a 1937 issue of Printing Art Quarterly,
(courtesy, Bennett Johnson/Chicago Art Deco Society) which includes a
seminal article by Moholy-Nagy and a full copy of the first
New Bauhaus catalog.
Attendees introduced themselves and described their interests in modernism. Most members stayed long after the program was completed, enjoying social interaction and brainstorming ideas for future events.
As
the Gands say, the mantra Less is More may apply
to modern design principles,
but not to this group's passion for the
acquisition and dissemination
of information on all things modern.
Kunkel adds, "a new
generation of enthusiasts is researching in
libraries; traveling and seeking
obscure facts; interviewing architects,
designers and their clients;
and getting together to celebrate
this exciting period of
creativity from our recent past."
For
more details on this exciting new group, please contact: Joe Kunkel
joe@jetsetmodern.com
or (T) 312-371-0986
Copyright © 2004 Chicago Bauhaus and Beyond (www.chicagobauhausbeyond.org) and Joe Kunkel (joe@jetsetmodern.com). All rights reserved worldwide. This article and photos may not be reproduced, reprinted, reposted or rewritten without express permission in writing from the author, owner and publisher.
