Presentation Copy to His Wife
Design in Art and Industry.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1935.
Price: $1,000.00
About the item
First edition. Illustrated. 204 pp. 1 vols. Small 4to. Presentation Copy to His Wife. Original blue cloth. Rebacked, preserving original spine. Two preliminary leaves chipped at outer margin. Very scarce. Provenance: From the Estate of Ely Jacques Kahn.
Item #234648
Inscribed by the author and famous New York architect (1884-1972) on the flyleaf, to his wife, Beatrice [Sulzberger] Kahn:
"To Beatrice - a fine design
"Ely Kahn"
A unique association copy of an important - and very personal - book on design, by one of New York's City's most influential architects. The origin of Kahn's book is told in the extensive chapter on his career in Steern, Gilmartin, and Mellins' NEW YORK 1930: ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS (NY, Rizzoli, pp. 550-563):
"In 1933, with unemployment among designers so universal that the American Institute of Architects pondered whether to recommend the closing of art and architecture schools, Kahn argued ... for a return to craft as a method for solving unemployment. He obtained a grant from the Carnegie Foundation to travvel around the world investigating the artist's role in society ... much of his time was spent in the Far East in a last fling with exoticism ... "Kahn's report on his trip [was] a book called DESIGN IN ART AND INDUSTRY; its exoticism, its picturesque local color, its concern with the individual craftsman and the handing down of vernacular traditions from father to son - all of these seemed irrelevant in a world that had turned its attention to encouraging the utmost efficiency and standardization in industry."
