Industrial design—the practice of optimizing the function, value, and appearance of products—is a central component in America’s culture of consumerism as well as the source of many beautiful objects now in the collections of leading art and history museums.
We have a number of significant twentieth-century collections that chronicle the evolution of the concepts, products, and processes specific to industrial design here at the Hagley Library, so we definitely wouldn’t want to miss noting that today is World Industrial Design Day, an international day of observance celebrated throughout the world in recognition of the establishment of the World Design Organization, founded on this day, June 29th, in 1957.
In honor of World Industrial Design Day, we’re sharing this undated design drawing for a microphone, created for the Brush Development Company by John Gordon Rideout (1898-1951), a noted industrial designer. Rideout began his career in sales, moved into advertising, and eventually opened industrial design firms in Toledo and then Cleveland, Ohio. This sketch comes from our collection of John Gordon Rideout papers (Accession 2701).
Highlights of the collection are images of Skippy Racer, perfume atomizers designed for DeVilbiss, the Shell-Back metal chair designed for Calumet Chair Company, and his classic re-design of Magnalite Cookware for the Wagner Manufacturing Company. To view a selection of digitized material from this collection, click here to visit its page in our Digital Archive.