By 1927, it was widely agreed that the name of the age could only be the Machine Age. The idea of the Machine Age helped the nation understand and negotiate its rush from a predominantly rural, Protestant society to an urban, modern world of automobiles, radios and electric toasters- itself one of the cardinal inventions of the era, the concept provided a lens through which the society focused its self-image. ...the Machine Age represents a distinctive period in art and design, forcing us to reconsider the shallow distinction we normally make between the exuberant 1920s - the Jazz Age - and the grim 1930s, the era of the Great Depression. Artists and engineers, poets and advertising men, clergymen and secular intellectuals shared a reverence for the machine. A cheerful confidence, typified by the style known as streamlining -fluid lines, rounded contours, the image of speed and efficiency derived from the look of locomotives, airplanes and ocean liners - unifies the period despite economic ups and downs. By all accounts, today we have crossed the threshold of a new technological phase. As smokestack industries decline and disappear, and as miniaturization proclaims the possibility of a new, clean industrial landscape, Machine Age sounds a bit quaint. Nevertheless, recent years have seen a fascination with early, machine-dominated modernist movements.... Save the 1938 Wurdeman & Becket (and Plummer) designed SMB STREAMLINE MODERNE (Thanks: New York Times Magazine)
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 01:45:00 +0000