Eliel Saarinen – Cranbrook Map Tapestry

Eliel Saarinen (Designer) , 1935 Born 1873. Rantasalmi. Finland: Cranbrook. Resident Architect. 1925-1950: Cranbrook Academy of Art (CAA),President. 1932- 1946: CAADirector of Department of Architecture and Urban Design. 1946-1950: died 1950. Bloomfield Hills. Michigan Weaver: Studio Loja Saarinen: attributed to Lilian Holm and Ruth Ingvarson Linen warp: linen. silk and wool weft: plain weave with discontinuous wefts 103 1/2 x 123 1/2 inches Gift of George Gough Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth through The CranbrookFoundation CAM 1935.7 Studio Loja Saarinen, under the direction of Loja Saarinen, frequently collaborated with Eliel Saarinen to translate his designs into fiber. This large-scale Cranhrook Map Tapestry was designed by Eliel and is based on one of his proposed plans for Cranbrook. It includes Cranbrook Academy of Art and the Art Museum, Cranbrook School for boys, Cranbrook Institute of Science, Kingswood School Cranbrook, and the Cranbrook Pavilion and Greek Theatre. The buildings, sculpture and landscaping ...

Carl Milles – Jonah and the Whale Fountain

Carl Milles Jonah and the Whale Fountain, designed 1931, cast 1931-1932, installed on Academy Way, 1932-1934 Born 1875. Lagga. Sweden: Cranbrook Academy of Art. Director of Department of Sculpture. 1931-1951: died 1955. Lidingo. Sweden Foundry: Herman Bergman. Stockholm. Sweden Bronze 108x 148 inches Gift of George Gough Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth through The Cranbrook Foundation CAM 1934.67 This delightful fountain reflects Carl Milles's elation upon becoming the first Director of the Department of Sculpture at the new Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1931. His first commission from The Cranbrook Foundation, Jonah and the Whale, was designed the same year he arrived at Cranbrook and installed in 1932 at a total cost of $29,000. Though he started small, thinking of a fountain for the inner courtyard at the new Kingswood SchoolCranbrook (where his Diana now presides), Milles's love of water seemed unquenchable. With its eighty pipes splashing streams of water on both the whale and the Buddha-like Jonah, Milles blithely succeeded in his initial intent to make his fountain "a joke for the children." Jonah, the Biblical ...

Carl Milles – Sketch for Orpheus

Carl Milles Sketch for Orpheus, circa 1926 Born 1875. : Cranbrook Academy of Art. Director of Department of Sculpture. 1931-1951: died 1955. Lidingo. Sweden Foundry: Herman Bergman. Stockholm. Sweden Bronze 87 x 21 x 16 inches Gift of George Gough Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth through The Cranbrook Foundation CAM1931.8 With the grace of a dancer, a youthful Orpheus descends in to Hades to retrieve his dead wife Eurydice, charming the guardian of the underworld with his poet-musician's lyre. Enlivened by CarlMilles's characteristic dark green patina and rugged surface, this "sketch"of Orpheus in bronze remembers the softer clay that formed its boyish locks and sinewy muscles. Milles studied sculpture in Paris and was accepted into his first Salonexhibition in 1899. Shortly thereafter he worked in the studio of Auguste Rodin. Milles won a sculptural competition for the Stockholm Concert Hall with this exh uberan t interpretation of the Orpheus myth. ...

Raphael Soyer – The Mission

Raphael Soyer The Mission, 1933 Born 1899. Borisoglebsk. Russia: died 1987. New York. New York Lithograph (Edition of 25) Image: 12 1/4 x 17 5/8 inches Gift of George Gough Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth through The Cranbrook Foundation CAM 1942.14 Raphael Soyer'spaintings and prints created during the Depression are among the most evocative representations of that period. In these works, Soyer,no stranger to poverty himself, shows his affinity with his subjects, who were often working-class men or the unemployed. Soyerbased this lithograph on his painting How Long SinceYou Wrote to Mother? (private collection) in which he usedhomeless men he had met in the Bowery as models. In portraying the transients in The Mission in attitudes ranging from resignation to defiance, Soyeralso displays his skills as a lithographer. The rich darkness of the clothing of the men huddled around the table emphasizes the glowing highlights on their faces and hands, ...

Marshall Fredericks – Torso of a Dancer

Marshall Fredericks Torso of a Dancer 1938-1939 Born 1908,Rock Island,Illinois; Cranbrook Academy of Art (CAA). Student. Department of Sculpture. 1933: Cranbrook Schools. Instructor,1933: CAA Instructorof Ceramics and Modeling. 1934-1938: CAA Instructor in Department of Sculpture. 1938-1942: died 1998. Birmingham. Michigan Belgian black marble 38 x 18 314 x 13 7 /8 inches Gift of George Gough Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth through The Cranbrook Foundation CAM 1939.42 Marshall Fredericks arrived at Cranbrook in 1932 to assist CarlMilles and eventually remained to teach courses in ceramics and sculptural modeling at the Academy of Art, Kingswood and Cranbrook schools. His years at Cranbrookwere among the most productive of his entire career. By the time he left to enter mili tory service in 1942, Fredericks was a wellestablished sculptor with a string of prizewinning works and significant commissions to his credit, including the Levi L. Barbour Memorial on Belle Isle in Detroit and The ...

Eliel Saarinen – Saarinen House Dining Room

Eliel Saarinen (Designer) Saarinen House Dining Room, designed 1928, constructed 1929-1930 Born 1873, Rantasalmi. Finland: Cranbrook. Resident Architect, 1925-1950: Cranbrook Academy of Art (CAA), President. 1932- 1946: CAADirector of Department of Architecture and Urban Design, 1946-1950: died 1950. Bloomfield Hills. Michigan Collection of Cranbrook Art Museum Saarinen House accession number: CAM 1992.25 Saarinen House has been hailed as one of the most significant residential projects in America a Gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art. Both an architect and a painter, Eliel Saarinen planned each detail of his personal environment from the design of the house and gardens to the interior furnishings. The dining room at SaarinenHouse represents his masterful use of geometry and color. The square rug, with its octagonal pattern, establishes the geometry of the space and allows for a subtle transformation of shapes throughout the room, terminating in the concentric circles of the gilded domed ceiling. This rug ...

Käthe Kollwitz – The Mothers (Die Mütter)

Köthe Kollwitz The Mothers (Die Mütter), 1922-1923 From the portfolio War (SiebenHolzschnitte zum Krieg), 1923 Born 1867. Konigsberg. Germany (now Kaliningrad, Russia): died 1945. Dresden. Germany Lithograph (Edition: 1/1 00) 20 1 /2 x 29 5/8 inches Gift of Peggy deSalle CAM 1984.48 Following the catastrophe of World War I, German artist KätheKollwitz produced a portfolio of seven woodcuts entitled War in 1923 at the height of the pacifist movement in Germany. Using generalized figures of mothers, widows, young soldier volunteers and grieving parents, the prints focused on the pain and sorrow of those left behind. Kollwitz was particularly sensitive to the grief of mothers, having lost her own son Peter in the early months of the war. The Mothers, part of theWar portfolio, shows a group of women locked into a solid sculptural mass that forms a protective barrier for the infant held by one and the two children ...

Pipsan Saarinen Swanson – Four Glasses

Pipsan Saarinen Swanson (Designer) Four Glasses: Champagne Glass, Water Goblet SherbetGlass and Wine Glass, designed 1946 Born Eva Lisa Saarinen. 1905. Kirkkonummi. Finland: Cranbrook Academy of Art. Instructorof Weaving and Textile Design. 1932-1933. 1935: died 1979. Bloomfield Hills. Michigan Manufacturer: USGlass Company. Tiffin. Ohio Glass Water: 5 3/8 x 3 3/4 (diameter) inches Champagne: 3 3/4 x 4 (diameter) inches Wine: 4 x 2 7/8 (diameter) inches Sherbet:3 1 /8 x 3 1 /4(diameter) inches Gift of Robert Saarinen Swanson and Ronald Saarinen Swanson CAM 1981. 70.A through .D PipsanSaarinenSwanson,daughter of Loja and Eliel Saarinen, readily accepted her parents' allencompassing approach to art, and during her long and successful career designed furniture, woven and printed textiles, clothing, metalwork, glass and interiors. Sheparticipated in Cranbrook's early history both as an artist and an instructor, contributing decorative details to Cranbrook Schoolfor boys (1926), SaarinenHouse (1930), and Kingswood SchoolCranbrook (1931), and offering several ...

Eero Saarinen – Drawings for Furniture Designs for Kingswood School Cranbrook

Eero Saarinen Drawings for Furniture Designs for Kingswood School Cranbrook, 1930-1931 Born 1910. Kirkkonummi. Finland: Cranbrook Academy of Art. Instructor,1939-1942: died 1961. Bloomfield Hills. Michigan Pencil on paper (nine pages in a book) Each page: 9 1/8 x 6 1/8 inches Gift of Ronald S. and Heather R. Swanson CAM 2003.4 Eero Saarinen is well-known for "talking with a pencil," evident in impromptu drawings and expressive sketches produced on the closest material at hand. Seminaldrawings for his mature architectural projects survive on the backs of menus, as insertions into letters he wrote to friends and relatives, and in the margins of his desk calendar. The earliest known document of Eero's creative process as a designer is this series of pencil sketches he clustered on the end and back pages of this book, Henry of Navarre by Henry Dwight Sedgwick, published in 1930. It is not hard to imagine the precocious twenty-year-old ...

Eliel Saarinen – Study for the Chicago Lakefront Project: Perspective of the Chicago Tower

Eliel Saarinen Study for the Chicago Lakefront Project: Perspective of the Chicago Tower, 1923 Born 1873. Rantasalmi. Finland: Cranbrook. Resident Architect. 1925-1950; Cranbrook Academy of Art (CAA)President. 1932- 1946; CAADirector of Department of Architecture and Urban Design. 1946-1950: died 1950. Bloomfield Hills. Michigan Pencil on tracing paper 23 1/2 x 17 inches Collection of Cranbrook Art Museum CAM 1955.389 With the $20,000 award he received for his second-place entry in the 1922 Chicago Tribune Tower Competition, the fifty-year-old Eliel Saarinen set sail for the UnitedStatesin 1923 where he first settled with his family in Chicago. Although he did not have a client in mind, he occupied himself by creating a plan for the development of Chicago's lakefront. Saa rinenwho believed architecture encompassed all aspects of design, from flatware to city planswas well known in Europe as a town planner and for his proposals for Helsinki, Tallinn, Budapest and Canberra, the ...