Esoteric Survey

John Caruthers and Jack Boyd  Alvar Aalto More Aalto and Luther Conover James Grant, Doug Ayers, Archie Kaplan, Robert McKeown Knoll x 3  

Danish Pepper Mills, Hans Agne Jakobsson lamp, Gambone, Peter Shire bowls from 1984, bowl by Christian Luc Table by Archie Kaplan for New Dimensions Furniture and a lamp  

David Cressey for Architectural Pottery Peter Shire, 1980 You know I love my little wire accessories. Here are baskets by Sol Bloom and a tray by Archie Kaplan , both for New Dimensions. All this belonged to the  Frank Bros  family and the toys were shiow at Frank Bros. : The Store that Modernized Modern exhibition that was held at the University Art Museum at CSULB. Here's the Finn Juhl ice bucket when it lived in the Frank's Case Study House 25 , which was designed by Edward Killingsworth.  Source: Photo: Julius Shulman, Getty Research Institute Bruno Munari Polariscop

Archie Kaplan ( 1917- 2008) Archie was born in Connecticut, but spent his adult life in New York. He had no formal design training. He dropped out of Brooklyn College to open his own school school. During high school and college he taught drafting, math, and similar subjects at trade schools -- "night tutoring schools" in his words – and that's the kind of school he opened. The school closed while he was in the Army. He was stationed on Okinawa during the war, and said he was influenced by Japanese architecture and landscaping. When he returned home after the war he opened another school, but decided to close it and go in a different direction.   Designed for Moderns was his next venture.  The company's name was changed to New Dimensions. Sol Bloom also designed for the company. Although it's sometimes unclear who designed what for the company, all the photos in this post are by Archie Kaplan.   This is...