When entering the Peabody Essex Museum, the visitor is visually greeted by a sparkling turquoise Studebaker Avanti. This iconic car was the brainchild of industrial designer Raymond Lowey in the early 1960s. It was created in an intense design charrette, or workshop, in Palm Springs, California. The wonderful car is at once sleek, aerodynamic, with minimal embellishment. It was a strong aesthetic reaction to the chrome and useless gewgaws that had previously adorned the American cars of the late fifties.

Distinctively low-slung, Loewy’s concept is wedge-shaped in profile, with Coke bottle contour shaped fenders, flush-mounted bumpers, and a grille-less nose. Uniqely, the front sits more than an inch lower than its tail. Its Fiberglas body and overall form speak to the very idea of California cool.xxxxxx

California has long been the home of fads, trends, new styles and the next new thing. It is where cool is and was created. This has been especially centered both in the consumer product-based Los Angeles and the cyber-oriented Silicon Valley. Throughout many decades of the 20th Century, what was contemporary could have been defined as created in California. It has been said that California may be a state of mind. It certainly was, and is, a place that has had its own mind. Probably, a better statement is that, California has been a creative state of mind.

These notions are embodied by the stunning design exhibit now at the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, MA: California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way. The show was originally show developed and presented at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2011. It offers more than 250 mid-century objects demonstrating California’s prominence in the modern design world.

In many ways, California was the epicenter of Mid-century Modern design. Mid-century modern is an architectural, interior, product and graphic design style that generally describes mid-20th century aesthetic and technical developments in modern design, architecture and urban development from roughly 1930 to 1965. This is the same period covered by this outstanding exhibit.

During this time—like Loewy and his colleagues did with the Avanti—California designers stripped fussy Victorian details, Rococo flourishes, and various pieces of visual clutter from art, architecture, furniture, graphics and fashion to define the sleek, often organic, modern look of a design-savvy, style-conscious emerging Atomic Age. California-based movies and later television shows spread and reinforced the new styles and designs, both nationally and internationally.

A great example of stripped down, sleek, even minimalist design is the Airstream trailer that the visitor encounters before going up the stairs to the exhibit. This stream lined American icon was first created by Wally Byam, in his Los Angeles backyard during the late 1920s. With its door mounted on its side—cut down on wind resistance and improving fuel efficiency—the now familiar sausage-shaped, gleaming, silver aluminum ‘ship of the highway’ symbolized mid-century American mobility. The Airstream trailer’s very structure served as a visual exclamation for a newly-discovered free-wheeling Golden State on the move.

Through the use of color, form and spatial relationships, the visitor entering the exhibition gallery feels a warm sense of optimism, creativity, experimentation and exuberance. These elements visually, materially and even culturally unite the displayed elements of furniture, jewelry, ceramics, sculpture, architectural and graphic drawings, toys, textiles, and fashion.

Of significance, the objects in “California Design” were not only intended to be beautiful, but also salable. New materials and manufacturing techniques developed during WWII were adapted to mass produce everything from ceramics to fashion to homes. California was a place with a culture of innovation and experimentation.

A great example is the design team of Charles and Ray Eames. They were commissioned by the U.S. Navy to make lightweight leg splints for injured World War II soldiers. One of these beautifully sculptured forms is on exhibit. They were able to take those military experiments with molded plywood to create their legendary residential chairs. The story of their leg splint is almost legendary. The humble leg splint put in the hands of design genius to reconfigure led to a new way in which furniture was thought about and made.

Right: Molded Wooden Leg Splint by Charles and Ray Eames, 1942–43. Photo: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Californians by choice, Charles (1907-1978) and Ray (1912-1988) Eames are widely regarded as among America’s most important designers. Their innovations are still informing contemporary design today. Interestingly, he was a noted architect, though he never finished college or got licensed; and she was an abstract painter who saw everything as a potential color study or painting. Much of their work is now iconic. Wonderful examples by them are included in this show.

Earlier in 1940, Charles had partnered with his friend architect Eero Saarinen to create a chair of molded plywood. The design problem that needed to be overcome was how to create compound curves that would stay flexible and not splinter while being lightweight and strong. Having access to military technology and manufacturing facilities, the Eameses and their team of designers were able to perfect their technique for molding plywood. The final product had a three-dimensional, biomorphic form.

Eames chairs became a design object of desire almost as soon as they were presented. In 1945, the LCW chair would be called by Time Magazine “the chair of the century.” Still manufactured by Herman Miller, they called it “the most advanced furniture being produced in the world today.”

Though failing to make it suitable for mass-production or even very functional, they had to upholster it to cover up its flaws, they won the Museum of Modern Arts’ “Organic Design in Home Furnishings” competition. It looked better than it sat. Through this “failure,” Eames never again started a design by what it was to look like, but instead each future design was started by how it was to function. The Navy splint problem, and the previous years’ exercises of trial and error led to creative answers.

Ultimately, the techniques used in developing the leg splint led directly to the Eames’ subsequent, highly influential molded plywood furniture designs. Original chairs in the exhibit illustrate this. A wonderful toy elephant can be seen in the children’s section of the show as well.

Right: Toy elephant by Charles and Ray Eames, Molded Plywood, 1945. Photo: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

There is more than a slight déjà vu quality to the exhibit. Reproductions of many of the objects on view—not only by the Eameses—can currently be found in stores or online. In fact, many of the originals are still plentiful on eBay. As a result, the show looks familiar. Mid-century furniture has been enjoying a resurgence for the past decade or so, and once again came into greater prominence when “Mad Men” debuted in 2007.

What truly defined California living were the homes and how people lived. The climate fostered an indoor/outdoor lifestyle. The airy, open homes wrapped around a central courtyard and swimming pool. Walls of windows and sliding glass doors created a seamless transition between inside and outside, yard and room. The quintessential Californian Kaufmann House in Palm Springs, designed by architect Richard Neutra (1892-1970), is represented in the show by the famous Julius Shulman (1910-2009) photograph. The pictured structure opens to panoramic views of the mountains and clear sky, balmy weather.

There is a plethora of high points at the show. Several standout pieces range from furniture, to appliances, to fashion, to décor. One major contributor to the California design legacy is German-born Kem Weber (1889-1963). His is an example of the kind of progressive European talent which enriched 20th Century American design. Two of his most iconic creations are in the exhibit. He designed for Lawson Time, the brilliantly elegant copper digital—yes digital!—Zephyr desk clock (1933). It eloquently defines, Streamline Modern.

Also on view is perhaps Weber’s most famous work, the Airline chair of 1934. It exemplifies the clean, streamlined style of the age, with its seat supported by a cantilevered frame reflecting wooden aircraft components. The one on display came from a group of 300 made for Walt Disney Studios, a major client of his. Weber was the main architect of the Walt Disney Studio complex in Burbank, California.

Right: Airline Chair by Kem Weber 1934. Photo: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Great examples showcased in the exhibit include: Group Artec’s 1950s and 60s garden pottery and ceramic sculpture present wonderful California outdoor elements; a polyurethane foam, wood and fiberglass cloth surfboard by Greg Noll from Hermosa Beach, says ‘Pacific coast surfing'(1960); an elegant 1949 Lamp designed by émigré Greta Magnusson Grossman; the futuristic Buck Rogers-esque bright cherry red, Opco Company’s Ice Gun from 1935; wonderful period record album covers from the 1950s by designers Saul Bass, Alvin Lustig and William Claxton; a fabulous boomerang fashion pin by Margaret De Patta from c. 1946-57; and what is more California than original Barbie and Ken dolls, designed by Ruth Handler and the Mattel Company in 1959 and 1961, respectively? .

Certainly a lack of traditional styles in California combined with a cross-cultural mix allowed designers along with new and natural materials allowed designers to be free to experiment and try new technologies and different approaches.

With the vast influx of new California residents in the 20s and 30s due to economic expansion followed by the turmoil and The Depression between the two World Wars, demand for new housing and furnishings exploded. This was coupled with gifted and well-trained designers, artists and artisans increasingly moving to the state.

Demand domestically and internationally for California-produced products was aided by greater exposure to California-based movies and later to television. This allowed for the embracing of California design and designers. California became not only a travel destination but a lifestyle.

With very clear and well-researched descriptions, the exhibition acknowledges materials, styles and forms that influenced the California design impetus. Starting with streamlined rather organic shaped furniture and appliances, the exhibit takes the visitor on a design journey starting around 1930 that tells an enthralling visual story. The PEM curator in charge of this terrific and thoughtful installation, Austen Barron Bailly has said, “Designers who embraced California modern wanted to make lives beautiful and comfortable. There’s something really timeless about that goal.”

California Design shows how California became America’s most important source of progressive architecture and home furnishings. It eloquently explores the state’s influence on the US’s material culture. The exhibition is divided into four thematic sections. These include Shaping, Making, Living and Selling. Thoughtfully, this exhibition explains the origins of modern California design by presenting a number of works by its creative professionals, references their influences and how they used innovative materials. Their work and creative process established the California look that reflected a modern lifestyle.

Not to be missed, this exhibit is a wonderful visual story of a period of prolific as well as optimistic creativity and form with function that defined modern.

By Mark Favermann, Contributing Editor

California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way

At the Peabody Essex Museum. March 29 through July 6, 2014.

Peabody Essex Museum

Salem, Massachusetts

The accompanying 360-page catalogue, edited by Wendy Kaplan, is co-published by LACMA and MIT Press, and features essays by Kaplan and Bobbye Tigerman, along with other leading architecture and design historians.

This article was previously published and appears courtesy of Boston’s online arts magazine, Art Fuse, at: http://artsfuse.org/