Designer Profile: Russel Wright - Modern on your table

""—because it is an honest expression of present-day living, modern design should interest all thinking Americans."" - Russel Wright

Russel Wright started his schooling as a Law student at Princeton. He spent a summer in an art colony in Woodstock N.Y. There he met his wife Mary Small Einstein and was offered a job at Norman Bell Geddes's studio as an assistant on the theatre sets for 'the Miracle'. In 1925 he visited the 'Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels' in Paris, France. Afterwards he returned to work at Wurlitzer and designed radios and the first jukebox [DesignAddict].

At the age of 30, Wright began to design 60 pieces of furniture for Heywood-Wakefield Furniture Company, later producing a line of solid bleached maple furniture for Conant Ball in 1935 [see picture]. By 1938 he was already working out of a studio on 53rd street in New York, producing Aluminum spun tableware. His aluminum works married the Art Deco aesthetic (with crisp, clean faces devoid of surface treatment) and industrial age materials. He produced over 200 shapes in aluminum. In 1938 he began to design and create moulds for his ceramic tableware collection. Unable to find a manufacturer willing to sell his pottery, Mr. and Mrs. Wright along with Irving Richards convinced local authorities of Steubenville (about a 30 minute drive from East Liverpool Ohio) to re-open its doors. Wright's first line at Steubenville Pottery, titled 'American Modern' started production in 1940 and lasted until 1961. American Modern was Wrights' response to the bright saturated dinnerware colors of Bauer Ring. The line was an extreme success, and created more than 1 million in revenue [DesignAddict].

Also in 1940 Wright launched a project called 'the American Way' in an attempt to separate American and European design. Manufactures and department stores sold American designed furniture and accessories to the public, becoming an endeavor of 72 manufacturers and 22 major department stores. However, WWII made the project unsuccessful.

Wright was one of the original 14 members of the Society of Industrial Designers (SID) which later became the American Society for Industrial Design, and is now the Industrial Designers Society of America. In 1949, American Cyanamid produced Meladur, which was designed by Wright, was the first melamine tableware. Melamine is the main component of Formica and Arborite and allows dishes to be easily wiped clean and heat resistant. Unfortunately, except for its limited success with restaurants the public never bought on to his design. Not until 1953 when the Northern Industrial Moulding Company started manufacturing his residential melamine dinnerware, it was so widely accepted it a whole host of companies began to produce it as well.

The Wright's co-authored a book called "Guide to Easier Living" in 1950, an effort to revolutionize the home. In this book, Russel and Mary went to great lengths to explain everything that they believed was important to orchestrating successful home engineering and economics. As they wrote "Good informal living substitutes a little headwork for a lot of legwork. It doesn't need wealth, but it does take thought, some ingenuity and resourcefulness, and more than a little loving care to create a home that is really your own. [Manitoga]" They emphasized freedom from convention. Their main goal as the title said "easier living".

In the later 1940s, Wright went to the Far East to help make their creations saleable in America. While in the Far East Wright was inspired by the homes and gardens of Japan. In 1952, when Mary Wright died, Russel hired David Leavitt as the architect of Dragon Rock, his Japanese inspired home in Garrison, New York, but only if Russel was listed in Publications as the Interior Designer [Origin of Dragon Rock]. Dragon rock has a large two-story central living and dining room, his daughter Annie to the west wing, and his live-in studio and guest rooms were to the east which were all separated by a pergola.

While Wright died in 1976, his designs are still influential. "Russel Wright: Creating American Lifestyle" was run at the Cooper-Hewitt design museum in 2001 and 2002. Examples of his work are on permanent display at major museums across the nation. Recently Oneida manufactured a "re-issue" of many of Wright's designs in new glazes. The line was stopped in 2004.

Before his death he had designed textiles, dinnerware, furniture, landscapes, all of which a design success. With the help of his wife Mary, he had built his name as a brand, 50 years before the likes of Martha Stewart and Ralph Lauren. It was hard for any woman between the 1930s and 1950s to escape his influence, who were most likely eating with his dinnerware sitting on his furniture, sleeping with his sheets, and using some of the appliances he designed.

Throughout his work, Wright sought to improve people's everyday lives. He produced inexpensive, mass produced dinnerware, furniture, appliances, and textiles that allowed for "easier living" for Americans while being contemporary and informal. His designs allowed people to have well designed products even through a time of depression and war. His contribution to modernism in the 20th century included previous American traditions of simplicity, and honest construction, flexibility and practicality, while incorporating new materials and technology. Russel Wright's work inspired from such influences as Asian, Surrealism, Colonial, and Frank Lloyd Wright, perhaps more than any other designer shifted the America's preference toward the modern.