Mid2Mod

Friday, December 2, 2011

Back in the day: Lane graduation boxes

The Lane Co., Inc. began making miniature cedar chests in 1925. In 1930 the company's savvy sales manager came up with the great promotional idea of giving them away to girls graduating from high school in the hopes that their parents would buy them full-size cedar chests to celebrate their graduation or that they would buy a chest when they had homes of their own.

Girls were sent an invitation from Lane to pick up one of the cedar boxes from a local furniture store. By 1984 more than 15 million of the small chests had been given away. (The promotion must have been a spectacular success, because every household I remember when I was growing up had a Lane cedar chest. I had my mother's and my grandmother's for years, and my daughter still has a very mid-century style Lane chest that belonged to a relative.)

Many girls finishing high school from 1930 through the mid-1980s have held onto their miniature Lane cedar chests and still keep high school mementos locked inside. Other less sentimental girls have allowed their chests to meet the fate of so many other mid-century pieces that have been lost to landfills or sold in garage sales.

From fundinguniverse.com

Lane graduation box
alleewillis.com

1950s Lane cedar chest ad
vintageadbrowser.com

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Max Gottschalk

Max Jules Gottschalk (1909-2005) was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a family of musicians, artists, designers and scientists. He entered Washington University at age 13 and studied art and design. After receiving a bachelor's degree, he did post-graduate work in radio engineering, archaeology, art history and music.

From 1939-1942 he lived in Newfoundland and worked as Chief Technical Advisor for the Department of Agriculture and Rural Construction. His job was to design furniture for a factory in Markland.

Upon his return to the United States, he moved first to New York City, where he was employed as an industrial designer for Teague Design. He later relocated to Tucson, Arizona, where he taught industrial design at Pima Community College and became chair of the Applied Design department.

His industrial designs include rotary card files and Scott paper towel holders for the Wheeldex Corporation, New York; lunar escape and air cushion vehicles for Bell Aero Systems; open frozen food refrigeration systems and open refrigerator cases for Hussman-Ligonier Company, St. Louis, Missouri; and electronic test equipment for Hughes Aircraft. He was president of Imagineering and chief of design development for Godesca/Gottschalk Engineering, makers of superfidelity sound systems.

His furniture designs made use of natural materials like wood and leather, often combined with more industrial materials such as steel and aluminum. Many of his pieces were left with a raw edge and employed leather with visible imperfections, which Gottschalk liked for its unique appearance. His logo appears on all his products.

From shiprocksantafe.com and journals.hil.unb.ca