May 5th, 2008
Legacy show features creations by a dean of industrial design
ATTLEBORO - You may not know his name, but chances are you’ve encountered Viktor Schreckengost’s work. Children played with his pedal cars in the 1940s. He pioneered a design for bicycle headlamps that changed the way flashlights were made. He masterminded the first modern mass-produced dinnerware for American Limoges.
ATTLEBORO - You may not know his name, but chances are you’ve encountered Viktor Schreckengost’s work. Children played with his pedal cars in the 1940s. He pioneered a design for bicycle headlamps that changed the way flashlights were made. He masterminded the first modern mass-produced dinnerware for American Limoges.
Schreckengost, a dean of 20th-century American industrial design, died in January at 101. “Viktor Schreckengost Legacy Exhibition,” organized at the Attleboro Arts Museum by Charles S. Tramontana, a former student who has had a notable career designing crystal and fine china, celebrates Schreckengost’s remarkable range of talents, from watercolor painting to ceramics.
Schreckengost taught for 70 years at the Cleveland Institute of Art, and the show includes work by some of his most successful students, including designers of cellphones, coffee makers, toys, dishes, and automobiles (a 1965 Ford Mustang designed by Schreckengost protégé Joe Oros is on view). It’s a joy to see the teacher’s influence ripple outward.
In Schreckengost’s case, that influence was both aesthetic and practical. He taught teamwork, problem solving, and the business of design. Designing dinnerware was a standard assignment: Yes, it had to look good, but it also had to be practical. Attleboro Arts Museum executive director Mim Brooks Fawcett reports that one of Schreckengost’s catch phrases was “But can it hold a cheese sandwich?”
This show has heart, thanks to the warm testaments of Schreckengost’s students and the fact that some of Schreckengost’s most endearing products are on view. The pedal cars, manufactured from stamped steel, are icons of mid-20th-century childhood. One, a little fire engine that first hit stores in 1949, has a big grille and hood, a seat, and not much more. Schreckengost, we learn from wall text, concluded that if the front grille looked authentic enough, the rest could be improvised according to the needs of the design.
Tags: cleveland, show
16 Responses to “Legacy show features creations by a dean of industrial design”
Yea, at one time I kinda thought Ben Stein was a smart guy, but he’s got a lot of crazy opinions about the world that really leave me with no respect for him whatsoever.The theory of evolution promotes racism just as much as nuclear theory promotes bombs or electricity promotes tasers. Religion promotes racism more than science ever has.
Ok, fine. 50 gang bangers and a virgin get together and vote that everybody gets raped. Does that make you feel more civilized?
According to a recent article at Forbes.com the organizers of the 110-year-old Frankfurt Motor Show have hooked up with “Brigitte,” a leading European women’s magazine, to set up a lounge for women featuring the ironic slogan: “Why women can’t park.”
That’s bullshit, of course taxes are theft. At very best they are a necessary evil, but likely not even that.By your logic, 50 gang-bangers and a virgin can get together and vote on who gets raped. Would it not be rape then? would it just be the agreed-upon price of living in a civil society?
Robin Ince on Creationismhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdocQHsPCNM
The problem is that too many people actually think that the ID debate is about science. It isn’t. The real issue is whether the government should coerce one demographic to pay for to teach the values of another.IMHO, the fundamentalists are kooks, but the bottom line is that they are still being coerced to pay for an educational system that teaches the opposite of what they believe. How can such a system lead to anything other than constant contention?We should consider this the punishment we get for believing that it is OK for the government to force people to pay for others education.
They are probably affronted by what they think biological Darwinism means, and not by what it actually means. I have found that relatively few people actually have a good understanding of the subtleties of Darwin’s idea.
Phili’s logic says no such thing. The tyranny of the majority metaphor only applies to taxes if the gangbangers are voting for all 51 of them to be raped just a little. Taxes aren’t imposed on the minority by the majority; they’re imposed on everyone to varying degrees.
How would that help, exactly? It’s clear that parents don’t put high value on facts or actual education. Vouchers would only exacerbate this situation, as schools competed for these fundamentalist dollars, bending over backwards to meet every zany demand of these kooks.
“Two years ago, Pennsylvania federal Judge John Jones III handed down a stunning decision that many said would take down the intelligent design movement. But American creationism doesn’t die. It just adapts”You might say American creationism just evolves. Like man.</irony>
Well, most libertarians I know would support school vouchers — so real schools, with, you know, science, in the science classrooms, could compete.
I find it ironic that people who support economic and social darwinism are so affronted by biological darwinism.
I have no problem whatsoever of creationism/ID being taught in schools. It should be taught as part of a philosophy of science course as part of the section on how to tell pseudo science from real science right along with Piltdown Man, Cold Fusion, UFO believers. I would imagine that Popper and falsificationism would be covered as well.
Creationism is evolving nicely.
You just described a mob where the rights of the minority are ignored - not a representative democracy.