Manning Bowman 1930 By Bel Geddes Art Deco Machine Age Pitcher In Chromed Steel
An art deco pitcher designed by Norman Bel Geddes for Manning Bowman.
A fabulous art deco machine-age pitcher, created in America by the Manning Bowman Company, back in the late 1930. This design of this original and avant garde piece was conceived by Norman Bel Geddes. Crafted with streamlines patterns in solid steel with high polished chromed finish and fitted with a large semi circular handle. This piece is very rare, highly collectable and in perfect usable-display condition with no bumps, marks or corroded parts.
Weight: 413.3 Grams, (0.91 Pound).
Measurements: 95 mm by 130 mm X 241 mm (3.75 X 5.1 X 9.50 Inches).
Marks: Stamped with the maker's mark and signed, "MANNING BOWMAN MERIDEN CONN. USA PATENT PEND."
Norman Bel Geddes
Bel Geddes began his career with set designs for Aline Barnsdall Los Angeles Little Theater in the 1916–17 season, then in 1918 as the scene designer for the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He designed and directed various theatrical works, from Arabesque and The Five O'Clock Girl on Broadway to an ice show, It Happened on Ice, produced by Sonja Henie. He also created set designs for the film Feet of Clay (1924), directed by Cecil B. DeMille, designed costumes for Max Reinhardt, and created the sets for the Broadway production of Sidney Kingsley's Dead End (1935).
Bel Geddes opened an industrial-design studio in 1927, and designed a wide range of commercial products, from cocktail shakers to commemorative medallions to radio cabinets. His designs extended to unrealized futuristic concepts: a teardrop-shaped automobile, and an Art Deco House of Tomorrow. In 1929, he designed "Airliner Number 4," a 9-deck amphibian airliner that incorporated areas for deck-games, an orchestra, a gymnasium, a solarium, and two airplane hangars. Bel Geddes designed the General Motors Pavilion, known as Futurama, for the 1939 New York World's Fair. For that famous and enormously influential installation, Bel Geddes exploited his earlier work in the same vein: he had designed a "Metropolis City of 1960" in 1936.
Manning Bowman & Co.
Manning Bowman & Co. was founded in 1832 in Middletown, Connecticut and later moved to Meridien, Connecticut. The company originally produced kitchenware that was made out of tin but later turned to producing a variety of Art Deco kitchenware, barware and electrical appliances made out of chrome and other metals. The company location was at Pratt and Miller Streets in Meriden, occupying a unique triangular-shaped building that has since been demolished. Across the street across from the Meriden Public Library original, brick back buildings of the original Manning, Bowman & Co. can be seen. As of 2016, over 70 Manning, Bowman & Co. designs are in American museums and collections, including most notably at Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford as well as the Brooklyn Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Yale University Art Gallery. Manning, Bowman & Co. exhibited products in the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, the Exposition Universelle (1878) in Paris and the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1880.
Collections: Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford, The Brooklyn Museum, The Dallas Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Yale University Art Gallery.
Condition: The overall condition of this pitcher is excellent. Beside the little normal wear, there is no damage to the steel. All parts are secured in the settings. This piece has been carefully inspected to guarantee the condition and authenticity.
INVENTORY REF: D063023AEOK/.1113
