New Forms and Materials

Mary and Russel's friendship and partnership joined their considerable creative talents with her intuitive ability to sell. What Mary lacked at first in experience, she made up for in self-confidence, charm, and good connections. While Russel was a transplanted Midwesterner, Mary was a native New Yorker. She was born in New York City in 1905 to Alva and Milton Einstein, a well-to-do businessman. She attended Cornell University, studied modern art and later, for a time, served as president of the Bach Circle Group that sponsored concerts of early 18th century music. She was a designer in her own right, and many who knew her felt that if she were not so dedicated to her husband's career, she would have been a successful artist, too.[15]

Russel's first designs were gift items that Mary placed in boutiques on Madison Avenue owned by important tastemakers like Rena Rosenthal and Mary Ryan. Clever circus animals, bookends, andirons and door stops forged and cast of nickel, gunmetal, wrought iron and other materials caught the eye of customers such as Gilda Grey, the Prince of Wales, Ann Morrow and Mrs. James Forrestal-and the Wrights and their work were featured in such magazines as Vogue, Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, Arts & Decoration, and House & Garden.[16]

With a little savings that they had deposited at the reassuringly named Corn Exchange Bank, Mary and Russel were able to establish their first living and working space in a converted horse stable at 165 East 35th Street in New York City. They found their first success in the early 1930s with serving accessories made of spun aluminum, copper, rattan, cork and wood. In metals, these designs took on sleek, geometric forms. In wood, Wright explored more exotic, organic forms. Key to the success of these early designs during the Depression was their affordable price and their fresh informality.

Mary and I were a young and impecunious couple, and we did this out of necessity. We had to do our own housekeeping and furnish our own apartment. So I began designing and making furniture and serving pieces for our own use.[17]

With limited space and no heavy equipment at hand, Russel devised a method to "spin" aluminum, creating lightweight, lustrous products: vases, serving trays, "tidbit" servers, bun warmers, salt and pepper shakers, pitchers, cooking utensils and more. Because of their lightweight and conductive properties, Wright discovered that these items could go from the refrigerator to the stove to the dinner table and a new marketing strategy was born. "Stove to Table Ware" was promoted in 1934 as both smart and efficient.

How to be smart efficiently, and efficient smartly, is the modern housewife's perennial problem. For this problem Russel Wright presents a solution…."Stove to Table Ware"-cooking utensils that come into the dining room. Made of aluminum, they have solid walnut handles that are heat resistant. In appearance, there is nothing "kitcheny" about them. They are as chic and well designed as a gown by Chanel."[18]

At the age of 30, Wright was hitting his stride. He created furniture for his own apartment on 35^th Street including the Cowboy Modern Chair (or Pony Chair), which he designed in 1932 and was later used for the boardroom at the Museum of Modern Art. Hand carved of Primavera wood, the Pony Chair is, according to curator William Hennessey, "an early manifestation of Wright's growing fondness for natural materials and vaguely Surrealist-inspired forms."[19] Natural materials and organic forms were also the inspiration for Wright's Oceana line of machine carved wooden accessories designed in 1935 and produced by the Klise Woodworking Company of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Despite the Depression, the 1930s were prolific years for Russel. He created Art Deco inspired tabletop radios and a baby grand piano for the Wurlitzer Company, and by the mid-1930s, he had designed a line of modern furnishings for the Heywood-Wakefield Company of Gardner, Massachusetts. Although that relationship did not last long, he soon created furnishings for the Conant-Ball Company, also located in Gardner, that began the development of related and coordinated furnishings, fabrics and, soon to follow, dinnerware and serving accessories that Wright collectively called American Modern.

Wright's designs for furniture for the Conant-Ball Company were emblematic of his quickly emerging philosophy. Modern design should reflect modern living yet it should be rooted in the best traditions. Designs for Conant-Ball furniture drew upon American Colonial traditions with a simplified, updated profile. Constructed of solid Northern Rock Maple as well as solid birch wood, the American Modern line included furniture for the bedroom, dining room, and living room. The sectional sofa, perhaps a design first, consisted of separate corner and center units, which could be configured in numerous variations. With the adjustable lounge chair, Wright updated a popular form from the Arts & Crafts era popularized by William Morris. The Conant-Ball line, included amongst its various finish options, a new light-colored finish, which Mary dubbed "blonde" that was widely emulated and came to symbolize the period through products by other designers produced by Heywood-Wakefield.

Wright's creative process was more akin to that of an artist than a corporate designer. Throughout his career he revisited formal themes and motifs, building an aesthetic language common to painters, sculptors and composers. Distinctive curves, for example, reappear in different lines; indented grips in place of conventional handles were used in designs 20 years apart from each other; and Russel's unique concentric-ring motif that first appeared in spun aluminum in the 1930s resurfaces in later designs in different materials. Like an artist, Russel also strived for innovation. In 1983, William Hennessey observed,

Wright belonged to the pioneering generation of industrial designers that included Bel Geddes, Walter Dorwin Teague, Donald Deskey, Raymond Loewy, and Henry Dreyfuss. Although he was a member of this group, Wright was also something of an outsider. Like many of his colleagues, his background was in stage design. But while most of them formed large, highly organized offices that employed a staff of designers working as a team on large-scale projects of heavy industry…Wright always remained a loner and a craftsman who, despite his occasional work as a design consultant, specialized in household products for his entire career.[20]

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