Holiday Tables

Staff from the Archives and Cultural Properties department will be putting together a display for the House and Gardens Auxiliary's annual Holiday Tables event.  Since this year's theme is "There's No Place Like Home", our display in George Booth's Country Office is titled: "Michigan Modern: The Saarinen-Swanson Group of Home Furnishings".  This was a complete group of home furnishings that grew out of a line of furniture collaboratively designed in 1939 by Eliel Saarinen, Pipsan Saarinen Swanson and J. Robert F. Swanson called the "Flexible Home Arrangement Group". In 1947, Swanson and Associates asked four members of the Cranbrook community to collaborate with their firm and expand the collection to include a complete set of coordinated furnishings. Their idea of “backgrounds for living” reflected the Cranbrook principle that art, architecture and interior design work harmoniously to create integrated living. The four artists included Cranbrook's Head of Weaving Marianne Strengell, ceramicist Lydia Kahn Winston, architect and interior designer Benjamin Baldwin, and sculptor Chuck Dusenbury. Objects included in this year's display include furniture, textiles, andirons and fireplace tools, glassware, vases, a seven-tier candelabrum, and lamps as well as supporting historic photographs and documents from the Archives.

Michigan Modern

The State Historic Preservation Office, in partnership with the Michigan History Foundation, has embarked on an exciting project called "Michigan Modern" that will document and recognize Michigan’s contribution to the development of the modernist architecture movement between 1940 and 1970. After World War II the Cranbrook's Academy of Art  became a center for American Modernism where Eliel Saarinen created an intellectual climate that attracted exceptional artists and designers.

The role of the Cranbrook Archives in the project will be multi-faceted, from providing images of architects and their projects for the Michigan Modern website to historical and biographical data about the Academy of Art and its faculty and students.