‘Practical Vision and the Business of Design: Norman Bel Geddes Incorporated' in Norman Bel Geddes Designs America (New York: Abrams, 2012), edited by Donald Albrecht, 54-70.

Maffei, Nicolas ‘Practical Vision and the Business of Design: Norman Bel Geddes Incorporated' in Norman Bel Geddes Designs America (New York: Abrams, 2012), edited by Donald Albrecht, 54-70. In: UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED.

Abstract

This chapter focuses on Norman Bel Geddes’ office, its influence, operation, and the designers of significance who passed through its doors, using a business history approach to interrogate design practice and consultancy. The synthesis of business and design history is a nascent scholarly practice (Meikle, Clarke, Yates, Porter, Scranton). Maffei’s chapter argues that Geddes’ self-construction and self-promotion as a visionary designer is central to understanding his place in American design history and the business of design in the twentieth century. It facilitates and extends a detailed insight into design business practices, and the role of the construction of design identities as a business strategy. It also sheds light on the early careers and networks of leading American designers, including Eliot Noyes and Henry Dreyfuss, who initially worked for Geddes. Norman Bel Geddes: Designs America was developed in association with a major exhibition of the same name, originating at the Harry Ransom Centre (HRC), Texas and travelling to The Museum of the City of New York where Albrecht, the exhibition curator, is Head of Design and Architecture. The book has been favourably reviewed in the New York Times Book Review and highlighted in Wallpaper, San Francisco Chronicle and Austin Chronicle. The HRC Geddes project was designated a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) ‘We the People’ project and was supported in part by the NEH. From the beginning of the project Maffei was represented on the Planning Committee for the exhibition, the only UK-based academic invited to do so owing to his extensive specialist knowledge of the Norman Bel Geddes archive and his demonstration of deep knowledge of Geddes’s life and career. Maffei was supported in travelling, undertaking research and consulting on the exhibition and book, contributing expert knowledge and analysis to a series of round-table discussions with scholars, archivists and curators.

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