Donald Sidney Deskey (November 23, 1894 – April 29, 1989) was an American
industrial designer.
Biography
Donald Sidney Deskey was born in
Blue Earth, Minnesota
Blue Earth is a city in Faribault County, Minnesota, United States, at the confluence of the east and west branches of the Blue Earth River. The population was 3,174 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Faribault County. It is home ...
. He studied architecture at the
University of California
The University of California (UC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university, research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, California, Oakland, the system is co ...
, but did not follow that profession, becoming instead an artist and a pioneer in the field of
Industrial design
Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical Product (business), products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in adva ...
. He attended the 1925
in Paris, which influenced his approach to design.
He went on to establish a design consulting firm in New York City and later the firm of Deskey-Vollmer (in partnership with
Phillip Vollmer), which specialized in furniture and textile design. His designs in this era progressed from
Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...
to
Streamline Moderne
Streamline Moderne is an international style of Art Deco architecture and design that emerged in the 1930s. Inspired by Aerodynamics, aerodynamic design, it emphasized curving forms, long horizontal lines, and sometimes nautical elements. In indu ...
.
Deskey first gained attention as a designer with his window displays for the
Franklin Simon Department Store in
Manhattan
Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
in 1926. In the 1930s, he won the competition to design
Radio City Music Hall
Radio City Music Hall (also known as Radio City) is an entertainment venue and Theater (structure), theater at 1260 Sixth Avenue (Manhattan), Avenue of the Americas, within Rockefeller Center, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York C ...
's interiors. He also sold geometrically painted objects through the fashionable shop of
Rena Rosenthal, and did custom design work for her. In the 1940s, he started the graphic design firm
Donald Deskey Associates and made some of the most recognizable icons of the day, including the
Crest toothpaste packaging, the
Tide
Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the Moon (and to a much lesser extent, the Sun) and are also caused by the Earth and Moon orbiting one another.
Tide tables ...
bullseye, as well as a widely used New York City lamppost model.
In 1940, Deskey developed a decorative form of
plywood
Plywood is a composite material manufactured from thin layers, or "plies", of wood veneer that have been stacked and glued together. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured boards, which include plywood, medium-density fibreboa ...
, which had a unique striated, or combed, look. Produced under the name Weldtex, it became very popular in the 1950s.
His company is still in operation in
Cincinnati
Cincinnati ( ; colloquially nicknamed Cincy) is a city in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. Settled in 1788, the city is located on the northern side of the confluence of the Licking River (Kentucky), Licking and Ohio Ri ...
. A collection of his work is held by the
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is a design museum at the Andrew Carnegie Mansion in Manhattan, New York City, along the Upper East Side's Museum Mile. It is one of 19 Smithsonian Institution museums and one of three Smithsonian facil ...
. He died in
Vero Beach
Vero Beach is a city in and the county seat of Indian River County, Florida, United States. According to the 2020 census, the city had a population of 16,354. Nicknamed "The Hibiscus City", Vero is situated about southeast of Orlando along the ...
, Florida, the town to which he had retired in 1975.
In 1923, Deskey married Mary Campbell Douthett,
a pianist and later professor of music at
Juniata College
Juniata College () is a private liberal arts college in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1876 as a co-educational normal school, it was the first college started by members of the Church of the Brethren. It was originally founded as a cent ...
.
They had two sons, Michael Douthett Deskey, an architect, and Donald Stephen ("Steve" or D. Stephen) Deskey, a building contractor. In 1952, Deskey married Katharine Godfrey Brennan, who survived him.
References
Further reading
*
External links
Donald Deskey at IDSADonald Deskey at The American Artists Bluebook
{{DEFAULTSORT:Deskey, Donald
1894 births
1989 deaths
American industrial designers
Streamline Moderne architects
People from Blue Earth, Minnesota