History lesson: Raymond Loewy

I saw this image and I immediately went into detective mode.

Intrigued, I dug around the shifty under bowels of the interweb and found out the following:

Designer:  Raymond Loewy, The Father of industrial design.

This dude is serious.  Check out his bio:

Life Magazine recently selected Loewy as one of the 100 most influential Americans of the twentieth century. 

Loewy is best known for such American design icons as the Coca Cola bottle, Air Force One, Lucky Strike, Greyhound Bus, Exxon and Shell logos, NASA interiors for Sky Lab and the Space Shuttle along with the Avanti, the only automobile to be exhibited in the Louvre.

Ya.

Some of the better known companies who sought his influence included Revlon, Faberge, Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, Hanes, Levis, Butterick, Bulova, Omega, Mont Blanc, Seth Thomas, Rosenthal, Wyeth Furniture, Frigidaire, Formica, Koehler, IBM, Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy's, Thalhimer's, Bloomingdales's, Ford, GM, Chrysler, Studebaker, BMW and Jaguar.

Word.

This is him.  Smooth cat.

Image from his official website

His favourite colour is black, beige and gold, he was friends with Frank Sinatra, and his eyes were blue (godda love the interweb).


Still, I like his furniture best.

Image from 1st Dibs - They reckon this is only a homage so only $3995 USD

Now this is the real dealio (From Christies) priced at $14000 (USD).  A good heads up my Northern Hemi friends if you see on of these at a trift store or yard sale.  Snatch that mother up.

If you want to purchase any of this furniture it will set you back a lot of moola.  Apparently too, the pieces were very heavy and therefore not widely distributed (i.e. probably NEVER seen in our tiny islands of NZ).  Oh well.  Thanks anyways Raymond, first and last seen on Pinterest.