Vanity Furniture as A New Type of Furniture in Modern Era: Focused on Patented Art Deco Vanity Furniture in the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum

The study of Lurelle Van Arsdale Guild (1898- 1986)’s vanity table and stool in the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum is essential to understand how the stylistic change was made on industrial design in the 1930s caused by economic necessity. The vanity furniture expresses in such relatively inexpensive image transformations that would attract new customers in the Depression. The objects are donated from a collector and became one of CHM’s collections in 1997. In curatorial file, other than the designer’s and manufacturer’s names there is nothing specified for these objects. Therefore, this study is aimed for researching the exact date for these valuable objects for understanding American Art Deco furniture in the 1930s. Moreover, studying social aspect of these objects gives clear vision for the background. Especially, the History of American Standard (Rodengen, 1999) gives great over view to the history of the manufacturer, C. F. Church Company. The record in Fortune of 1934 suggests the designer, Lurelle Guild’s position among other industrial designers at that time. And Profoundly, the objects were assigned design patents. Therefore, the vanity furniture set in the CHM was a significant symbol of early modernism rising from functional areas after the Depression.