Product Description
Allen Porter, Filmstrips, Photogram vintage gelatin silver print 1947

ALLEN PORTER (b.1926) USA
Filmstrips 1947
Photogram vintage gelatin silver print
Size: (unframed): H: 11” x W: 14”
Size: (frame): H: 20” x W: 23”
After attending art programs at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, Porter enrolled at the ID upon his return from military service in WWII. His course of study included graphic design and photography. His photograms were produced while working with famed ID photography instructors Frank Levstik and Ferenc Berko. Shortly after leaving the ID in 1949, Porter established a design office in Los Angeles during the height of the California modern design movement. He incorporated his innovative light work into design projects for important clients like Gruen Lighting and Carroll Sagar & Associates.
Allen Porter, Filmstrips, Photogram vintage gelatin silver print 1947
MITZI OTTEN-FRIEDMANN (1884-1955) Austria
WIENER WERKSTÄTTE (1903-1932)
Brooch c. 1915
Reverse-painted glass depicting a couple set in a silver frame / back
Marks: M. OTTEN-FRIEDMANN on the front (right), the reverse stamped: WW, Vienna assay mark for 900 silver
D: 2 3/8”
Rosalia Marie Friedmann-Otten (“Mitzi”) * November 28, 1884 Vienna, † May 5, 1955 New York, NY
Student at the School of Applied Arts in Vienna (with Oskar Strnad), Friedmann-Otten participated in numerous exhibitions (including art shows in 1908, 1920; Neukunstgruppe 1909; German Women’s Art in 1925; Werkbundausstellung 1930). Member of the Austrian Werkbund, the Wiener Werkstätte and the Neukunstgruppe. One of the most versatile artists (commercial art, metalwork, jewelry, fashion, starting from 1920 mainly enamel works, including large-scale email pictures), Friedmann-Otten had to flee in 1938 to the United States.
GYÖRGY KEPES (1906-2001) Hungary/USA
Abstraction 1942
Silver gelatin print
Signed: Gyorgy Kepes 1942 (in ink on back)
Framed size: H: 18 13/16” x W: 16”
György Kepes was a Hungarian-born painter, designer, educator and art theorist. After emigrating to the U.S. in 1937, he taught design at the New Bauhaus (later the School of Design, then Institute of Design, then Illinois Institute of Design or IIT) in Chicago. In 1947 He founded the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he taught until his retirement in 1974.
LINDA LEE JOHNSON (1944-2018) Washington, DC
Sculpted silver bowl “Vessel XII” c. 2004
Irregular organic shaped lost wax cast silver bowl with an irregular shaped top and one pierced hole (3/4 inch). Approx. silver weight is 80 troy ounces.
Marks: Logo monogram, 5/20, initial monogram
H: 5 1/4″ x W: 8 1/2″ x D: 7 1/4″
At the age of three Linda Lee Johnson was given a handmade Native American bracelet from her father, a naval aviator, and subsequently another every time they crossed the country. By the time she was seven, she had seven bracelets which she never removed. She was an American field service exchange student to Greece in high school. It was here that she developed her love of theater, sculpture and ancient
jewelry. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in English literature and dramatic art and immediately began to study sculpture making.
She was a founding member of the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and a professional actress for nineteen years with many major roles in New York city and regional theaters around the country and abroad.
She studied jewelry making in New York City 1984-88.
In 1986, she was asked to place her pieces in Tiffany & Co. in all major stores. At the same time she had many featured pieces of jewelry, small sculpture and functional objects in the Museum of Modern Art design store.
Barney’s New York began to represent her in l989, where her jewelry and limited edition decorative art work are still found today.
She lived in Washington DC and the Adirondack Mountains where she continued to craft and sculpt her jewelry and decorative works of art until her passing in 2018.
DONALD DESKEY (1894-1989) USA
Barrels c.1925-30
Silver gelatin print, ebonized textured wood frame
Provenance: The Estate of Donald Deskey
H: 9 7/8” x W: 7 15/16”
Framed: H: 22” x W: 18”
Price: $4,200
Donald Deskey was a native of Blue Earth, Minnesota. He studied architecture at the University of California, but did not follow that profession, becoming instead an artist and a pioneer in the field of Industrial design. In Paris he attended the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, which influenced his approach to design. He established 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 to Streamline Moderne.
He first gained note as a designer when he created window displays for the Franklin Simon Department Store in Manhattan in 1926. In the 1930's, he won the competition to design the interiors for Radio City Music Hall. In the 1940's he started the graphic design firm Donald Deskey Associates and made some of the most recognizable icons of the day. He designed the Crest toothpaste packaging, as well as the Tide bullseye. His company is still in operation in Cincinnati. A collection of his work is held by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. He is regarded the American pioneer of industrial design, and contemporary American graphic design.