SYROCO SUNBURST WALL CLOCK vintage Danish MCM mid century modern Nordic atomic

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Seller: sidewaysstairsco ✉️ (1,180) 100%, Location: Santa Ana, California, US, Ships to: US & many other countries, Item: 195710503885 SYROCO SUNBURST WALL CLOCK vintage Danish MCM mid century modern Nordic atomic. Check out our other new and used items>>>>>HERE! (click me) FOR SALE: A mid-century statement piece for your delightful domicile SYROCO DANISH MODERN SUNBURST WALL CLOCK DETAILS: A blend of Early American and Danish design! This beautiful mid-century modern wall clock from the treasured home decorations manufacturer Syroco is the stylish, post-war touch your home deserves. The fascinating sunburst-shaped clock proudly unites Danish modern design and antique American furniture concepts. The 28 points of the atomic age/Nordic-style star (or sunburst) have rounded tips, scooped middle sections, and are of course tapered - much like the contemporary Danish and mid-century modern furniture of the time. You'll notice other great sections of rounded "wood" like the rim of the clock face and the short extensions that become the points. Syroco stayed true to their well-oiled wooden roots by using their patented lightweight composite wood material to construct this clock, in part, as well they focused on the aesthetic of Early American furniture woods and stains. The wood finish Syroco appears to be going for is walnut with a stain that varies, in sunburst fashion, from mahogany to natural. In large part the wall clock is composed of plastic, which keeps the sizable home decor piece a managable weight. The contrasting cream colored clock face has numbers with the same feel and wooden appearance of the rim and casing, and contrasting too are the classic clock hands in black (we believe these hands are not original). The clock's face also has a noticable hole above the "6" which is necessary for an 8-day wind-up clock mechanism to fit. That's right, this beautiful vintage piece was created to be used with either an 8-day clock or battery-powered quartz clock mechanism. Metal loop on back makes hanging super simple. Fun Fact: Syroco would later be acquired by Rexall, a drug and chemical company that was renamed Dart Industries but not before acquiring ownership of Tupperware - small world, right!?! A rare '60s find! A new venture for Syroco! In the early 1960s the Syracuse Ornamental Company, known as Syroco, began combining their old wood processes and newly embraced (at the time) plastic molding technology; resulting in wonderful, well-designed, and skillfully constructed household products like this wall clock. "...Syroco, was an American manufacturing company based in Syracuse, New York. They were best known for their molded wood-pulp products that resembled hand-carving. Founded in Syracuse, New York in 1890 by immigrant Adolph Holstein, the Syracuse Ornamental Company (Syroco) specialized in decorative wood carving, especially for the local residential market. Products included fireplace mantelpieces and other types of interior decoration popular in late Victorian homes... Syroco added more lines of injection molded plastics when a new plant was opened in nearby Baldwinsville in 1963 which was entirely geared to plastics production, especially PVCs and polystyrene. The company began to use plastic in new "modern" designs and new forms for clocks, mirrors, tables and a range of household items."(library.syracuse.edu). Dimensions: Height: 22-1/4"Length: 22-1/4" Width: 2-1/4 CONDITION: In good, pre-owned condition and working. The clock has visible wear/damage. The "wooden" parts of the clock have a beautiful shabby chic appearance from use over the decades. The clock face has a few scrapes and the 8-day clock hole has many short thin craze lines radiating from the edge. The face could look excellent again with some paint touch up on the scrapes and even the craze lines. The battery-powered clock movement works but the hands are bent - we recommend replacing with a new movement and hands, or just a hand set. We believe the clock movement and hands were previously replaced. Hanging hardware has oxidized and shows age. Please see photos. To ensure safe delivery all items are carefully packaged before shipping out THANK YOU FOR LOOKING. QUESTIONS? JUST ASK. *ALL PHOTOS AND TEXT ARE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OF SIDEWAYS STAIRS CO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.* "Biographical History The Syracuse Ornamental Company, known as Syroco, was an American manufacturing company based in Syracuse, New York. They were best known for their molded wood-pulp products that resembled hand-carving. Founded in Syracuse, New York in 1890 by immigrant Adolph Holstein, the Syracuse Ornamental Company (Syroco) specialized in decorative wood carving, especially for the local residential market. Products included fireplace mantelpieces and other types of interior decoration popular in late Victorian homes. To meet increasing market demand and sales opportunities Holstein developed a material looked and felt like wood but that which could be shaped, allowing multiple pieces to be produced through a molding process. The new product, which combined wood pulp brought from the Adirondacks with flour as a binder and other materials to give it strength, was extruded and then cut to fit compression molds, which had were made from original carvings in real wood. The process favored shallow molds with little undercutting, and this served well for the creation of a wide variety of "carved" relief work to be applied to different sorts of flat surfaces such as walls, furniture and caskets. Production of this new molded product, known as SyrocoWood, was the mainstay of the company's production through the 1940s. The finished material could be smoothed and varnished to look like wood, or it could be painted. Sales catalogues from the early 1900s through the 1920s offer hundreds of varieties of moldings, capitals, brackets, volutes, and reliefs of vases, garlands, cartouches, scrollwork, and other details in a variety of styles. Syroco operated from a large factory complex on 581 South Clinton Street in Syracuse acquired from Smith Corona Typewriter Company. The company remained in the hands of the Holstein family for three generations, with some of Adolph's children and grandchildren taking over management and sales positions. At its peak, about 400 workers were employed at the plant. By the 1930s the company had also developed an extensive line of gift and novelty items made of "SyrocoWood" and also "Woodite," a combination of wood flour and polymer. In the 1960s the company began to use injection molding for some of its products, but did not entirely abandon its old processes. Syroco added more lines of injection molded plastics when a new plant was opened in nearby Baldwinsville in 1963 which was entirely geared to plastics production, especially PVCs and polystyrene. The company began to use plastic in new "modern" designs and new forms for clocks, mirrors, tables and a range of household items. In 1968-1969 the company launched its "Lady Syroco" home products. Beginning in 1986 Syroco produced a popular line of lawn furniture. In 1965 the company was bought by Rexall Drug and Chemical Company (which soon changed its name to Dart Industries). Dart owned Tupperware, from which Syroco gained more knowledge of injection molding. Syroco was purchased by the Syratech Corporation of Boston in 1986 which expanded its patio furniture production. In 1995 Syratech sold Syroco to Marley PLC of Sevenoaks, England, and in 2004 Syroco was purchased by Vassallo Industries of Puerto Rico which closed the plant in 2007. In April 2010 Tessy Plastics purchased the 270,000 square foot Syroco plant to be used for storage and distribution. Sources: "Corkscrews of the Syracuse Ornamental Company," online at vintagecorkscrews.com Hannagan, Charley. "Syroco plant closes," Syracuse Post-Standard, June 18, 2007. Alexander Holstein, interviewed by Sam Gruber, Syracuse, New York, Nov. 8, 2010. Sorcher, Jamie. "Brits in deal for Syroco," HFN The Weekly Newspaper for the Home Furnishing Network, April 3, 1995....      Catalogs Box 1         1908             "Syracuse Ornamental Company, Manufacturers of Cloth Covered Casket Decorations, Corners, Ornaments, Mouldings, Panels, etc. in Broadcloth, Plush and Satin, Furniture Ornaments" (1908), 62 pp Box 1         1918             Period Carvings Catalog "K" (1918) Box 1         1923             The Syroco Line of Fibre Wood Carvings and Mouldings: Period Carvings (1923), 432 plates Box 1         1930s             Syroco Wood Products (undated) Box 1         1940s             SyrocoWood: Creations by Master Craftsmen (undated, circa 1940s?), 18 pp., Catalog No. 4 (includes some items in Plastics Artifacts Collection); SyrocoWood: Art Products, Creations by Master Craftsmen (undated, circa 1940s?), 14 pp.; SyrocoWood Devotional items (undated, circa 1940s?), Catalog No. 8, 8 ½" x 11 , 6 panel gate fold; Syroco Wood Gifts and Decorative Accessories (1940), 6 pp. (photocopy), Catalog No. 9; Syroco Wood Decorative Accessories (1947) (photocopy selected pages), Catalog No. 12 Box 1         1950s             Syroco Wood: How to Use Decorative Accessories to Beautify Your Home (undated circa 1950s?), 26 pp.; Syroco Catalog No. 53 (1953), 48 pp; Syroco Catalog No 54 (1954), 40 Box 1         1960s             Syroco Decorative Wall Accessories (1962), includes Danish Modern Collection, Early American Collection; Carvings by Syroco (1963), 67 pp; Syroco Wall to Wall Decorating; New...Decorative Floral-Mates by Syroco, 4 pp; Syroco Decorative Accessories 1967-'68, 63 pp; Syroco Decorative Accessories 1968-'69, 48 pp; Discover the colorful world of...Lady Syroco Accessories for Bath & Boudoir (undated circa 1968-1969) Box 2         1970-1974             Syroco Decorative Accessories 1970, 48 pp; Retail Pricelist 1970, includes "the Syroco Story"; Syroco Art (1970), folder with inserted sales materials; Syroco Art (undated, circa 1970), 28 color print cards and pricelist bound in clear acetate cover folder; "For Today and Tomorrow..." Syroco presents "Chrome and Chroma: Collection"; "Out of the past..." Syroco presents "The Pre-Columbian Collection"; "In the Beginning..." Syroco presents "Genesis"; "Table Manners..." Syroco presents: Parsons Tables for Every Manner of Home, Color Scheme and Use" Box 2         1975-1979             Metal Wall Sculpture by Syroco (1975), 18 pp; Life Style by Syroco (1976); folder with 1976 Decorative Accessories Catalog and price list; Syroco Decorative Accessories Catalog: 1977 (folder with catalog, price list and promotional sheets on furniture lines) Box 2         1980s             Syroco Decorative Accessories Catalog: 1983 (includes Syroco housewares); Syroco Decorative Accessories (1984) Box 2         2000s             Syroco Home Accents Collection (circa 2005), 14 pp; Syroco Home & Garden Collection, 10 pp" (library.syracuse.edu) "Made by the Syracuse Ornamental Company, Syroco looks and feels like wood, but is a different kind of art form.     Chriss Swaney     Updated:     Sep 11, 2020     Original:     Mar 16, 2018 Alexander E. Holstein is not bashful about extolling the entrepreneurial prowess of his grandfather Adolph. His grandfather founded the Syracuse Ornamental Company (Syroco) in 1890. Syroco Family Ties Holstein, 93, recalls that he was in charge of production at the manufacturing facility that employed 500 during its heyday in the Syracuse, New York, area. Initially, the company produced ornamental carvings for embellishment of coffins and furniture. The company had patents and copyrights on its processes and designs. This set of four mid-century Syroco® plaques depict the four seasons. Each diamond-shaped plaque features a tree that represents one of the seasons. This set of four mid-century Syroco® plaques depict the four seasons. Each diamond-shaped plaque features a tree that represents one of the seasons. “The company was best known for its molded wood-pulp products that resembled hand carving,’’ said Holstein, who says his home is a museum of popular Syroco products from mirrors to toothbrush holders. Other products included fireplace and mantle pieces and other types of interior decoration popular in late Victorian-era homes. Plus, the governor’s mansion in Albany, New York, features some Syroco pieces. To meet increased market demand, Holstein said that his grandfather, an expert woodcarver from Warsaw, developed a material that looked and felt like wood but that could be shaped, allowing multiple pieces to be produced by a molding process. Wood Pulp Into Art The new product combined wood pulp from the Adirondacks, with flour as a binder and other materials. After extrusion it was cut to fit compression molds. These molds were made from original carvings in real wood by woodcarvers. These carvers originally came to the United States from several European countries. Production of this new molded product was the mainstay of the company’s product through the 1940s. The finished model could be smoothed and varnished to look like wood, or it could be painted. Sales catalogs from the early 1900s through the 1920s offer hundreds of varieties of moldings. The advertisements include various styles of brackets, garlands, cartouches and scrolls. But by the 1930s, the company had also developed an extensive line of gift and novelty items. These pieces comprise of syrowood and also woodite — a combination of wood flour and polymer. In the 1960s, the company began to use injection molding for some of its products. But, it did not entirely abandon its old process. Furthermore, antiques dealers and avid collectors vie daily for their most cherished Syroco pieces from ornately carved mirrors to bookends and pipe holders. Online Stores Showcasing Syroco Many collectors trawl the web for great bargains, and one of the more popular sites is Ruby Lane, where Syroco remains and ongoing headline grabber. This vintage Syroco pipe holder holds up to six pipes and sold for $75. This vintage Syroco pipe holder holds up to six pipes and sold for $75. Courtesy of The Antique Chasers: rubylane.com/shop/theantiquechasers “We’re seeing lots of Syroco, including bookends, mirrors, brush holders, pipe holders, and the very popular figural corkscrews our site and collectors are bidding for them all,” said Zenna Inness of Ruby Lane. Prices can range from $34 to $145. Futhermore, Inness said buyers are an eclectic mix of young and old. But many of the sentimental buyers and collectors of Syroco are older. Judy Bromly, 66, of Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, said she recently purchased an ornate Syroco mirror for her bedroom at an estate sale, and paid $65 for it. “My grandmother was an avid Syroco collector, and I have several sets of horse-shaped bookends I now keep in my den.’’ Sales Supports Legacy For others, selling Syroco collectibles is a way to honor a long, lost beloved family member. Mara Balusek of Dallas, Texas, sells her Syroco collectibles via her RareFinds shop on Ruby Lane. She collects pipe holders and miniature boxes. “All my profits from selling my Syroco online goes into a scholarship fund at Texas-based Stephen F. Austin State University in the memory of my late son. So far, the scholarship fund sports about $600,000.” A vintage 1930s-1940s Syroco horse head bottle opener, $36. A vintage 1930s-1940s Syroco horse head bottle opener, $36. Courtesy of RMC Antiques: rubylane.com/shop/rmcantiques Janice Woods, a Denver, Colorado, antiques dealer, reports that the Syroco horse-shaped bookends remain popular. “People love horses and any equine-related Syroco collectibles are extremely popular,’’ said Woods. Tom Kelly, a dealer at Pittsburgh Antique Shops in the city’s bustling strip district, said he just sold a pair of Syroco horse head bookends for $50. “I also sold a couple of Syroco round mirrors for $40,’’ Kelly said. Functional and Fanciful Kelly points out that more younger couples are finding great value in Syroco collectibles. “They think it is cool and very functional,’’ said Kelly. Bill Antonacceo of Ascendant Auction Galleries in Beaver, Pennsylvania, says younger collectors are turning to Syroco because it is light weight and extremely functional. “The younger collectors are buying Syroco clocks and wall décor that can be easily put away quickly when a couples’ freelance job ends and they move on to another high-tech gig,’’ states Antonacceo, an antique expert. Still, other antique enthusiasts report that younger collectors opt for Syroco because it is very economical to purchase and begin a collection. Mary Price of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, said her daughter began collecting Syroco during her college days when she needed some wall decorations to tidy up a drab basement apartment in Boston. “My daughter now collects all kinds of Syroco clocks and mirrors,’’ said Price, a retired history teacher. Mid-Century Syroco bookends, Rococo Revival, $35. Mid-Century Syroco bookends, Rococo Revival, $35. Courtesy of Antiques Inn: rubylane.com/shop/antiquesinn1 Fond Memories in Syracuse In addition, Robert Searing, curator of history at Onondaga Historical Society in Syracuse, reports several changes of ownership of the Syroco company. The company would end production in 2007. “We have several ornamental clocks and mirrors in our collection here at the historical society,’’ said Searing. “The local population here in Syracuse have fond memories of the plant and the enormous marketplace it once dominated,’’ he added. Still, perhaps the best way to find your favorite Syroco collectible is to go online. One of the newer sites – Spruce – offers an interesting assortment of Syroco pieces as does the all-encompassing eBay. But Inness of Ruby Lane admonishes buyers and collectors to do their homework before buying anything. “Collectors should first check for extant manufacturer’s labels because Syroco is somewhat of a catchall term online and dealers often erroneously identify items by that name even though it may be by a competing company." Syrocodecorative artcarving By Chriss Swaney" (greensburgdailynews.com) " SyrocoWood Products by Syracuse Ornamental Co. Molded Wood Pulp Decorative Items and Jewelry By Pamela Wiggins Updated on 01/11/20 SyrocoWood Example - Wood Pulp Brooch Photos by Jay B. Siegel Have you ever found a piece of jewelry or a decorative object that looks like carved wood, complete with wood grain, but when you picked it up to look closer something wasn’t quite right? Maybe what you have there is SyrocoWood. The Syracuse Ornamental Company The Syracuse Ornamental Company, Syroco for short, was founded in Syracuse, New York in 1890 by a German immigrant named Adolph Holstein, according to information shared online by the Syracuse University Library. The company specialized in wood carving early on, supplying fireplace mantels and other decorative wood interior detailing to local residential builders. Demand led to innovation as Syroco developed a process to make products that looked like wood but were actually made with wood pulp and fillers. The wood pulp was mixed with flour as a binder along with other materials to make it stronger. The result was a composite that could be molded into desired shapes to simulate carved wood. “The process favored shallow molds with little undercutting, and this served well for the creation of a wide variety of ‘carved’ relief work to be applied to different sorts of flat surfaces such as walls, furniture, and caskets. Production of this new molded product, known as SyrocoWood, was the mainstay of the company's production through the 1940s. The finished material could be smoothed and varnished to look like wood, or it could be painted. Sales catalogs from the early 1900s through the 1920s offer hundreds of varieties of moldings, capitals, brackets, volutes, and reliefs of vases, garlands, cartouches, scrollwork, and other details in a variety of styles,” as shared on the Syracuse University library website. The Growth of the Business As the business continued to grow, as many as 400 employees manned the Syroco factory. By the 1930s, the company had expanded to make an “extensive line of gift and novelty items” under the names “SyrocoWood” and “Woodite.” The Scottie dog brooch shown here would fall into this category. The pin backs on these pieces were simple and inexpensive, likely a reflection of Depression-era economics. Other decorative pieces made during this era varied in quality with some nicely detailed and others lacking in design aesthetics. The compression molds used to make these wood-look pieces were actually created using original wood carvings, which imparted a realistic look (at least at first glance). You often don’t realize that a Syroco product is not real wood until you pick it up and notice a decidedly different feel about it. In fact, these items almost feel like dense plastic, although not as heavy as Bakelite. Examining them closely under magnification, however, can reveal that an exterior finish that has worn away on the edges revealing the lighter-colored composite material under the surface (as exhibited in the detailed photo shown above). In the early 1960s, the company began to include injection molding in the manufacturing process for some of its products although the older methods were sometimes employed as well. By 1963 more and more of the company’s products were being made of plastics with the introduction of a “Lady Syroco” line of home products and other goods such as clocks, mirrors, and tables. Syroco was purchased in 1965 by the company that would become Dart Industries, the owner of a more familiar American brand: Tupperware. The company changed hands several times and continued to produce plastic wares including lawn furniture through 2007 when the plant finally closed. Marks on Syroco Products Some of the products made of SyrocoWood found by collectors today include trinket or cigarette boxes, wall hangings or plaques, mirror frames, and candle sconces. Those made in the 1950s and ‘60s tend to have a more gold-colored finish to them while earlier products more often simulate genuine wood coloring more closely. Older pieces may be marked with a foil sticker, but these have sometimes been removed or wore away with use over time. Those styles are most often identified by the wood-look material rather than a sticker. Later pieces are often found marked with foil stickers and/or a Syracuse Ornamental Co. stamp on the back. Jewelry pieces believed to have been manufactured by this company are usually not marked and are sometimes misidentified as genuine wood by novice dealers and collectors." (thesprucecrafts.com) "Atomic Age in design refers to the period roughly corresponding to 1940–1963, when concerns about nuclear war dominated Western society during the Cold War. Architecture, industrial design, commercial design (including advertising), interior design, and fine arts were all influenced by the themes of atomic science, as well as the Space Age, which coincided with that period. Atomic Age design became popular and instantly recognizable, with a use of atomic motifs and space age symbols. Theme Building in Los Angeles International Airport. Vital forms Abstract organic forms were identified as a core motif in the 2001 exhibition of Atomic Age design at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, titled "Vital forms: American art and design in the atomic age, 1940–1960".[1] Atomic power was a paradox during the era. It held great promise of technological solutions for the problems facing an increasingly complex world; at the same time, people were fearful of a nuclear armageddon, after the use of atomic weapons at the end of World War II. People were ever-aware of the potential good, and lurking menace, in technology. Science became more visible in the mainstream culture through Atomic Age design. Atomic particles themselves were reproduced in visual design, in areas ranging from architecture to barkcloth patterns. The geometric atomic patterns that were produced in textiles, industrial materials, melamine counter tops, dishware and wallpaper, and many other items, are emblematic of Atomic Age design. The Space Age interests of the public also began showing up in Atomic Age designs, with star and galaxy motifs appearing with the atomic graphics.     Vintage atom-shaped ceiling light fixtures.     Vintage atom-shaped ceiling light fixtures.     The futuristic-looking Keraclonic television.     The futuristic-looking Keraclonic television.     An atom-shaped ceiling light fixture.     An atom-shaped ceiling light fixture.     Los Angeles International Airport's "Inside Encounter" lounge in its space age Theme Building.     Los Angeles International Airport's "Inside Encounter" lounge in its space age Theme Building.     1950s barkcloth tablecloth with a geometric design and a botanical motif.     1950s barkcloth tablecloth with a geometric design and a botanical motif.     Brussels Atomium (1958).     Brussels Atomium (1958). Free-form biomorphic shapes also appear as a recurring theme in Atomic Age design. British designers at the Council of Industrial Design (CoID) produced fabrics in the early 1950s that showed "skeletal plant forms, drawn in a delicate, spidery graphic form", reflecting x-ray technology that was becoming more widespread and familiar in pop culture. These botanic designs influenced later Atomic Age patterns that included repeating organic shapes similar to cells and organisms viewed through a microscope.[2] There are similarities between many Atomic Age designs and the mid-century modern trend of the same time. Elements of Atomic Age and Space Age design were dominant in the Googie design movement in commercial buildings in the United States. Some streamlined industrial designs also echoed the influence of futurism that had been seen much earlier in Art Deco design.[citation needed] Space Age design Whereas Atomic Age motifs and structures leaned towards design fields such as architecture and industrial design, Space Age design spread into a broader range of consumer products, including furniture, clothing fashion, and even animation styles, as with the popular television show The Jetsons. Beginning with the dawn of the Space Age (commonly attributed to the launch of Sputnik in October 1957[3]), Space Age design captured the optimism and faith in technology that was felt by much of society during the 1950s and 1960s, together with the design possibilities afforded by newly accessible materials like fibreglass that had become much more widely available since the second world war. Space Age design also had a more vernacular character, appearing in accessible forms that quickly became familiar to mainstream consumers. Since the end of the 1970s, Space Age design has become more closely associated with kitsch and with Googie architecture for popular commercial buildings such as diners, bowling alleys, and shops, though the finest examples of its kind have remained desirable and highly collectible. "Space Age design is closely tied to the pop movement [...] the fusion of popular culture, art, design, and fashion".[4] Fashion Go-go boots by Andre Courreges, 1965. Issey Miyake's "Flying Saucer" dress. Two of the most well-known fashion designers to use Space Age themes in their designs were Pierre Cardin and Paco Rabanne. Pierre Cardin established the futuristic trend of using synthetic and industrial materials in fashion, with "forward thinking" innovations in his early 1960s work. Cardin "popularized the use of everyday materials for fashion items, like vinyl and metal rings for dresses, carpentry nails for brooches, and common decorative effects such as geometric cut-outs, appliqués, large pockets, helmets and oversized buttons".[5] In 1964, Cardin launched his "space age" line, and André Courrèges showed his "Moon Girl" collection, introducing the white go-go boot style and other icons of the 1960s.[6] The Japanese designer, Issey Miyake from Hiroshima, worked in Paris and New York from 1964 to 1970, and used many atomic age forms, and technologically produced materials in his work. In 1970 he moved to Tokyo to continue these innovations.[7] Miyake cites his first encounter with design as being two bridges in his hometown, Hiroshima, at the hypocenter of the atomic bombing in WWII.[8] Vernacular architecture Example of "dingbat" apartment facade. The dingbat apartment house, ubiquitous in the Los Angeles, California area, was built between 1945 through the 1960s, and fused a purist style with googie influence. The architect, Francis Ventre, coined the term "Dingbat (building)" for these quickly built stucco and frame simple structures.[9] These structures often had a single exterior ornament in the shape of a starburst, boomerang, or pattern of rectangles. Architecture Chemosphere house, Los Angeles. The Chemosphere house, designed by John Lautner in 1960, has become an icon of the atomic age home. The octagonal shaped house is cantilevered on a steep slope in the Hollywood Hills, California. At the time, Encyclopædia Britannica cited it as the "most modern home built in the world." (wikipedia.org) "Danish modern is a style of minimalist furniture and housewares from Denmark associated with the Danish design movement. In the 1920s, Kaare Klint embraced the principles of Bauhaus modernism in furniture design, creating clean, pure lines based on an understanding of classical furniture craftsmanship coupled with careful research into materials, proportions, and the requirements of the human body. Designers such as Arne Jacobsen and Hans Wegner helped bring about a thriving furniture industry from the 1940s to the 1960s. Adopting mass-production techniques and concentrating on form rather than just function, Finn Juhl contributed to the style's success. Additionally, minimalist Danish housewares such as cutlery and trays of teak and stainless steel and dinnerware such as those produced in Denmark for Dansk International Designs in its early years, expanded the Danish modern aesthetic beyond furniture.[citation needed] History A row of brown, wooden chairs with a seat made of some woven material Kaare Klint: Church Chair (1936) Origin Between the two world wars, Kaare Klint exerted a strong influence on Danish furniture making. Appointed head of the Furniture Department at the Architecture School of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, he encouraged his students to take an analytical approach, adapting design to modern-day needs. Adopting the Functionalist trend of abandoning ornamentation in favour of form, he nonetheless maintained the warmth and beauty inherent in traditional Danish cabinet making, as well as high-quality craftsmanship and materials.[1] The development of modern Danish furniture owes much to the collaboration between architects and cabinetmakers. Cabinetmaker A. J. Iversen, who had successfully exhibited furniture from designs by architect Kay Gottlob at the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts in 1925 in Paris, was instrumental in fostering further partnerships. In 1927, with a view to encouraging innovation and stimulating public interest, the Danish Cabinetmakers Guild organized a furniture exhibition in Copenhagen which was to be held every year until 1967. It fostered collaboration between cabinetmakers and designers, creating a number of lasting partnerships including those between Rudolph Rasmussen and Kaare Klint, A. J. Iversen and Ole Wanscher, and Erhard Rasmussen and Børge Mogensen. From 1933, collaboration was reinforced as a result of the annual competition for new types of furniture, arranged each year prior to the exhibition.[2][3] In 1931, another key institution in the development of Danish Modern formed; The Association of Arts (Danish: Forening for Kunsthaandværk) founded a permanent venue for arts and craft called Den Permanente [da].[4] Start of the Golden Age In the postwar years, Danish designers and architects believed that design could be used to improve people's lives. In the late 1940s, the growing middle class in Denmark began to show interest in Danish Modern and helped fuel further investment into the style.[5] Particular attention was given to creating affordable furniture and household objects that were both functional and elegant. Fruitful cooperation ensued, combining Danish craftsmanship with innovative design. Initially, the furniture was handmade, but recognizing that their work would sell better if prices were reduced, the designers soon turned to factory production. The scarcity of materials after World War II encouraged the use of plywood. In the late 1940s, the development of new techniques led to the mass production of bent plywood designs by Hans Wegner and Børge Mogensen, both of whom produced chairs with a teak plywood seat and back on a beech frame. In 1951, Arne Jacobsen went even further with his sculptural Ant Chair with a one-piece plywood seat and back, bent in both directions. Collapsible chairs dating from the 1930s include Kaare Klint's Safari Chair and propeller stools which were also developed by Poul Kjærholm and Jørgen Gammelgaard.[6] Danish furniture exports grew from just DKK 0.8 million in 1939 to DKK 6.8 million in 1944.[7] The international market Interest in Danish Modern in the United States began when Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. from the Museum of Modern Art purchased some items for the Fallingwater home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.[8] This ultimately led to mass-production in the United States, too.[9] Furniture exports from Denmark rose from DKK 9.8 million in 1953 to DKK 257.8 million in 1964. This was aided in part by Denmark's decision to copy the British 30% devaluation in September 1949, which brought the price Danish goods drastically down for American consumers.[10] From the beginning of the 1950s, American manufacturers obtained licenses for the mass production of Danish designs while maintaining high standards of craftsmanship. Later, the designs were altered to suit American tastes and American parts were introduced to reduce costs. When Sears and Woolworth's entered the market, the Danes countered by producing new designs based on new materials. One of Wegner's works was used by Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy in a 1960 televised debate and is now known simply as The Chair.[11] Decline in popularity Sales peaked around 1963, but when American manufacturers introduced molded plastic and wood-grained Formica as cheaper substitutes, they started to decline in favor of Mediterranean designs which became popular in 1966.[8][12] In addition to changes in style preferences, customers' shopping habits had changed to favor affordable and lower-cost furniture over a single investment that would last their lifetime.[13] A 1980 New York Times article observed that Danish modern "went out of style" in the United States, due in part to counterculture, "which would have none of the earnest establishment image of Scandinavian design", and the "new culture, for which only the shocking is chic".[14] Many factories closed during this time and the Cabinetmakers' Guild Exhibition held its final event in 1966 after too few cabinetmakers remained in Copenhagen to sustain it.[15] Resurgence of interest In the late 1990s, Danish modern, and the broader mid-century modern movement, experienced a revival in international interest.[16] While the mass-produced works of Wegner, Juhl and Jacobsen are still in demand, collectors are increasingly turning to limited production items from these and the other designers. In the United States, while prices have increased, they are still at reasonable levels compared to similar items of new furniture. Licensed manufacturers have started reissuing key designs, while others have used Danish Modern for inspiration.[17] The Danish furniture industry today Employing some 15,000 people each year, Denmark's 400 furniture companies produce goods worth around DKK 13 billion (€1.75 billion). A highly productive sector, over 80% of the furniture produced is sold abroad making furniture Denmark's fifth most-important export industry. Most of the items produced are for the home, but many are designed for the workplace. In addition to its classic designs, Danish designer furniture benefits from a new generation of innovative players. As a result, Denmark has maintained its place as the world's leading furniture producer in relation to the country's population.[18] A number of firms continue to be active in producing both classic Danish Modern designs and in introducing variants designed by a new generation of artists. They include Republic of Fritz Hansen, Fredericia Furniture, Carl Hansen & Søn and Normann Copenhagen, all of whom exhibited at the 2011 Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan.[19] Other significant producers include PP Møbler, Kjærholm Production and One Collection, formerly known as Hansen & Sørensen.[citation needed] However, a large amount of Danish furniture is now produced outside of Denmark. Production has been outsourced to aboard where costs are lower, mainly Baltic countries and eastern and southern Europe. Republic of Fritz Hansen, for example, has moved their production to Poland.[20] New types of Danish design companies have emerged with both national and international appeal in recent years. Normann Copenhagen, HAY, Muuto, Kähler are among new firms that carry Danish modern design principles forward.[20] Innovative design work is also encouraged by the Wilhelm Hansen Foundation with the annual Finn Juhl Prize which is awarded to designers, manufacturers or writers who have made a special contribution to the field of furniture design, especially chairs.[21] Main contributors Kaare Klint (1888—1954) As a result of the furniture school he founded at the Royal Academy in 1924, Klint had an impact on Danish furniture, influencing designers such as Kjærholm and Mogensen. His carefully researched designs are based on functionality, proportions in line with the human body, craftsmanship and the use of high quality materials. Notable examples of his work include the Propeller Stool (1927), the Safari Chair and the Deck Chair (both 1933), and the Church Chair (1936).[22]     Table and chairs, Danish Design Museum     Table and chairs, Danish Design Museum     Library at the Danish Design Museum     Library at the Danish Design Museum Poul Henningsen (1894–1967) Poul Henningsen, an architect, with a strong belief in the functionalist way of thinking, was an important participant in the Danish Modern school, not for furniture but for lighting design. His attempt to prevent the blinding glare from the electric lamp bulb succeeded in 1926 with a three-shade lamp, known as the PH lamp. The curvature of the shades allowed his hanging lamp to illuminate both the table and the rest of the room. He went on to design many similar lamps, some with frosted glass, including desk lamps, chandeliers and wall-mounted fixtures. Although he died in 1967, many of his designs continue to be popular.[23]     PH Lamp (1925) variation with frosted glass     PH Lamp (1925) variation with frosted glass     PH desk lamp (1941)     PH desk lamp (1941)     The PH5 Lamp (1958)     The PH5 Lamp (1958)     The PH Artichoke     The PH Artichoke Mogens Lassen (1901–1987) In addition to his architectural work, Lassen was also a keen furniture designer. Influenced both by Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, he developed a unique approach to Functionalism.[24] As a result of his fine craftsmanship and his search for simplicity, his steel-based furniture from the 1930s added a new dimension to the modernist movement. His later designs in wood still form part of classical Danish Modern, especially his three-legged stool[25] and folding Egyptian coffee table (1940) originally produced by A. J. Iversen.[26] Arne Jacobsen (1902–1971) Graduating from the Royal Academy in 1924, Jacobsen quickly demonstrated his mastery of both architecture and furniture design. With the completion of his Royal Hotel in Copenhagen and all its internal fittings and furniture in 1960, his talents became widely recognized, especially as a result of the chairs called the Egg chair and the Swan, now international icons. His stackable, three-legged Ant Chair (1952) with a one-piece plywood seat and back and its four-legged counterpart, the Model 3107 chair (1955), were particularly popular with worldwide sales in the millions.[27]     Wooden-legged Grand Prix Chair (1957)     Wooden-legged Grand Prix Chair (1957)     The Egg (1958)     The Egg (1958)     The Swan (1958)     The Swan (1958)     Three-legged Ant Chair (1952)     Three-legged Ant Chair (1952)     The 7 Chair (1955)     The 7 Chair (1955) Ole Wanscher (1903–1985) Inspired by Kaare Klint under whom he had studied, Wanscher later followed in his footsteps as professor of the Royal Academy's furniture school. Particularly interested in 18th-century English furniture and in early Egyptian furniture, one of his most successful pieces was his delicately designed Egyptian Stool (1960) crafted from luxurious materials. Another successful item was his Colonial Chair in Brazilian rosewood.[28] He was awarded the Grand Prix for furniture at Milan's triennale in 1960.[29] Finn Juhl (1912–1989) Though he studied architecture at the Royal Academy, Juhl was a self-taught designer of furniture. In the late 1930s, he created furniture for himself but from 1945 he became recognized for his expressively sculptural designs, placing emphasis on form rather than function, so breaking tradition with the Klint school. His successful interior design work at the United Nations Headquarters in New York spread the notion of Danish Modern far and wide, paving the way for the international participation of his Danish colleagues. Two key pieces of furniture, in which the seat and backrest are separated from the wooden frame, are his 45-Chair, with its elegant armrests, and his Chieftain Chair (1949).[30] Finn Juhl's home in Charlottenlund, just north of Copenhagen, has been preserved as he left it with the furniture he designed.     Finn Juhl furniture at the Danish Design Museum     Finn Juhl furniture at the Danish Design Museum     Poet Sofa in room at Copenhagen's Bella Sky Hotel     Poet Sofa in room at Copenhagen's Bella Sky Hotel     Chair in Design Museum Danmark     Chair in Design Museum Danmark Børge Mogensen (1914–1972) After studying under Kaare Klint at the Copenhagen School of Arts and Crafts and at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Mogensen adopted Klint's approach to simple, functional furniture design. Taking an almost scientific approach to an item's functionality, most of his furniture is characterized by strong, simple lines and was designed for industrial production. Notable items include his oak-framed Hunting Chair (1950) with a strong leather back and seat, his light, open Spokeback Sofa (1945), and the low robust Spanish Chair (1959).[31]     Spanish Chair (1959)     Spanish Chair (1959)     Spokeback Sofa (1945)     Spokeback Sofa (1945) Hans Wegner (1914–2007) Best known as ‘the Master of the Chairs,' Wegner created fascinating furniture with clean, organic and aesthetic lines, balanced by a minimalist and composed aspect. He was a modernist with emphasis on the practicality and elegance of each piece he crafted. He believed the versatility and usability of his designs were as vital for him as the looks of them. After graduating in architecture in 1938, he worked in Arne Jacobsen and Eric Møller's office before establishing his own office in 1943. Striving for functionality as well as beauty, he became the most prolific Danish designer, producing over 500 different chairs. His Round Chair (technically Model 500) in 1949 was called "the world's most beautiful chair" before being labelled simply "The Chair" after Nixon and Kennedy used it in a 1960 televised debate. His Wishbone Chair, also 1949, with a Y-shaped back split and a curved back, was inspired by a Chinese child's chair he had seen. A work of simplicity and comfort, it is still made today by the Danish firm Carl Hansen & Son. Wegner's designs can now be found in several of the world's top design museums including New York's Museum of Modern Art.[32][33]     The Wishbone Chair (1949)     The Wishbone Chair (1949)     Hans Wegner chair, Centre Pompidou, Paris     Hans Wegner chair, Centre Pompidou, Paris     The Round Chair (1949)     The Round Chair (1949)     The Peacock Chair     The Peacock Chair Grete Jalk (1920–2006) After training as a cabinetmaker, she studied at the Danish Design School in 1946, while receiving additional instruction from Kaare Klint at the Royal Academy's Furniture School. Inspired by Alvar Aalto's laminated bent-plywood furniture and Charles Eames' moulded plywood designs, she began to develop her own boldly curved models in the 1950s. In 1963, she won a Daily Mirror competition with her "He Chair" and "She Chair". With the help of furniture manufacturer Poul Jeppesen, she went on to design simpler models with clear, comfortable lines, which became popular both in Denmark and the United States thanks to their competitive prices. Jalk also edited the Danish design magazine Mobilia and compiled an authoritative four-volume work on Danish furniture.[34][35]     Grete Jalk: plywood GJ Chair (1963)     Grete Jalk: plywood GJ Chair (1963)     Grete Jalk's GJ Table (1963)     Grete Jalk's GJ Table (1963) Verner Panton (1926–1998) On graduating from the Royal Academy in 1951, Panton worked briefly with Arne Jacobsen. During the 1960s, he designed furniture, lamps and textiles with an imaginative combination of innovative materials, playful shapes and bold colours. Among his earliest designs were the Bachelor Chair and Tivoli Chair (1955), both produced by Fritz Hansen, but he is remembered above all for his Panton Chair (1960), the world's first one-piece moulded plastic chair.[36] Sometimes referred to as a pop artist, unlike the majority of his colleagues, he continued to be successful in the 1970s, not only with furniture but with interior designs including lighting.[37][38]     Heart Cone chairs (1959)     Heart Cone chairs (1959)     Panton Chair (1960)     Panton Chair (1960)     Flowerpot Lamps (designed 1968)     Flowerpot Lamps (designed 1968)     Moon Lamp (designed 1967)     Moon Lamp (designed 1967) Poul Kjærholm (1929–1980) In addition to an academic career at the School of Arts and Crafts and at the Institute of Design at the Royal Academy, Kjærholm always took full account of the importance of place a piece of furniture had in surrounding architectural space. Functionality took second place to his artistic approach which was centred on elegantly clean lines and attention to detail. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he worked essentially with steel, combining it with wood, leather, cane or marble. Kjærhom developed a close understanding with the cabinetmaker E. Kold Christensen who produced most of his designs. Today a wide selection of his furniture is produced by Fritz Hansen. Kjærholm's work can be seen in New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.[39]     PK0 chair, designed 1952 but first produced 1997     PK0 chair, designed 1952 but first produced 1997     Hammock Chair 25 (1965)     Hammock Chair 25 (1965)     PK9 Chair (1960)     PK9 Chair (1960)     Kjærholm's chairs in the Louisiana Museum     Kjærholm's chairs in the Louisiana Museum Jens Risom (1916–2016) Often credited with having introduced Danish Modern design to America, Risom was a graduate of Copenhagen School of Industrial Arts and Design. He emigrated to the United States in 1939 to study American design, working first as a textile designer and later as a freelance furniture designer. In 1941 he joined Hans Knoll at the Hans Knoll Furniture Company, and together they toured the country promoting Risom's designs. A true minimalist, Risom worked mainly in wood because it was cheap, and one of his most successful pieces, Knoll Chair #654 (which is still being manufactured)[40] was made with a seat of nylon webbing that had been discarded by the army. Other contributors Many other designers and cabinetmakers contributed to the Danish modern scene. Several worked in partnerships, including:[41]     Tove and Edvard Kindt-Larsen (1901–1982), both students of Kaare Klint, working with contrasting materials[42]     Peter Hvidt (1916–1986) and Orla Mølgaard-Nielsen (1907–1993), remembered for the Ax Chair (1950) and the X Chair (1960)     Ejner Larsen (1917–1987) and Aksel Bender Madsen (1916–2000) working mainly with teak and rosewood     Preben Fabricius (1931–1984) and Jørgen Kastholm (1938–2007), demonstrating originality with their Horseshoe Chair (1962) A number of cabinetmakers also developed skills in design. They include:     Jacob Kjær (1896–1957), famous for his FN Chair, who also produced the furniture he designed     Frits Henningsen (c. 1900 – c. 1970), who designed models produced at his own workshop in Copenhagen[43] Several other individuals made important contributions:     Mogens Koch (1898–1992), remembered for his bookcases (1928) and folding chair (1932)     Jørgen Gammelgaard (1938–1991), known for his Tip-Top lamp series.     Rigmor Andersen (1903–1995), a versatile designer, maintaining the strict traditions of Klint's furniture school.[44]     Peder Moos (1906–1991), designed and built individual pieces on request, with his own special finish[45]     Kurt Østervig (1912–1986), trained in Odense, designed furniture for ships and cinemas as well as for the home.[46]     Helge Vestergaard Jensen (1917–1987), who produced the Daybed (1955)     Hans Olsen (1919–1992), who experimented with materials and form, creating a number of items in his own distinctive style.[47]     Nanna Ditzel (1923–2005), pioneering new materials and production techniques, also working with textiles and jewelry     Poul Volther (1923–2001), remembered above all for his iconic Corona Chair.[48]     Arne Vodder (1926–2009), a close friend and partner of Finn Juhl, his furniture sold particularly well in the United States.[49]     Bodil Kjær (born 1932), architect and interior designer who created a successful series of office furniture in the 1960s.[50]     Bernt Petersen (born 1937), notable for his small, light stool (1959) with beautifully shaped legs and for his seating in theatres and concert halls.[51] A number of Danish textile designers worked closely with furniture designers to help shape the look of Danish modernism, for example by creating textiles for cushions, sofas, and beds. These include Lis Ahlmann and Vibeke Klint, among others. Danish Modern chairs at the Danish Design Center in Copenhagen In popular culture     The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern (1967): The second novel of American writer Lilian Jackson Braun's The Cat Who...     In The Brady Bunch Season 2, Episode 18 — in "Our Son, the Man" the family house's den is referred to as being Danish modern.     In House, M.D. Season 3, Episode 6 — in "Que Sera Sera" House's interior design preferences (as well as his patient, George's) are called Danish modern." (wikipedia.org) "Raygun Gothic is a catchall term for a visual and architectural style that, when applied to retrofuturistic science fiction environments, incorporates various aspects of the Googie, Streamline Moderne and Art Deco architectural styles. Academic Lance Olsen has characterised Raygun Gothic as "a tomorrow that never was".[1] It is inspired by Space Age, raypunk and atompunk subcultures. The style has also been associated with architectural indulgence, and situated in the context of the golden age of modern design due to its use of features such as "single-support beams, acute angles, brightly colored paneling" as well as "shapes and cutouts showing motion".[2] Origin The term was coined by William Gibson in his 1981 story "The Gernsback Continuum":[2][3]     Cohen introduced us and explained that Dialta [a noted pop-art historian] was the prime mover behind the latest Barris-Watford project, an illustrated history of what she called "American Streamlined Modern." Cohen called it "raygun Gothic." Their working title was The Airstream Futuropolis: The Tomorrow That Never Was.     — William Gibson, "The Gernsback Continuum"" (wikipedia.org) "Quartz clocks and quartz watches are timepieces that use an electronic oscillator regulated by a quartz crystal to keep time. This crystal oscillator creates a signal with very precise frequency, so that quartz clocks and watches are at least an order of magnitude more accurate than mechanical clocks. Generally, some form of digital logic counts the cycles of this signal and provides a numerical time display, usually in units of hours, minutes, and seconds. Since the 1980s, when the advent of solid-state digital electronics allowed them to be made compact and inexpensive, quartz timekeepers have become the world's most widely used timekeeping technology, used in most clocks and watches as well as computers and other appliances that keep time." (wikipedia.org) "Tupperware is an American home products line that includes preparation, storage, and serving products for the kitchen and home. In 1942, Earl Tupper developed his first bell-shaped container; the brand products were introduced to the public in 1946. Tupperware develops, manufactures, and internationally distributes its products as a wholly owned subsidiary of its parent company Tupperware Brands; as of 2007, it was sold by means of approximately 1.9 million direct salespeople on contract. In 2013, the top marketplace for Tupperware was Indonesia, which topped Germany as the second. Indonesia's sales in 2013 were more than $200 million.[2] Company history Tupperware containers from 2011 2 Colourful Tupperware containers Colourful Tupperware containers Tupperware was developed in 1946 by Earl Tupper (1907–1983) in Leominster, Massachusetts.[3] He developed polyethylene plastic containers to be used in households to contain food and keep them airtight, which featured a "burping seal" that was patented in 1949.[4] Tupper had already invented the plastic for Tupperware in 1938,[dubious – discuss] but the product succeeded with the emergence of the "sale through presentation" idea, held in a party setting.[5] Tupperware developed a direct marketing strategy to sell products known as the Tupperware party. The Tupperware party enabled women of the 1950s to earn an income while keeping their focus in the domestic domain.[6] The "party plan" model relies on characteristics generally assumed of housewives (e.g., party planning, hosting a party, and sociable relations with friends and neighbors). Brownie Wise (1913–1992) recognized Tupperware's potential as a commodity. She realized that she had to be creative and therefore started to throw these Tupperware parties.[7] Wise, a former sales representative of Stanley Home Products, developed the strategy.[8] As a result, Wise was made vice president of marketing in 1951. Wise soon created Tupperware Parties Inc.[9] During the early 1950s, Tupperware's sales and popularity exploded, thanks in large part to Wise's influence among women who sold Tupperware, and some of the famous "jubilees" celebrating the success of Tupperware ladies at lavish and outlandishly themed parties. At a time when women came back from working during World War II only to be told to "go back to the kitchen",[10] Tupperware was known as a method of empowering women and giving them a toehold in the postwar business world.[11][12] The tradition of Tupperware's "Jubilee" style events continues to this day, with rallies being held in major cities to recognize and reward top-selling and top-recruiting individuals, teams, and organizations. Tupperware spread to Europe in 1960 when Mila Pond hosted Tupperware parties in Weybridge, England, and other locations around the world. At the time, a strict dress code was required for Tupperware ladies, with skirts and stockings (tights) worn at all times, and white gloves often accompanying the outfit.[13] A technique called "carrot calling" helped promote the parties: representatives would travel door-to-door in a neighborhood and ask housewives to "run an experiment" in which carrots would be placed in a Tupperware container and compared with "anything that you would ordinarily leave them in"; it would often result in the scheduling of a Tupperware party.[13] Rexall, by now the owner of the Tupperware brand, sold its namesake drugstores in 1977 and renamed itself Dart Industries. Dart merged with Kraftco to form Dart & Kraft. The company demerged, with the former Dart assets renamed Premark International. Tupperware Brands was spun off from Premark in 1996; Premark was acquired by Illinois Tool Works three years later.[14] In 2003 Tupperware closed down operations in the UK and Ireland, citing customer dissatisfaction with their direct sales model.[15] There has been limited importer-based distribution since then.[16] The company announced a formal relaunch in the UK in mid-2011,[17] and recruited UK staff, but in December the relaunch was canceled.[18] As of 2007 Tupperware was sold by means of approximately 1.9 million direct salespeople on contract.[19] In May 2018, the Israeli daily TheMarker, reported that Tupperware will withdraw from Israel leaving 2,000 agents without a job. The article attributed this decision to the regional headquarters which manages other Middle Eastern countries.[20] Tupperware Israel relaunched in December 2020 as an online shop.[21] In March 2021 Tupperware closed down in the Netherlands.[22] In August 2022 Tupperware announced it would be leaving the New Zealand market in late 2022.[23] On November 2, 2022, after publishing quarterly results, the company said its inability to maintain compliance with its credit agreement raises substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern. The stock value dropped more than 40%.[citation needed] In April 2023 the company warned that there is "substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern". The stock price dropped almost 50% on the same day.[24] On April 11, 2023, Tupperware’s stock value plummeted to $1.30. Although there was a slight recovery the following day, its sliding sales and increasing debt prompt warnings of permanent company closure unless it receives substantial investment.[25] As of April 2023 Tupperware has 82 countries listed as places they trade.[26] This list is not up-to-date as there have been closures. " (wikipedia.org) "Rexall was a chain of American drugstores, and the name of their store-branded products. The stores, having roots in the federation of United Drug Stores starting in 1903, licensed the Rexall brand name to as many as 12,000 drug stores across the United States from 1920 to 1977. The "Rex" in the name was derived from the name of Ellen M. Regis, who developed "Rexall remedies" and from whom the company purchased the mark.[1] Founding In 1903, Louis K. Liggett persuaded 40 independent drug stores to invest $4,000 in a retailers' cooperative called United Drug Stores, which sold products under the Rexall name. After World War I, the cooperative established a franchise arrangement whereby independently owned retail outlets adopted the Rexall trade name and sold Rexall products. The company was based in Boston,[2] in an area now occupied by Northeastern University. Rexall Train Postcard photo of the Rexall Train. The Rexall Train of March to November 1936 toured the United States and Canada to promote Rexall drug store products and to provide the equivalent of a national convention for local Rexall druggists without the cost of travel. Free tickets for locals to see displays of Rexall products were available at local Rexall drug stores. The 29,000 mile tour visited 47 of the 48 contiguous states (omitting Nevada) and parts of Canada. A streamlined steam-powered 4-8-2 Mohawk locomotive (No. 2873) from the New York Central Railroad hauled the similarly streamlined blue-and-white train of twelve air-conditioned Pullman cars. Four of the cars contained displays, four contained convention facilities and one housed a dining car. The train was the million-dollar brainchild of Louis Liggett, who traveled in an observation car at its rear.[3] Growth Rexall Drug Store at Rock Rapids, Iowa (2006) Rexall Drug 120 Panchromatic High Speed Film (1960s) Justin Whitlock Dart, formerly of the Walgreens drugstore chain, took control of Boston-based United Drug Company in 1943. The chain operated under the Liggett, Owl, Sonta, and Rexall brands, which Dart rebranded under the Rexall name. Rexall gained national exposure through its sponsorship of two famous classic American radio programs of the 1940s and 1950s: Amos and Andy and The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show. Both shows were often opened by an advertisement from an actor (Griff Barnett) portraying "your Rexall family druggist", and included the catch phrase "Good health to all from Rexall." They also sponsored the Jimmy Durante Show and references are made by the character Mr. Peavey in some of The Great Gildersleeve radio shows. Rexall also sponsored Richard Diamond, Private Detective starring Dick Powell from April 1950 until Camel replaced Rexall as the sponsor after the December 6, 1950, broadcast.[citation needed] In 1946, United-Rexall Drug Inc. purchased the Renfro chain in Texas, and Lane Drug Stores which had 58 stores throughout the Southeast.[citation needed] It also launched the Owl Superstores chain. In 1947, the company held a gala opening for their new headquarters and first store in Los Angeles, California. The new Hollywood Owl was reported in Life as 'the World's Biggest Drugstore'.[4] In 1958, the Rexall Drug Company was the largest U.S. drug store franchise, with 11,158 stores (for comparison, fewer than 12,000 McDonald's restaurants are in the U.S. today). Time noted that two-thirds of its stores were in areas where one-third of the population lived. However, this comprised more than 20% of all drug stores in the United States.[citation needed] Also in 1958, Rexall employee Joe Coulombe was asked to test the launch of Pronto Markets, a store brand to compete against 7-Eleven. After running six Pronto Markets in the Los Angeles area, Rexall asked Coulombe to close them down. Coulombe decided to buy them out instead, and eventually renamed the chain "Trader Joe's".[5] Dart sold his stake in Rexall in 1978. Dart had acquired stakes in West Bend, Duracell, Hobart Corporation, Tupperware, Ralph Wilson Plastics, and Archer Glass, which were collectively known as Dart Industries." (wikipedia.org) "Danish design is a style of functionalistic design and architecture that was developed in mid-20th century. Influenced by the German Bauhaus school, many Danish designers used the new industrial technologies, combined with ideas of simplicity and functionalism to design buildings, furniture and household objects, many of which have become iconic and are still in use and production. Prominent examples are the Egg chair, the PH lamps and the Sydney Opera House (Australia)....     Create account     Log in Personal tools Contents     (Top)     History     Modern trends     Architecture     Recent achievements     Designers     Museums     See also     References     External links Danish design     Article     Talk     Read     Edit     View history Tools From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Part of a series on the Culture of Denmark     Architecture Art Cuisine Design Folklore Holidays Literature Media         Cinema Television Radio Newspapers Magazines Internet Music Philosophy Photography Sculpture Sports Theatre     vte Arne Jacobsen's clock in the Glostrup Town Hall, Glostrup, Denmark Danish design is a style of functionalistic design and architecture that was developed in mid-20th century. Influenced by the German Bauhaus school, many Danish designers used the new industrial technologies, combined with ideas of simplicity and functionalism to design buildings, furniture and household objects, many of which have become iconic and are still in use and production. Prominent examples are the Egg chair, the PH lamps and the Sydney Opera House (Australia). History See also: Danish modern The Danish Culture Canon credits Thorvald Bindesbøll (1846–1908) with early contributions to design in the areas of ceramics, jewellery, bookbinding, silver and furniture although he is known in the rest of the world for creating the Carlsberg logo (1904), still in use today.[1] The Canon also includes Knud V. Engelhardt (1882–1931) for a more industrial approach, especially in the rounded contours of his electric tramcar designs which were widely copied.[2] In the area of textiles, Marie Gudme Leth (1895–1997) brought the screen printing process to Denmark, opening a factory in 1935 which allowed her colourful patterns to be manufactured on an industrial basis.[3] August Sandgren introduced functionalism in the design of his masterful bookbindings. The forms and materials of Hans Wegner's Wishbone Chair are representative of the movement's aesthetic In the late 1940s, shortly after the end of the Second World War, conditions in Denmark were ideally suited to success in design. The emphasis was on furniture but architecture, silver, ceramics, glass and textiles also benefitted from the trend. Denmark's late industrialisation combined with a tradition of high-quality craftsmanship formed the basis of gradual progress towards industrial production. After the end of the war, Europeans were keen to find novel approaches such as the light wood furniture from Denmark. Last but not least, support in Denmark for freedom of individual expression assisted the cause.[4] The newly established Furniture School at the Royal Danish Academy of Art played a considerable part in the development of furniture design. Kaare Klint taught functionalism based on the size and proportions of objects, wielding considerable influence. Hans J. Wegner, who had been trained as a cabinetmaker, contributed with a unique sense of form, especially in designing chairs.[5] As head of FDB Møbler, Børge Mogensen designed simple and robust objects of furniture for the average Danish family. Finn Juhl demonstrated an individualistic approach in designing chairs with an appealing but functional look. In the early 1950s, American design also influenced Danish furniture. The American Charles Eames designed and manufactured chairs of moulded wood and steel pipes. These encouraged Arne Jacobsen to design his worldfamous Ant Chair, Denmark's first industrially manufactured chair. Furthermore, as Shaker furniture—and especially its reputation for stripped down chairs—began to be more and more known abroad, it also influenced Danish designers.[6] Poul Kjærholm, Verner Panton and Nanna Ditzel followed a few years later, continuing the successful story of Danish design. Kjærholm worked mainly in steel and leather, Panton left Denmark during the 1960s to continue designing imaginative but highly unconventional plastic chairs while Nanna Ditzel, who also had a strongly individualistic approach, was successful in helping to renew Danish furniture design in the 1980s. " (wikipedia.org) "A clock or a timepiece[1] is a device used to measure and indicate time. The clock is one of the oldest human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units such as the day, the lunar month and the year. Devices operating on several physical processes have been used over the millennia. Some predecessors to the modern clock may be considered as "clocks" that are based on movement in nature: A sundial shows the time by displaying the position of a shadow on a flat surface. There is a range of duration timers, a well-known example being the hourglass. Water clocks, along with the sundials, are possibly the oldest time-measuring instruments. A major advance occurred with the invention of the verge escapement, which made possible the first mechanical clocks around 1300 in Europe, which kept time with oscillating timekeepers like balance wheels.[2][3][4][5] Traditionally, in horology (the study of timekeeping), the term clock was used for a striking clock, while a clock that did not strike the hours audibly was called a timepiece. This distinction is no longer made. Watches and other timepieces that can be carried on one's person are usually not referred to as clocks.[6] Spring-driven clocks appeared during the 15th century. During the 15th and 16th centuries, clockmaking flourished. The next development in accuracy occurred after 1656 with the invention of the pendulum clock by Christiaan Huygens. A major stimulus to improving the accuracy and reliability of clocks was the importance of precise time-keeping for navigation. The mechanism of a timepiece with a series of gears driven by a spring or weights is referred to as clockwork; the term is used by extension for a similar mechanism not used in a timepiece. The electric clock was patented in 1840, and electronic clocks were introduced in the 20th century, becoming widespread with the development of small battery-powered semiconductor devices. The timekeeping element in every modern clock is a harmonic oscillator, a physical object (resonator) that vibrates or oscillates at a particular frequency.[3] This object can be a pendulum, a tuning fork, a quartz crystal, or the vibration of electrons in atoms as they emit microwaves, the last method of which is so precise that it serves as the definition of the second. Clocks have different ways of displaying the time. Analog clocks indicate time with a traditional clock face, with moving hands. Digital clocks display a numeric representation of time. Two numbering systems are in use: 12-hour time notation and 24-hour notation. Most digital clocks use electronic mechanisms and LCD, LED, or VFD displays. For the blind and for use over telephones, speaking clocks state the time audibly in words. There are also clocks for the blind that have displays that can be read by touch. Etymology The word clock derives from the medieval Latin word for 'bell'—clocca—and has cognates in many European languages. Clocks spread to England from the Low Countries,[7] so the English word came from the Middle Low German and Middle Dutch Klocke.[8] The word derives from the Middle English clokke, Old North French cloque, or Middle Dutch clocke, all of which mean 'bell', and stem from an Old Irish root.... nalog See also: Clock face A modern quartz clock with a 24-hour face A linear clock at London's Piccadilly Circus tube station. The 24 hour band moves across the static map, keeping pace with the apparent movement of the sun above ground, and a pointer fixed on London points to the current time. Analog clocks usually use a clock face which indicates time using rotating pointers called "hands" on a fixed numbered dial or dials. The standard clock face, known universally throughout the world, has a short "hour hand" which indicates the hour on a circular dial of 12 hours, making two revolutions per day, and a longer "minute hand" which indicates the minutes in the current hour on the same dial, which is also divided into 60 minutes. It may also have a "second hand" which indicates the seconds in the current minute. The only other widely used clock face today is the 24 hour analog dial, because of the use of 24 hour time in military organizations and timetables. Before the modern clock face was standardized during the Industrial Revolution, many other face designs were used throughout the years, including dials divided into 6, 8, 10, and 24 hours. During the French Revolution the French government tried to introduce a 10-hour clock, as part of their decimal-based metric system of measurement, but it did not achieve widespread use. An Italian 6 hour clock was developed in the 18th century, presumably to save power (a clock or watch striking 24 times uses more power). Another type of analog clock is the sundial, which tracks the sun continuously, registering the time by the shadow position of its gnomon. Because the sun does not adjust to daylight saving time, users must add an hour during that time. Corrections must also be made for the equation of time, and for the difference between the longitudes of the sundial and of the central meridian of the time zone that is being used (i.e. 15 degrees east of the prime meridian for each hour that the time zone is ahead of GMT). Sundials use some or part of the 24 hour analog dial. There also exist clocks which use a digital display despite having an analog mechanism—these are commonly referred to as flip clocks. Alternative systems have been proposed. For example, the "Twelv" clock indicates the current hour using one of twelve colors, and indicates the minute by showing a proportion of a circular disk, similar to a moon phase.... Purposes Many cities and towns traditionally have public clocks in a prominent location, such as a town square or city center. This one is on display at the center of the town of Robbins, North Carolina Clocks are in homes, offices and many other places; smaller ones (watches) are carried on the wrist or in a pocket; larger ones are in public places, e.g. a railway station or church. A small clock is often shown in a corner of computer displays, mobile phones and many MP3 players. The primary purpose of a clock is to display the time. Clocks may also have the facility to make a loud alert signal at a specified time, typically to waken a sleeper at a preset time; they are referred to as alarm clocks. The alarm may start at a low volume and become louder, or have the facility to be switched off for a few minutes then resume. Alarm clocks with visible indicators are sometimes used to indicate to children too young to read the time that the time for sleep has finished; they are sometimes called training clocks. A clock mechanism may be used to control a device according to time, e.g. a central heating system, a VCR, or a time bomb (see: digital counter). Such mechanisms are usually called timers. Clock mechanisms are also used to drive devices such as solar trackers and astronomical telescopes, which have to turn at accurately controlled speeds to counteract the rotation of the Earth. Most digital computers depend on an internal signal at constant frequency to synchronize processing; this is referred to as a clock signal. (A few research projects are developing CPUs based on asynchronous circuits.) Some equipment, including computers, also maintains time and date for use as required; this is referred to as time-of-day clock, and is distinct from the system clock signal, although possibly based on counting its cycles. In Chinese culture, giving a clock (traditional Chinese: 送鐘; simplified Chinese: 送钟; pinyin: sòng zhōng) is often taboo, especially to the elderly as the term for this act is a homophone with the term for the act of attending another's funeral (traditional Chinese: 送終; simplified Chinese: 送终; pinyin: sòngzhōng).[91][92][93] This homonymic pair works in both Mandarin and Cantonese, although in most parts of China only clocks and large bells, and not watches, are called "zhong", and watches are commonly given as gifts in China. However, should such a gift be given, the "unluckiness" of the gift can be countered by exacting a small monetary payment so the recipient is buying the clock and thereby counteracting the '送' ("give") expression of the phrase. Time standards Main articles: Time standard and Atomic clock For some scientific work timing of the utmost accuracy is essential. It is also necessary to have a standard of the maximum accuracy against which working clocks can be calibrated. An ideal clock would give the time to unlimited accuracy, but this is not realisable. Many physical processes, in particular including some transitions between atomic energy levels, occur at exceedingly stable frequency; counting cycles of such a process can give a very accurate and consistent time—clocks which work this way are usually called atomic clocks. Such clocks are typically large, very expensive, require a controlled environment, and are far more accurate than required for most purposes; they are typically used in a standards laboratory. " (wikipedia.org) "Mid-century modern (MCM) is a design movement in interior, product, graphic design, architecture, and urban development that was popular in the United States and Europe from roughly 1945 to 1969,[1][2] during the United States's post–World War II period. The term was used descriptively as early as the mid-1950s and was defined as a design movement by Cara Greenberg in her 1984 book Mid-Century Modern: Furniture of the 1950s. It is now recognized by scholars and museums worldwide as a significant design movement. The MCM design aesthetic is modern in style and construction, aligned with the Modernist movement of the period. It is typically characterized by clean, simple lines and honest use of materials, and it generally does not include decorative embellishments. Architecture     This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Mid-century modern architectureCalifornia Mid-Century Modern Home with open-beam ceiling 1960.jpg Tract house in Tujunga, California, featuring open-beamed ceilings, c. 1960 Years active    1945–1969 Country    United States Influences    International, Bauhaus Detail of Copan, a Niemeyer building in São Paulo, Oscar Niemeyer The mid-century modern movement in the U.S. was an American reflection of the International and Bauhaus movements, including the works of Gropius, Florence Knoll, Le Corbusier, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.[3] Although the American component was slightly more organic in form and less formal than the International Style, it is more firmly related to it than any other. Brazilian and Scandinavian architects were very influential at this time, with a style characterized by clean simplicity and integration with nature. Like many of Wright's designs, Mid-century architecture was frequently employed in residential structures with the goal of bringing modernism into America's post-war suburbs. This style emphasized creating structures with ample windows and open floor plans, with the intention of opening up interior spaces and bringing the outdoors in. Many Mid-century houses utilized then-groundbreaking post and beam architectural design that eliminated bulky support walls in favor of walls seemingly made of glass. Function was as important as form in Mid-century designs, with an emphasis placed on targeting the needs of the average American family. Eichler Homes – Foster Residence, Granada Hills In Europe, the influence of Le Corbusier and the CIAM resulted in an architectural orthodoxy manifest across most parts of post-war Europe that was ultimately challenged by the radical agendas of the architectural wings of the avant-garde Situationist International, COBRA, as well as Archigram in London. A critical but sympathetic reappraisal of the internationalist oeuvre, inspired by Scandinavian Moderns such as Alvar Aalto, Sigurd Lewerentz and Arne Jacobsen, and the late work of Le Corbusier himself, was reinterpreted by groups such as Team X, including structuralist architects such as Aldo van Eyck, Ralph Erskine, Denys Lasdun, Jørn Utzon and the movement known in the United Kingdom as New Brutalism. Pioneering builder and real estate developer Joseph Eichler was instrumental in bringing Mid-century modern architecture ("Eichler Homes") to subdivisions in the Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay region of California, and select housing developments on the east coast. George Fred Keck, his brother Willam Keck, Henry P. Glass, Mies van der Rohe, and Edward Humrich created Mid-century modern residences in the Chicago area. Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House is extremely difficult to heat or cool, while Keck and Keck were pioneers in the incorporation of passive solar features in their houses to compensate for their large glass windows. Mid-century modern in Palm Springs Miller House, by Richard Neutra The city of Palm Springs, California is noted for its many examples of Mid-century modern architecture.[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][excessive citations] Architects include:[11][12]     Welton Becket: Bullock's Palm Springs (with Wurdeman) (1947) (demolished, 1996[13])     John Porter Clark: Welwood Murray Library (1937); Clark Residence (1939) (on the El Minador golf course); Palm Springs Women's Club (1939)     William F. Cody: Stanley Goldberg residence;[14] Del Marcos Motel (1947); L'Horizon Hotel, for Jack Wrather and Bonita Granville (1952); remodel of Thunderbird Country Club clubhouse (c. 1953) (Rancho Mirage); Tamarisk Country Club (1953) (Rancho Mirage) (now remodeled); Huddle Springs restaurant (1957); St. Theresa Parish Church (1968); Palm Springs Library (1975)     Craig Ellwood: Max Palevsky House (1970)     Albert Frey: Palm Springs City Hall (with Clark and Chambers) (1952–57); Palm Springs Fire Station #1 (1955); Tramway Gas Station (1963); Movie Colony Hotel; Kocher-Samson Building (1934) (with A. Lawrence Kocher); Raymond Loewy House (1946); Villa Hermosa Resort (1946); Frey House I (1953); Frey House II (1963); Carey-Pirozzi house (1956); Christian Scientist Church (1957); Alpha Beta Shopping Center (1960) (demolished)     Victor Gruen: City National Bank (now Bank of America) (1959)[15] (designed as an homage to the Chapelle Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, by Le Corbusier)     A. Quincy Jones: Palm Springs Tennis Club (with Paul R. Williams) (1946); Town & Country Center (with Paul R. Williams) (1947–50); J.J. Robinson House (with Frederick E. Emmons) (1957); Ambassador and Mrs. Walter H. Annenberg House (with Frederick E. Emmons) (1963)     William Krisel:[16] Ocotillo Lodge(1957); House of Tomorrow(1962).[17]     John Lautner: Desert Hot Springs Motel (1947); Arthur Elrod House (1968) (interiors used in filming James Bond's Diamonds Are Forever); Hope Residence (1973)     John Black Lee: Specialized in residential houses. Lee House 1 (1952), Lee House 2 (1956) for which he won the Award of Merit from the American Institute of Architects, Day House (1965), * System House (1961), Rogers House (1957), Ravello (1960)     Gene Leedy: The Sarasota School of Architecture, sometimes called Sarasota Modern, is a regional style of post-war architecture that emerged on Florida's Central West Coast.     Frederick Monhoff: Palm Springs Biltmore Resort (1948) (demolished, 2003[13])     Richard Neutra (Posthumous AIA Gold Medal honoree): Grace Lewis Miller house (1937) (includes her Mensendlieck posture therapy studio);[18] Kaufmann Desert House (1946);[19] Samuel and Luella Maslon House, Tamarisk Country Club, Rancho Mirage (1962) (demolished 2003)[13]     William Pereira: Robinson's (1953)     William Gray Purcell (with protégé Van Evera Bailey): Purcell House (1933) (cubist modern)     Donald Wexler: Steel Developmental Houses,[20] Sunny View Drive (1961). Home developer, Alexander Homes, popularized this post-and-beam architectural style in the Coachella Valley. Alexander houses and similar homes feature low-pitched roofs, wide eaves, open-beamed ceilings, and floor-to-ceiling windows.[7]: 66–75      E. Stewart Williams: Frank Sinatra House (1946) (with piano-shaped pool); Oasis commercial building (with interiors by Paul R. Williams) (1952); William and Marjorie Edris House (1954); Mari and Steward Williams House (1956); Santa Fe Federal Savings Building (1958); Coachella Valley Savings & Loan (now Washington Mutual) (1960); Palm Springs Desert Museum (1976)     Paul Williams: Palm Springs Tennis Club (with Jones) (1946)     Frank Lloyd Wright Jr.: Oasis Hotel (1923)     Walter Wurdeman: Bullock's Palm Springs (with Welton Becket) (1947) (demolished 1996)[13] Examples of 1950s Palm Springs motel architecture include Ballantines Movie Colony (1952) – one portion is the 1935 Albert Frey San Jacinto Hotel – the Coral Sands Inn (1952), and the Orbit Inn (1957).[21] Restoration projects have been undertaken to return many of these residences and businesses to their original condition.[22] Industrial design Scandinavian design was very influential at this time, with a style characterized by simplicity, democratic design and natural shapes. Glassware (Iittala – Finland), ceramics (Arabia – Finland), tableware (Georg Jensen – Denmark), lighting (Poul Henningsen – Denmark), and furniture (Danish modern) were some of the genres for the products created. In America, east of the Mississippi, the American-born Russel Wright, designing for Steubenville Pottery, and Hungarian-born Eva Zeisel designing for Red Wing Pottery and later Hall China created free-flowing ceramic designs that were much admired and heralded in the trend of smooth, flowing contours in dinnerware. On the West Coast of America the industrial designer and potter Edith Heath (1911–2005) founded Heath Ceramics in 1948. The company was one of the numerous California pottery manufacturers that had their heyday in post-war US, and produced Mid-Century modern ceramic dish-ware. Edith Heath's "Coupe" line remains in demand and has been in constant production since 1948, with only periodic changes to the texture and color of the glazes.[23] The Tamac Pottery company produced a line of mid-century modern biomorphic dinnerware and housewares between 1946 to 1972.[24] Social medium Printed ephemera documenting the mid-century transformations in design, architecture, landscape, infrastructure, and entertainment include mid-century linen post cards from the early 1930s to the late 1950s. These post cards came about through innovations pioneered through the use of offset lithography. The cards were produced on paper with a high rag content, which gave the post card a textured look and feel. At the time this was a less expensive process. Along with advances in printing technique, mid-century linen postcards allowed for very vibrant ink colors. The encyclopedic geographic imagery of mid-century linen post cards suggests popular middle class attitudes about nature, wilderness, technology, mobility and the city during the mid-20th century.[25] Curt Teich in Chicago[26] was the most prominent and largest printer and publisher of Linen Type postcards[27] pioneering lithography with his "Art Colortone" process.[28] Other large publishers include Stanley Piltz in San Francisco, who established the "Pictorial Wonderland Art Tone Series", Western Publishing and Novelty Company in Los Angeles and the Tichnor Brothers in Boston.[29] The printing of mid-century linen post cards began to give way in the late 1950s to Kodachrome and Ektachrome color prints." (wikipedia.org) "Danish modern is a style of minimalist furniture and housewares from Denmark associated with the Danish design movement. In the 1920s, Kaare Klint embraced the principles of Bauhaus modernism in furniture design, creating clean, pure lines based on an understanding of classical furniture craftsmanship coupled with careful research into materials, proportions, and the requirements of the human body. Designers such as Arne Jacobsen and Hans Wegner helped bring about a thriving furniture industry from the 1940s to the 1960s. Adopting mass-production techniques and concentrating on form rather than just function, Finn Juhl contributed to the style's success. Additionally, minimalist Danish housewares such as cutlery and trays of teak and stainless steel and dinnerware such as those produced in Denmark for Dansk International Designs in its early years, expanded the Danish modern aesthetic beyond furniture.[citation needed] History A row of brown, wooden chairs with a seat made of some woven material Kaare Klint: Church Chair (1936) Origin Between the two world wars, Kaare Klint exerted a strong influence on Danish furniture making. Appointed head of the Furniture Department at the Architecture School of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, he encouraged his students to take an analytical approach, adapting design to modern-day needs. Adopting the Functionalist trend of abandoning ornamentation in favour of form, he nonetheless maintained the warmth and beauty inherent in traditional Danish cabinet making, as well as high-quality craftsmanship and materials.[1] The development of modern Danish furniture owes much to the collaboration between architects and cabinetmakers. Cabinetmaker A. J. Iversen, who had successfully exhibited furniture from designs by architect Kay Gottlob at the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts in 1925 in Paris, was instrumental in fostering further partnerships. In 1927, with a view to encouraging innovation and stimulating public interest, the Danish Cabinetmakers Guild organized a furniture exhibition in Copenhagen which was to be held every year until 1967. It fostered collaboration between cabinetmakers and designers, creating a number of lasting partnerships including those between Rudolph Rasmussen and Kaare Klint, A. J. Iversen and Ole Wanscher, and Erhard Rasmussen and Børge Mogensen. From 1933, collaboration was reinforced as a result of the annual competition for new types of furniture, arranged each year prior to the exhibition.[2][3] In 1931, another key institution in the development of Danish Modern formed; The Association of Arts (Danish: Forening for Kunsthaandværk) founded a permanent venue for arts and craft called Den Permanente [da].[4] Start of the Golden Age In the postwar years, Danish designers and architects believed that design could be used to improve people's lives. In the late 1940s, the growing middle class in Denmark began to show interest in Danish Modern and helped fuel further investment into the style.[5] Particular attention was given to creating affordable furniture and household objects that were both functional and elegant. Fruitful cooperation ensued, combining Danish craftsmanship with innovative design. Initially, the furniture was handmade, but recognizing that their work would sell better if prices were reduced, the designers soon turned to factory production. The scarcity of materials after World War II encouraged the use of plywood. In the late 1940s, the development of new techniques led to the mass production of bent plywood designs by Hans Wegner and Børge Mogensen, both of whom produced chairs with a teak plywood seat and back on a beech frame. In 1951, Arne Jacobsen went even further with his sculptural Ant Chair with a one-piece plywood seat and back, bent in both directions. Collapsible chairs dating from the 1930s include Kaare Klint's Safari Chair and propeller stools which were also developed by Poul Kjærholm and Jørgen Gammelgaard.[6] Danish furniture exports grew from just DKK 0.8 million in 1939 to DKK 6.8 million in 1944.[7] The international market Interest in Danish Modern in the United States began when Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. from the Museum of Modern Art purchased some items for the Fallingwater home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.[8] This ultimately led to mass-production in the United States, too.[9] Furniture exports from Denmark rose from DKK 9.8 million in 1953 to DKK 257.8 million in 1964. This was aided in part by Denmark's decision to copy the British 30% devaluation in September 1949, which brought the price Danish goods drastically down for American consumers.[10] From the beginning of the 1950s, American manufacturers obtained licenses for the mass production of Danish designs while maintaining high standards of craftsmanship. Later, the designs were altered to suit American tastes and American parts were introduced to reduce costs. When Sears and Woolworth's entered the market, the Danes countered by producing new designs based on new materials. One of Wegner's works was used by Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy in a 1960 televised debate and is now known simply as The Chair.[11] Decline in popularity Sales peaked around 1963, but when American manufacturers introduced molded plastic and wood-grained Formica as cheaper substitutes, they started to decline in favor of Mediterranean designs which became popular in 1966.[8][12] In addition to changes in style preferences, customers' shopping habits had changed to favor affordable and lower-cost furniture over a single investment that would last their lifetime.[13] A 1980 New York Times article observed that Danish modern "went out of style" in the United States, due in part to counterculture, "which would have none of the earnest establishment image of Scandinavian design", and the "new culture, for which only the shocking is chic".[14] Many factories closed during this time and the Cabinetmakers' Guild Exhibition held its final event in 1966 after too few cabinetmakers remained in Copenhagen to sustain it.[15] Resurgence of interest In the late 1990s, Danish modern, and the broader mid-century modern movement, experienced a revival in international interest.[16] While the mass-produced works of Wegner, Juhl and Jacobsen are still in demand, collectors are increasingly turning to limited production items from these and the other designers. In the United States, while prices have increased, they are still at reasonable levels compared to similar items of new furniture. Licensed manufacturers have started reissuing key designs, while others have used Danish Modern for inspiration.[17] The Danish furniture industry today Employing some 15,000 people each year, Denmark's 400 furniture companies produce goods worth around DKK 13 billion (€1.75 billion). A highly productive sector, over 80% of the furniture produced is sold abroad making furniture Denmark's fifth most-important export industry. Most of the items produced are for the home, but many are designed for the workplace. In addition to its classic designs, Danish designer furniture benefits from a new generation of innovative players. As a result, Denmark has maintained its place as the world's leading furniture producer in relation to the country's population.[18] A number of firms continue to be active in producing both classic Danish Modern designs and in introducing variants designed by a new generation of artists. They include Republic of Fritz Hansen, Fredericia Furniture, Carl Hansen & Søn and Normann Copenhagen, all of whom exhibited at the 2011 Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan.[19] Other significant producers include PP Møbler, Kjærholm Production and One Collection, formerly known as Hansen & Sørensen.[citation needed] However, a large amount of Danish furniture is now produced outside of Denmark. Production has been outsourced to aboard where costs are lower, mainly Baltic countries and eastern and southern Europe. Republic of Fritz Hansen, for example, has moved their production to Poland.[20] New types of Danish design companies have emerged with both national and international appeal in recent years. Normann Copenhagen, HAY, Muuto, Kähler are among new firms that carry Danish modern design principles forward.[20] Innovative design work is also encouraged by the Wilhelm Hansen Foundation with the annual Finn Juhl Prize which is awarded to designers, manufacturers or writers who have made a special contribution to the field of furniture design, especially chairs.[21] Main contributors Kaare Klint (1888—1954) As a result of the furniture school he founded at the Royal Academy in 1924, Klint had an impact on Danish furniture, influencing designers such as Kjærholm and Mogensen. His carefully researched designs are based on functionality, proportions in line with the human body, craftsmanship and the use of high quality materials. Notable examples of his work include the Propeller Stool (1927), the Safari Chair and the Deck Chair (both 1933), and the Church Chair (1936).[22]     Table and chairs, Danish Design Museum     Table and chairs, Danish Design Museum     Library at the Danish Design Museum     Library at the Danish Design Museum Poul Henningsen (1894–1967) Poul Henningsen, an architect, with a strong belief in the functionalist way of thinking, was an important participant in the Danish Modern school, not for furniture but for lighting design. His attempt to prevent the blinding glare from the electric lamp bulb succeeded in 1926 with a three-shade lamp, known as the PH lamp. The curvature of the shades allowed his hanging lamp to illuminate both the table and the rest of the room. He went on to design many similar lamps, some with frosted glass, including desk lamps, chandeliers and wall-mounted fixtures. Although he died in 1967, many of his designs continue to be popular.[23]     PH Lamp (1925) variation with frosted glass     PH Lamp (1925) variation with frosted glass     PH desk lamp (1941)     PH desk lamp (1941)     The PH5 Lamp (1958)     The PH5 Lamp (1958)     The PH Artichoke     The PH Artichoke Mogens Lassen (1901–1987) In addition to his architectural work, Lassen was also a keen furniture designer. Influenced both by Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, he developed a unique approach to Functionalism.[24] As a result of his fine craftsmanship and his search for simplicity, his steel-based furniture from the 1930s added a new dimension to the modernist movement. His later designs in wood still form part of classical Danish Modern, especially his three-legged stool[25] and folding Egyptian coffee table (1940) originally produced by A. J. Iversen.[26] Arne Jacobsen (1902–1971) Graduating from the Royal Academy in 1924, Jacobsen quickly demonstrated his mastery of both architecture and furniture design. With the completion of his Royal Hotel in Copenhagen and all its internal fittings and furniture in 1960, his talents became widely recognized, especially as a result of the chairs called the Egg chair and the Swan, now international icons. His stackable, three-legged Ant Chair (1952) with a one-piece plywood seat and back and its four-legged counterpart, the Model 3107 chair (1955), were particularly popular with worldwide sales in the millions.[27]     Wooden-legged Grand Prix Chair (1957)     Wooden-legged Grand Prix Chair (1957)     The Egg (1958)     The Egg (1958)     The Swan (1958)     The Swan (1958)     Three-legged Ant Chair (1952)     Three-legged Ant Chair (1952)     The 7 Chair (1955)     The 7 Chair (1955) Ole Wanscher (1903–1985) Inspired by Kaare Klint under whom he had studied, Wanscher later followed in his footsteps as professor of the Royal Academy's furniture school. Particularly interested in 18th-century English furniture and in early Egyptian furniture, one of his most successful pieces was his delicately designed Egyptian Stool (1960) crafted from luxurious materials. Another successful item was his Colonial Chair in Brazilian rosewood.[28] He was awarded the Grand Prix for furniture at Milan's triennale in 1960.[29] Finn Juhl (1912–1989) Though he studied architecture at the Royal Academy, Juhl was a self-taught designer of furniture. In the late 1930s, he created furniture for himself but from 1945 he became recognized for his expressively sculptural designs, placing emphasis on form rather than function, so breaking tradition with the Klint school. His successful interior design work at the United Nations Headquarters in New York spread the notion of Danish Modern far and wide, paving the way for the international participation of his Danish colleagues. Two key pieces of furniture, in which the seat and backrest are separated from the wooden frame, are his 45-Chair, with its elegant armrests, and his Chieftain Chair (1949).[30] Finn Juhl's home in Charlottenlund, just north of Copenhagen, has been preserved as he left it with the furniture he designed.     Finn Juhl furniture at the Danish Design Museum     Finn Juhl furniture at the Danish Design Museum     Poet Sofa in room at Copenhagen's Bella Sky Hotel     Poet Sofa in room at Copenhagen's Bella Sky Hotel     Chair in Design Museum Danmark     Chair in Design Museum Danmark Børge Mogensen (1914–1972) After studying under Kaare Klint at the Copenhagen School of Arts and Crafts and at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Mogensen adopted Klint's approach to simple, functional furniture design. Taking an almost scientific approach to an item's functionality, most of his furniture is characterized by strong, simple lines and was designed for industrial production. Notable items include his oak-framed Hunting Chair (1950) with a strong leather back and seat, his light, open Spokeback Sofa (1945), and the low robust Spanish Chair (1959).[31]     Spanish Chair (1959)     Spanish Chair (1959)     Spokeback Sofa (1945)     Spokeback Sofa (1945) Hans Wegner (1914–2007) Best known as ‘the Master of the Chairs,' Wegner created fascinating furniture with clean, organic and aesthetic lines, balanced by a minimalist and composed aspect. He was a modernist with emphasis on the practicality and elegance of each piece he crafted. He believed the versatility and usability of his designs were as vital for him as the looks of them. After graduating in architecture in 1938, he worked in Arne Jacobsen and Eric Møller's office before establishing his own office in 1943. Striving for functionality as well as beauty, he became the most prolific Danish designer, producing over 500 different chairs. His Round Chair (technically Model 500) in 1949 was called "the world's most beautiful chair" before being labelled simply "The Chair" after Nixon and Kennedy used it in a 1960 televised debate. His Wishbone Chair, also 1949, with a Y-shaped back split and a curved back, was inspired by a Chinese child's chair he had seen. A work of simplicity and comfort, it is still made today by the Danish firm Carl Hansen & Son. Wegner's designs can now be found in several of the world's top design museums including New York's Museum of Modern Art.[32][33]     The Wishbone Chair (1949)     The Wishbone Chair (1949)     Hans Wegner chair, Centre Pompidou, Paris     Hans Wegner chair, Centre Pompidou, Paris     The Round Chair (1949)     The Round Chair (1949)     The Peacock Chair     The Peacock Chair Grete Jalk (1920–2006) After training as a cabinetmaker, she studied at the Danish Design School in 1946, while receiving additional instruction from Kaare Klint at the Royal Academy's Furniture School. Inspired by Alvar Aalto's laminated bent-plywood furniture and Charles Eames' moulded plywood designs, she began to develop her own boldly curved models in the 1950s. In 1963, she won a Daily Mirror competition with her "He Chair" and "She Chair". With the help of furniture manufacturer Poul Jeppesen, she went on to design simpler models with clear, comfortable lines, which became popular both in Denmark and the United States thanks to their competitive prices. Jalk also edited the Danish design magazine Mobilia and compiled an authoritative four-volume work on Danish furniture.[34][35]     Grete Jalk: plywood GJ Chair (1963)     Grete Jalk: plywood GJ Chair (1963)     Grete Jalk's GJ Table (1963)     Grete Jalk's GJ Table (1963) Verner Panton (1926–1998) On graduating from the Royal Academy in 1951, Panton worked briefly with Arne Jacobsen. During the 1960s, he designed furniture, lamps and textiles with an imaginative combination of innovative materials, playful shapes and bold colours. Among his earliest designs were the Bachelor Chair and Tivoli Chair (1955), both produced by Fritz Hansen, but he is remembered above all for his Panton Chair (1960), the world's first one-piece moulded plastic chair.[36] Sometimes referred to as a pop artist, unlike the majority of his colleagues, he continued to be successful in the 1970s, not only with furniture but with interior designs including lighting.[37][38]     Heart Cone chairs (1959)     Heart Cone chairs (1959)     Panton Chair (1960)     Panton Chair (1960)     Flowerpot Lamps (designed 1968)     Flowerpot Lamps (designed 1968)     Moon Lamp (designed 1967)     Moon Lamp (designed 1967) Poul Kjærholm (1929–1980) In addition to an academic career at the School of Arts and Crafts and at the Institute of Design at the Royal Academy, Kjærholm always took full account of the importance of place a piece of furniture had in surrounding architectural space. Functionality took second place to his artistic approach which was centred on elegantly clean lines and attention to detail. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he worked essentially with steel, combining it with wood, leather, cane or marble. Kjærhom developed a close understanding with the cabinetmaker E. Kold Christensen who produced most of his designs. Today a wide selection of his furniture is produced by Fritz Hansen. Kjærholm's work can be seen in New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.[39]     PK0 chair, designed 1952 but first produced 1997     PK0 chair, designed 1952 but first produced 1997     Hammock Chair 25 (1965)     Hammock Chair 25 (1965)     PK9 Chair (1960)     PK9 Chair (1960)     Kjærholm's chairs in the Louisiana Museum     Kjærholm's chairs in the Louisiana Museum Jens Risom (1916–2016) Often credited with having introduced Danish Modern design to America, Risom was a graduate of Copenhagen School of Industrial Arts and Design. He emigrated to the United States in 1939 to study American design, working first as a textile designer and later as a freelance furniture designer. In 1941 he joined Hans Knoll at the Hans Knoll Furniture Company, and together they toured the country promoting Risom's designs. A true minimalist, Risom worked mainly in wood because it was cheap, and one of his most successful pieces, Knoll Chair #654 (which is still being manufactured)[40] was made with a seat of nylon webbing that had been discarded by the army. Other contributors Many other designers and cabinetmakers contributed to the Danish modern scene. Several worked in partnerships, including:[41]     Tove and Edvard Kindt-Larsen (1901–1982), both students of Kaare Klint, working with contrasting materials[42]     Peter Hvidt (1916–1986) and Orla Mølgaard-Nielsen (1907–1993), remembered for the Ax Chair (1950) and the X Chair (1960)     Ejner Larsen (1917–1987) and Aksel Bender Madsen (1916–2000) working mainly with teak and rosewood     Preben Fabricius (1931–1984) and Jørgen Kastholm (1938–2007), demonstrating originality with their Horseshoe Chair (1962) A number of cabinetmakers also developed skills in design. They include:     Jacob Kjær (1896–1957), famous for his FN Chair, who also produced the furniture he designed     Frits Henningsen (c. 1900 – c. 1970), who designed models produced at his own workshop in Copenhagen[43] Several other individuals made important contributions:     Mogens Koch (1898–1992), remembered for his bookcases (1928) and folding chair (1932)     Jørgen Gammelgaard (1938–1991), known for his Tip-Top lamp series.     Rigmor Andersen (1903–1995), a versatile designer, maintaining the strict traditions of Klint's furniture school.[44]     Peder Moos (1906–1991), designed and built individual pieces on request, with his own special finish[45]     Kurt Østervig (1912–1986), trained in Odense, designed furniture for ships and cinemas as well as for the home.[46]     Helge Vestergaard Jensen (1917–1987), who produced the Daybed (1955)     Hans Olsen (1919–1992), who experimented with materials and form, creating a number of items in his own distinctive style.[47]     Nanna Ditzel (1923–2005), pioneering new materials and production techniques, also working with textiles and jewelry     Poul Volther (1923–2001), remembered above all for his iconic Corona Chair.[48]     Arne Vodder (1926–2009), a close friend and partner of Finn Juhl, his furniture sold particularly well in the United States.[49]     Bodil Kjær (born 1932), architect and interior designer who created a successful series of office furniture in the 1960s.[50]     Bernt Petersen (born 1937), notable for his small, light stool (1959) with beautifully shaped legs and for his seating in theatres and concert halls.[51] A number of Danish textile designers worked closely with furniture designers to help shape the look of Danish modernism, for example by creating textiles for cushions, sofas, and beds. These include Lis Ahlmann and Vibeke Klint, among others. Danish Modern chairs at the Danish Design Center in Copenhagen In popular culture     The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern (1967): The second novel of American writer Lilian Jackson Braun's The Cat Who...     In The Brady Bunch Season 2, Episode 18 — in "Our Son, the Man" the family house's den is referred to as being Danish modern.     In House, M.D. Season 3, Episode 6 — in "Que Sera Sera" House's interior design preferences (as well as his patient, George's) are called Danish modern." (wikipedia.org) "Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, and social organization which reflected the newly emerging industrial world, including features such as urbanization, architecture, new technologies, and war. Artists attempted to depart from traditional forms of art, which they considered outdated or obsolete. The poet Ezra Pound's 1934 injunction to "Make it New" was the touchstone of the movement's approach. Modernist innovations included abstract art, the stream-of-consciousness novel, montage cinema, atonal and twelve-tone music, divisionist painting and modern architecture. Modernism explicitly rejected the ideology of realism[a][2][3] and made use of the works of the past by the employment of reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parody.[b][c][4] Modernism also rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and many modernists also rejected religious belief.[5][d] A notable characteristic of modernism is self-consciousness concerning artistic and social traditions, which often led to experimentation with form, along with the use of techniques that drew attention to the processes and materials used in creating works of art.[7] While some scholars see modernism continuing into the 21st century, others see it evolving into late modernism or high modernism.[8] Postmodernism is a departure from modernism and rejects its basic assumptions.[9][10][11] Definition Some commentators define modernism as a mode of thinking—one or more philosophically defined characteristics, like self-consciousness or self-reference, that run across all the novelties in the arts and the disciplines.[12] More common, especially in the West, are those who see it as a socially progressive trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment with the aid of practical experimentation, scientific knowledge, or technology.[e] From this perspective, modernism encouraged the re-examination of every aspect of existence, from commerce to philosophy, with the goal of finding that which was holding back progress, and replacing it with new ways of reaching the same end. According to Roger Griffin, modernism can be defined as a broad cultural, social, or political initiative, sustained by the ethos of "the temporality of the new". Modernism sought to restore, Griffin writes, a "sense of sublime order and purpose to the contemporary world, thereby counteracting the (perceived) erosion of an overarching 'nomos', or 'sacred canopy', under the fragmenting and secularizing impact of modernity." Therefore, phenomena apparently unrelated to each other such as "Expressionism, Futurism, vitalism, Theosophy, psychoanalysis, nudism, eugenics, utopian town planning and architecture, modern dance, Bolshevism, organic nationalism – and even the cult of self-sacrifice that sustained the hecatomb of the First World War – disclose a common cause and psychological matrix in the fight against (perceived) decadence." All of them embody bids to access a "supra-personal experience of reality", in which individuals believed they could transcend their own mortality, and eventually that they had ceased to be victims of history to become instead its creators.... In the 1960s after abstract expressionism Main articles: Post-painterly abstraction, Color field, Lyrical abstraction, Arte Povera, Process art, and Western painting In abstract painting during the 1950s and 1960s several new directions like hard-edge painting and other forms of geometric abstraction began to appear in artist studios and in radical avant-garde circles as a reaction against the subjectivism of abstract expressionism. Clement Greenberg became the voice of post-painterly abstraction when he curated an influential exhibition of new painting that toured important art museums throughout the United States in 1964. color field painting, hard-edge painting and lyrical abstraction[120] emerged as radical new directions. By the late 1960s however, postminimalism, process art and Arte Povera[121] also emerged as revolutionary concepts and movements that encompassed both painting and sculpture, via lyrical abstraction and the postminimalist movement, and in early conceptual art.[121] Process art as inspired by Pollock enabled artists to experiment with and make use of a diverse encyclopedia of style, content, material, placement, sense of time, and plastic and real space. Nancy Graves, Ronald Davis, Howard Hodgkin, Larry Poons, Jannis Kounellis, Brice Marden, Colin McCahon, Bruce Nauman, Richard Tuttle, Alan Saret, Walter Darby Bannard, Lynda Benglis, Dan Christensen, Larry Zox, Ronnie Landfield, Eva Hesse, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra, Pat Lipsky, Sam Gilliam, Mario Merz and Peter Reginato were some of the younger artists who emerged during the era of late modernism that spawned the heyday of the art of the late 1960s.[122] Pop art Eduardo Paolozzi. I was a Rich Man's Plaything (1947) is considered the initial standard bearer of "pop art" and first to display the word "pop". Main articles: Pop art and Western painting In 1962 the Sidney Janis Gallery mounted The New Realists, the first major pop art group exhibition in an uptown art gallery in New York City. Janis mounted the exhibition in a 57th Street storefront near his gallery. The show sent shockwaves through the New York School and reverberated worldwide. Earlier in England in 1958 the term "Pop Art" was used by Lawrence Alloway to describe paintings that celebrated the consumerism of the post World War II era. This movement rejected abstract expressionism and its focus on the hermeneutic and psychological interior in favor of art that depicted and often celebrated material consumer culture, advertising, and the iconography of the mass production age. The early works of David Hockney and the works of Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi (who created the groundbreaking I was a Rich Man's Plaything, 1947) are considered seminal examples in the movement. Meanwhile, in the downtown scene in New York's East Village 10th Street galleries, artists were formulating an American version of pop art. Claes Oldenburg had his storefront, and the Green Gallery on 57th Street began to show the works of Tom Wesselmann and James Rosenquist. Later Leo Castelli exhibited the works of other American artists, including those of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein for most of their careers. There is a connection between the radical works of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, the rebellious Dadaists with a sense of humor, and pop artists like Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, and Roy Lichtenstein, whose paintings reproduce the look of Ben-Day dots, a technique used in commercial reproduction. Minimalism Main articles: Minimalism, Minimal music, Literary minimalism, Postminimalism, and 20th-century Western painting Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, wherein artists intend to expose the essence or identity of a subject through eliminating all nonessential forms, features, or concepts. Minimalism is any design or style wherein the simplest and fewest elements are used to create the maximum effect. As a specific movement in the arts it is identified with developments in post–World War II Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with this movement include Donald Judd, John McCracken, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris, Ronald Bladen, Anne Truitt, and Frank Stella.[123] It derives from the reductive aspects of modernism and is often interpreted as a reaction against Abstract expressionism and a bridge to Postminimal art practices. By the early 1960s minimalism emerged as an abstract movement in art (with roots in the geometric abstraction of Kazimir Malevich,[124] the Bauhaus and Piet Mondrian) that rejected the idea of relational and subjective painting, the complexity of abstract expressionist surfaces, and the emotional zeitgeist and polemics present in the arena of action painting. Minimalism argued that extreme simplicity could capture all of the sublime representation needed in art. Minimalism is variously construed either as a precursor to postmodernism, or as a postmodern movement itself. In the latter perspective, early minimalism yielded advanced Modernist works, but the movement partially abandoned this direction when some artists like Robert Morris changed direction in favor of the anti-form movement. Hal Foster, in his essay The Crux of Minimalism,[125] examines the extent to which Donald Judd and Robert Morris both acknowledge and exceed Greenbergian Modernism in their published definitions of minimalism.[125] He argues that minimalism is not a "dead end" of Modernism, but a "paradigm shift toward postmodern practices that continue to be elaborated today."" (wikipedia.org) "A sunburst is a design or figure commonly used in architectural ornaments and design patterns and possibly pattern books. It consists of rays or "beams" radiating out from a central disk in the manner of sunbeams.[1] Sometimes part of a sunburst, a semicircular or semi-elliptical shape, is used. Traditional sunburst motifs usually show the rays narrowing as they get further from the centre; from the later 19th century they often get wider, as in the Japanese Rising Sun Flag, which is more appropriate in optical terms. In architecture, the sunburst is often used in window designs, including fanlights and rose windows, as well as in decorative motifs. The sunburst motif is characteristic of Baroque church metalwork, especially monstrances and votive crowns, and Art Deco and Art Nouveau styles as well as church architecture. A sunburst is frequently used in emblems and military decorations. Sunbursts can appear in photographs when taking a picture of the Sun through the diaphragm of a lens set to a narrow aperture due to diffraction; the effect is often called a sunstar.[2] In information visualization, a sunburst diagram or sunburst chart is a multilevel pie chart used to represent the proportion of different values found at each level in a hierarchy. Badges The sunburst was the badge of king Edward III of England, and has thus become the badge of office of Windsor Herald. Gallery     A traditional "solar" monstrance     A traditional "solar" monstrance     Baroque sunburst crown on a Spanish statue of the Virgin Mary     Baroque sunburst crown on a Spanish statue of the Virgin Mary     Sunburst chart representing disk usage in a file system     Sunburst chart representing disk usage in a file system     War flag of the Imperial Japanese Army (army's version of the Rising Sun Flag)     War flag of the Imperial Japanese Army (army's version of the Rising Sun Flag)     Blue Sky with a White Sun, flag of the Chinese Nationalist Party     Blue Sky with a White Sun, flag of the Chinese Nationalist Party     The Star of India, official emblem of British India     The Star of India, official emblem of British India     Terra cotta sunburst art deco design in gold at the Eastern Columbia Building in Los Angeles     Terra cotta sunburst art deco design in gold at the Eastern Columbia Building in Los Angeles     Bottom of stairs, Burbank City Hall, Burbank, California     Bottom of stairs, Burbank City Hall, Burbank, California     Chrysler Building top     Chrysler Building top     Traditional Irish sunburst flag, used since the 18th century and associated with the mythical warriors, the Fianna     Traditional Irish sunburst flag, used since the 18th century and associated with the mythical warriors, the Fianna     Modern sunburst flag, used by Irish nationalist groups     Modern sunburst flag, used by Irish nationalist groups" (wikipedai.org) "In geometry, a star polygon is a type of non-convex polygon. Regular star polygons have been studied in depth; while star polygons in general appear not to have been formally defined, certain notable ones can arise through truncation operations on regular simple and star polygons. Branko Grünbaum identified two primary definitions used by Johannes Kepler, one being the regular star polygons with intersecting edges that don't generate new vertices, and the second being simple isotoxal concave polygons.[1] The first usage is included in polygrams which includes polygons like the pentagram but also compound figures like the hexagram. One definition of a star polygon, used in turtle graphics, is a polygon having 2 or more turns (turning number and density), like in spirolaterals.[2] Names Star polygon names combine a numeral prefix, such as penta-, with the Greek suffix -gram (in this case generating the word pentagram). The prefix is normally a Greek cardinal, but synonyms using other prefixes exist. For example, a nine-pointed polygon or enneagram is also known as a nonagram, using the ordinal nona from Latin.[citation needed] The -gram suffix derives from γραμμή (grammḗ) meaning a line.[3] Regular star polygon Further information: Regular polygon § Regular star polygons Regular star polygon 5-2.svg {5/2}     Regular star polygon 7-2.svg {7/2}     Regular star polygon 7-3.svg {7/3}... Regular convex and star polygons with 3 to 12 vertices labelled with their Schläfli symbols A "regular star polygon" is a self-intersecting, equilateral equiangular polygon. A regular star polygon is denoted by its Schläfli symbol {p/q}, where p (the number of vertices) and q (the density) are relatively prime (they share no factors) and q ≥ 2. The density of a polygon can also be called its turning number, the sum of the turn angles of all the vertices divided by 360°. The symmetry group of {n/k} is dihedral group Dn of order 2n, independent of k. Regular star polygons were first studied systematically by Thomas Bradwardine, and later Johannes Kepler.[4] Construction via vertex connection Regular star polygons can be created by connecting one vertex of a simple, regular, p-sided polygon to another, non-adjacent vertex and continuing the process until the original vertex is reached again.[5] Alternatively for integers p and q, it can be considered as being constructed by connecting every qth point out of p points regularly spaced in a circular placement.[6] For instance, in a regular pentagon, a five-pointed star can be obtained by drawing a line from the first to the third vertex, from the third vertex to the fifth vertex, from the fifth vertex to the second vertex, from the second vertex to the fourth vertex, and from the fourth vertex to the first vertex. If q is greater than half of p, then the construction will result in the same polygon as p-q; connecting every third vertex of the pentagon will yield an identical result to that of connecting every second vertex. However, the vertices will be reached in the opposite direction, which makes a difference when retrograde polygons are incorporated in higher-dimensional polytopes. For example, an antiprism formed from a prograde pentagram {5/2} results in a pentagrammic antiprism; the analogous construction from a retrograde "crossed pentagram" {5/3} results in a pentagrammic crossed-antiprism. Another example is the tetrahemihexahedron, which can be seen as a "crossed triangle" {3/2} cuploid. Degenerate regular star polygons If p and q are not coprime, a degenerate polygon will result with coinciding vertices and edges. For example {6/2} will appear as a triangle, but can be labeled with two sets of vertices 1-6. This should be seen not as two overlapping triangles, but a double-winding of a single unicursal hexagon.[7][8]     Doubly wound hexagon.svg Construction via stellation Alternatively, a regular star polygon can also be obtained as a sequence of stellations of a convex regular core polygon. Constructions based on stellation also allow for regular polygonal compounds to be obtained in cases where the density and amount of vertices are not coprime. When constructing star polygons from stellation, however, if q is greater than p/2, the lines will instead diverge infinitely, and if q is equal to p/2, the lines will be parallel, with both resulting in no further intersection in Euclidean space. However, it may be possible to construct some such polygons in spherical space, similarly to the monogon and digon; such polygons do not yet appear to have been studied in detail. Simple isotoxal star polygons When the intersecting lines are removed, the star polygons are no longer regular, but can be seen as simple concave isotoxal 2n-gons, alternating vertices at two different radii, which do not necessarily have to match the regular star polygon angles. Branko Grünbaum in Tilings and Patterns represents these stars as |n/d| that match the geometry of polygram {n/d} with a notation {nα} more generally, representing an n-sided star with each internal angle α<180°(1-2/n) degrees.[1] For |n/d|, the inner vertices have an exterior angle, β, as 360°(d-1)/n. Simple isotoxal star examples |n/d| {nα}       {330°}       {630°}     |5/2| {536°}       {445°}     |8/3| {845°}     |6/2| {660°}       {572°} α     30°     36°     45°     60°     72° β     150°     90°     72°     135°     90°     120°     144° Isotoxal star     Isotoxal star triangle 12-5.svg     Isotoxal star hexagon 12-5.png     Stjärna.svg     Isotoxal square star 8-3.svg     Octagonal star.png     Roundel of Israel – Low Visibility – Type 2.svg     Wide pentagram.png Related polygram   {n/d}       Regular star polygon 12-5.svg {12/5}     Alfkors.svg {5/2}     Regular star polygon 8-3.svg {8/3}     Hexagram.svg 2{3} Star figure     Decagram 10 3.png {10/3} Examples in tilings Further information: Uniform tiling § Uniform tilings using star polygons These polygons are often seen in tiling patterns. The parametric angle α (degrees or radians) can be chosen to match internal angles of neighboring polygons in a tessellation pattern. Johannes Kepler in his 1619 work Harmonices Mundi, including among other period tilings, nonperiodic tilings like that three regular pentagons, and a regular star pentagon (5.5.5.5/2) can fit around a vertex, and related to modern Penrose tilings.[9] Example tilings with isotoxal star polygons[10] Star triangles     Star squares     Star hexagons     Star octagons Triangle and triangular star tiling.png (3.3* α.3.3** α)     Octagon star square tiling.png (8.4* π/4.8.4* π/4)     Hexagon hexagram tiling.png (6.6* π/3.6.6* π/3)     Gyrated truncated hexagonal tiling2.png (3.6* π/3.6** π/3)     Trihexagonal tiling stars.png (3.6.6* π/3.6)     Hexagon hexagram tiling2.png Not edge-to-edge Interiors     This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) The interior of a star polygon may be treated in different ways. Three such treatments are illustrated for a pentagram. Branko Grünbaum and Geoffrey Shephard consider two of them, as regular star polygons and concave isogonal 2n-gons.[9] Pentagram interpretations.svg These include:     Where a side occurs, one side is treated as outside and the other as inside. This is shown in the left hand illustration and commonly occurs in computer vector graphics rendering.     The number of times that the polygonal curve winds around a given region determines its density. The exterior is given a density of 0, and any region of density > 0 is treated as internal. This is shown in the central illustration and commonly occurs in the mathematical treatment of polyhedra. (However, for non-orientable polyhedra density can only be considered modulo 2 and hence the first treatment is sometimes used instead in those cases for consistency.)     Where a line may be drawn between two sides, the region in which the line lies is treated as inside the figure. This is shown in the right hand illustration and commonly occurs when making a physical model. When the area of the polygon is calculated, each of these approaches yields a different answer. In art and culture Main article: Star polygons in art and culture     This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Star polygons feature prominently in art and culture. Such polygons may or may not be regular but they are always highly symmetrical. Examples include:     The {5/2} star pentagon (pentagram) is also known as a pentalpha or pentangle, and historically has been considered by many magical and religious cults to have occult significance.     The {7/2} and {7/3} star polygons (heptagrams) also have occult significance, particularly in the Kabbalah and in Wicca.     The {8/3} star polygon (octagram) is a frequent geometrical motif in Mughal Islamic art and architecture; the first is on the emblem of Azerbaijan.     An eleven pointed star called the hendecagram was used on the tomb of Shah Nemat Ollah Vali." (wikipedia.org) "A Moravian star (German: Herrnhuter Stern) is an illuminated Advent, Christmas, or Epiphany decoration popular in Germany and in places in Europe and America where there are Moravian congregations, notably the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania and the area surrounding Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The stars take their English name from the Moravian Church, originating in Moravia. In Germany, they are known as Herrnhut stars, named after the Moravian Mother Community in Saxony, Germany, where they were first commercially produced. History The first Moravian star is known to have originated in the 1830s at the Moravian Boys' School in Niesky, Germany, as a geometry lesson or project. The first mention is of a 110-point star for the 50th anniversary of the Paedagogium (classical school for boys) in Niesky. Around 1880, Peter Verbeek, an alumnus of the school, began making the stars and their instructions available for sale through his bookstore.[1][2] His son Harry went on to found the Herrnhut Star Factory, which was the main source of stars until World War I. Although heavily damaged at the end of World War II, the Star Factory resumed manufacturing them. Briefly taken over by the government of East Germany in the 1950s, the factory was returned to the Moravian Church-owned Abraham Dürninger Company, which continues to make the stars in Herrnhut.[citation needed] Other star-making companies and groups have sprung up since then. Some Moravian congregations have congregation members who build and sell the stars as fund raisers. Cultural importance The star was soon adopted throughout the Moravian Church as an Advent symbol. At the time, Moravian congregations were inhabited exclusively by Moravians and the church owned and controlled all property. Daily life was centered on their Christian faith and there was no distinction between the secular and the sacred, even in their daily activities. Everything was considered worship. It did not take long for the stars to go from a pastime for children to an occupation for the congregation. Moravian stars continue to be a popular Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany decoration throughout the world, even in areas without a significant Moravian Church presence. The stars are often seen in Moravian nativity and Christmas village displays as a representation of the Star of Bethlehem. They are properly displayed from the first Sunday in Advent (the fourth Sunday before Christmas) until the Festival of Epiphany (January 6). Large advent stars shine in the dome of the Frauenkirche in Dresden and over the altar of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. The city of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, which traces its origins to Salem has Moravian origins dating to 1766, uses the Moravian star as their official Christmas street decoration. In addition, a 9.5-meter or 31-foot Moravian star, one of the largest in the world, sits atop the North Tower of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center during the Advent and Christmas seasons.[3] Another star sits under Wake Forest University's Wait Chapel during the Advent and Christmas seasons as well. The use of the stars during the Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany seasons is also a tradition in the West Indies, Greenland, Suriname, Labrador, Central America, South and East Africa, Ladakh in India, and in parts of Scandinavia: wherever the Moravian Church has sent missionaries. Types of stars Augmented rhombicuboctahedron (26-points) The original Moravian star as manufactured in Herrnhut since 1897 exists only in a 26-point form, composed of eighteen square and eight triangular cone-shaped points.[4] The 26th point is missing and used for mounting. This shape is technically known as an augmented rhombicuboctahedron. Each face of the geometric solid in the middle, the rhombicuboctahedron, serves as the base for one of the pyramid augmentations or starburst points. This is the most commonly seen and most widely available form of Christmas star. Other forms of Christmas star exist, which differ from the original Herrnhut Moravian star. No matter how many points a star has, it has a symmetrical shape based on polyhedra. There are other stars with 20, 32, 50, 62 and 110 points that are commonly hand-made. The variety comes from various ways of forming the polyhedron that provides a base for the points—using an octagonal face instead of a square face, for example. The common original Herrnhut Moravian star becomes a 50-point star when the squares and triangles that normally make up the faces of the polyhedron become octagons and hexagons. This leaves a 4-sided trapezoidal hole in the corners of the faces which is then filled with an irregular four sided point. These 4-sided points form a "starburst" in the midst of an otherwise regular 26-point star. Froebel stars, which are paper decorations made from four folded strips of paper, are sometimes inaccurately also called Moravian stars, among many other names." (wikipedia.org) "Art Deco, short for the French Arts Décoratifs, and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I),[1] and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. Through styling and design of the exterior and interior of anything from large structures to small objects, including how people look (clothing, fashion and jewelry), Art Deco has influenced bridges, buildings (from skyscrapers to cinemas), ships, ocean liners, trains, cars, trucks, buses, furniture, and everyday objects like radios and vacuum cleaners.[2] It got its name after the 1925 Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes (International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts) held in Paris.[3] Art Deco combined modern styles with fine craftsmanship and rich materials. During its heyday, it represented luxury, glamour, exuberance, and faith in social and technological progress. From its outset, Art Deco was influenced by the bold geometric forms of Cubism and the Vienna Secession; the bright colours of Fauvism and of the Ballets Russes; the updated craftsmanship of the furniture of the eras of Louis XVI and Louis Philippe I; and the exoticized styles of China, Japan, India, Persia, ancient Egypt and Maya art. It featured rare and expensive materials, such as, and exquisite craftsmanship. The Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, and other skyscrapers of New York City built during the 1920s and 1930s are monuments to the style. In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, Art Deco became more subdued. New materials arrived, including chrome plating, stainless steel and plastic. A sleeker form of the style, called Streamline Moderne, appeared in the 1930s, featuring curving forms and smooth, polished surfaces.[4] Art Deco is one of the first truly international styles, but its dominance ended with the beginning of World War II and the rise of the strictly functional and unadorned styles of modern architecture and the International Style of architecture that followed.[5] Etymology Art Deco took its name, short for arts décoratifs, from the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris in 1925,[3] though the diverse styles that characterised it had already appeared in Paris and Brussels before World War I. Arts décoratifs was first used in France in 1858 in the Bulletin de la Société française de photographie.[6] In 1868, the Le Figaro newspaper used the term objets d'art décoratifs for objects for stage scenery created for the Théâtre de l'Opéra.[7][8][9] In 1875, furniture designers, textile, jewellers, glass-workers, and other craftsmen were officially given the status of artists by the French government. In response, the École royale gratuite de dessin (Royal Free School of Design), founded in 1766 under King Louis XVI to train artists and artisans in crafts relating to the fine arts, was renamed the École nationale des arts décoratifs (National School of Decorative Arts). It took its present name, ENSAD (École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs), in 1927. At the 1925 Exposition, architect Le Corbusier wrote a series of articles about the exhibition for his magazine L'Esprit Nouveau, under the title "1925 EXPO. ARTS. DÉCO.", which were combined into a book, L'art décoratif d'aujourd'hui (Decorative Art Today). The book was a spirited attack on the excesses of the colourful, lavish objects at the Exposition, and on the idea that practical objects such as furniture should not have any decoration at all; his conclusion was that "Modern decoration has no decoration".[10] The actual term art déco did not appear in print until 1966, in the title of the first modern exhibition on the subject, held by the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, Les Années 25 : Art déco, Bauhaus, Stijl, Esprit nouveau, which covered the variety of major styles in the 1920s and 1930s.[11] The term was then used in a 1966 newspaper article by Hillary Gelson in The Times (London, 12 November), describing the different styles at the exhibit.[12] Art Deco gained currency as a broadly applied stylistic label in 1968 when historian Bevis Hillier published the first major academic book on it, Art Deco of the 20s and 30s.[2] He noted that the term was already being used by art dealers, and cites The Times (2 November 1966) and an essay named Les Arts Déco in Elle magazine (November 1967) as examples.[13] In 1971, he organized an exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which he details in his book The World of Art Deco.[14][15] Origins Society of Decorative Artists (1901–1945) The emergence of Art Deco was closely connected with the rise in status of decorative artists, who until late in the 19th century were considered simply as artisans. The term arts décoratifs had been invented in 1875, giving the designers of furniture, textiles, and other decoration official status. The Société des artistes décorateurs (Society of Decorative Artists), or SAD, was founded in 1901, and decorative artists were given the same rights of authorship as painters and sculptors. A similar movement developed in Italy. The first international exhibition devoted entirely to the decorative arts, the Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Decorativa Moderna, was held in Turin in 1902. Several new magazines devoted to decorative arts were founded in Paris, including Arts et décoration and L'Art décoratif moderne. Decorative arts sections were introduced into the annual salons of the Sociéte des artistes français, and later in the Salon d'Automne. French nationalism also played a part in the resurgence of decorative arts, as French designers felt challenged by the increasing exports of less expensive German furnishings. In 1911, SAD proposed a major new international exposition of decorative arts in 1912. No copies of old styles would be permitted, only modern works. The exhibit was postponed until 1914; and then, because of the war, until 1925, when it gave its name to the whole family of styles known as "Déco".... Decoration and motifs     Iron fireplace screen, Rose Iron Works (Cleveland, Ohio) (1930)     Iron fireplace screen, Rose Iron Works (Cleveland, Ohio) (1930)     Elevator doors of the Chrysler Building (New York City, N.Y.), by William Van Alen (1927–30)     Elevator doors of the Chrysler Building (New York City, N.Y.), by William Van Alen (1927–30)     Sunrise motif from the Wisconsin Gas Building (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) (1930)     Sunrise motif from the Wisconsin Gas Building (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) (1930)     Detail of mosaic facade of Paramount Theatre (Oakland, California) (1931)     Detail of mosaic facade of Paramount Theatre (Oakland, California) (1931) Decoration in the Art Deco period went through several distinct phases. Between 1910 and 1920, as Art Nouveau was exhausted, design styles saw a return to tradition, particularly in the work of Paul Iribe. In 1912 André Vera published an essay in the magazine L'Art Décoratif calling for a return to the craftsmanship and materials of earlier centuries, and using a new repertoire of forms taken from nature, particularly baskets and garlands of fruit and flowers. A second tendency of Art Deco, also from 1910 to 1920, was inspired by the bright colours of the artistic movement known as the Fauves and by the colourful costumes and sets of the Ballets Russes. This style was often expressed with exotic materials such as sharkskin, mother of pearl,  tinted leather, lacquered and painted wood, and decorative inlays on furniture that emphasized its geometry. This period of the style reached its high point in the 1925 Paris Exposition of Decorative Arts. In the late 1920s and the 1930s, the decorative style changed, inspired by new materials and technologies. It became sleeker and less ornamental. Furniture, like architecture, began to have rounded edges and to take on a polished, streamlined look, taken from the streamline modern style. New materials, such as nickel or chrome-plated steel, aluminium and bakelite, an early form of plastic, began to appear in furniture and decoration.[103] Throughout the Art Deco period, and particularly in the 1930s, the motifs of the décor expressed the function of the building. Theatres were decorated with sculpture which illustrated music, dance, and excitement; power companies showed sunrises, the Chrysler building showed stylized hood ornaments; The friezes of Palais de la Porte Dorée at the 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition showed the faces of the different nationalities of French colonies. The Streamline style made it appear that the building itself was in motion. The WPA murals of the 1930s featured ordinary people; factory workers, postal workers, families and farmers, in place of classical heroes.... Streamline was a variety of Art Deco which emerged during the mid-1930s. It was influenced by modern aerodynamic principles developed for aviation and ballistics to reduce aerodynamic drag at high velocities. The bullet shapes were applied by designers to cars, trains, ships, and even objects not intended to move, such as refrigerators, gas pumps, and buildings.[60] One of the first production vehicles in this style was the Chrysler Airflow of 1933. It was unsuccessful commercially, but the beauty and functionality of its design set a precedent; meant modernity. It continued to be used in car design well after World War II.[113][114][115][116] New industrial materials began to influence the design of cars and household objects. These included aluminium, chrome, and bakelite, an early form of plastic. Bakelite could be easily moulded into different forms, and soon was used in telephones, radios and other appliances. Grand dining room of the ocean liner SS Normandie by Pierre Patout (1935); bas-reliefs by Raymond Delamarre Ocean liners also adopted a style of Art Deco, known in French as the Style Paquebot, or "Ocean Liner Style". The most famous example was the SS Normandie, which made its first transatlantic trip in 1935. It was designed particularly to bring wealthy Americans to Paris to shop. The cabins and salons featured the latest Art Deco furnishings and decoration. The Grand Salon of the ship, which was the restaurant for first-class passengers, was bigger than the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles. It was illuminated by electric lights within twelve pillars of Lalique crystal; thirty-six matching pillars lined the walls. This was one of the earliest examples of illumination being directly integrated into architecture. The style of ships was soon adapted to buildings. A notable example is found on the San Francisco waterfront, where the Maritime Museum building, built as a public bath in 1937, resembles a ferryboat, with ship railings and rounded corners. The Star Ferry Terminal in Hong Kong also used a variation of the style." (wikipedia.org) "Wood is a structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic material – a natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin that resists compression. Wood is sometimes defined as only the secondary xylem in the stems of trees,[1] or it is defined more broadly to include the same type of tissue elsewhere such as in the roots of trees or shrubs.[citation needed] In a living tree it performs a support function, enabling woody plants to grow large or to stand up by themselves. It also conveys water and nutrients between the leaves, other growing tissues, and the roots. Wood may also refer to other plant materials with comparable properties, and to material engineered from wood, or woodchips or fiber. Wood has been used for thousands of years for fuel, as a construction material, for making tools and weapons, furniture and paper. More recently it emerged as a feedstock for the production of purified cellulose and its derivatives, such as cellophane and cellulose acetate. As of 2020, the growing stock of forests worldwide was about 557 billion cubic meters.[2] As an abundant, carbon-neutral[3] renewable resource, woody materials have been of intense interest as a source of renewable energy. In 2008, approximately 3.97 billion cubic meters of wood were harvested.[2] Dominant uses were for furniture and building construction.[4] History A 2011 discovery in the Canadian province of New Brunswick yielded the earliest known plants to have grown wood, approximately 395 to 400 million years ago.[5][6] Wood can be dated by carbon dating and in some species by dendrochronology to determine when a wooden object was created. People have used wood for thousands of years for many purposes, including as a fuel or as a construction material for making houses, tools, weapons, furniture, packaging, artworks, and paper. Known constructions using wood date back ten thousand years. Buildings like the European Neolithic long house were made primarily of wood. Recent use of wood has been enhanced by the addition of steel and bronze into construction.[7] The year-to-year variation in tree-ring widths and isotopic abundances gives clues to the prevailing climate at the time a tree was cut.... Color The wood of coast redwood is distinctively red. In species which show a distinct difference between heartwood and sapwood the natural color of heartwood is usually darker than that of the sapwood, and very frequently the contrast is conspicuous (see section of yew log above). This is produced by deposits in the heartwood of chemical substances, so that a dramatic color variation does not imply a significant difference in the mechanical properties of heartwood and sapwood, although there may be a marked biochemical difference between the two. Some experiments on very resinous longleaf pine specimens indicate an increase in strength, due to the resin which increases the strength when dry. Such resin-saturated heartwood is called "fat lighter". Structures built of fat lighter are almost impervious to rot and termites, and very flammable. Tree stumps of old longleaf pines are often dug, split into small pieces and sold as kindling for fires. Stumps thus dug may actually remain a century or more since being cut. Spruce impregnated with crude resin and dried is also greatly increased in strength thereby. Since the latewood of a growth ring is usually darker in color than the earlywood, this fact may be used in visually judging the density, and therefore the hardness and strength of the material. This is particularly the case with coniferous woods. In ring-porous woods the vessels of the early wood often appear on a finished surface as darker than the denser latewood, though on cross sections of heartwood the reverse is commonly true. Otherwise the color of wood is no indication of strength. Abnormal discoloration of wood often denotes a diseased condition, indicating unsoundness. The black check in western hemlock is the result of insect attacks. The reddish-brown streaks so common in hickory and certain other woods are mostly the result of injury by birds. The discoloration is merely an indication of an injury, and in all probability does not of itself affect the properties of the wood. Certain rot-producing fungi impart to wood characteristic colors which thus become symptomatic of weakness. Ordinary sap-staining is due to fungal growth, but does not necessarily produce a weakening effect.... Engineered products Main article: Engineered wood Engineered wood products, glued building products "engineered" for application-specific performance requirements, are often used in construction and industrial applications. Glued engineered wood products are manufactured by bonding together wood strands, veneers, lumber or other forms of wood fiber with glue to form a larger, more efficient composite structural unit.[44] These products include glued laminated timber (glulam), wood structural panels (including plywood, oriented strand board and composite panels), laminated veneer lumber (LVL) and other structural composite lumber (SCL) products, parallel strand lumber, and I-joists.[44] Approximately 100 million cubic meters of wood was consumed for this purpose in 1991.[4] The trends suggest that particle board and fiber board will overtake plywood. Wood unsuitable for construction in its native form may be broken down mechanically (into fibers or chips) or chemically (into cellulose) and used as a raw material for other building materials, such as engineered wood, as well as chipboard, hardboard, and medium-density fiberboard (MDF). Such wood derivatives are widely used: wood fibers are an important component of most paper, and cellulose is used as a component of some synthetic materials. Wood derivatives can be used for kinds of flooring, for example laminate flooring. ... Wood-plastic composites (WPCs) are composite materials made of wood fiber/wood flour and thermoplastic(s) such as polythene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), or polylactic acid (PLA). In addition to wood fiber and plastic, WPCs can also contain other ligno-cellulosic and/or inorganic filler materials. WPCs are a subset of a larger category of materials called natural fiber plastic composites (NFPCs), which may contain no cellulose-based fiber fillers such as pulp fibers, peanut hulls, coffee husk, bamboo, straw, digestate, etc. Chemical additives provide for integration of polymer and wood flour (powder) while facilitating optimal processing conditions. History The company that invented and patented the process to create WPC was Covema of Milan in 1960, founded by Terragni brothers (Dino and Marco). Covema called WPC under the tradename Plastic-Wood.[1][2] After a few years from the invention of the Plastic-Wood the company Icma San Giorgio patented the first process to add wood fiber/wood flour to the thermoplastics (WPCs).[3] Uses Also sometimes known as Composite Timber, WPCs are still new materials relative to the long history of natural lumber as a building material. The most widespread use of WPCs in North America is in outdoor deck floors, but it is also used for railings, fences, landscaping timbers, cladding and siding, park benches, molding and trim, prefab houses under the tradename Woodpecker WPC.,[4] window and door frames, and indoor furniture.[5] WPCs were first introduced into the decking market in the early 1990s. Manufacturers[6][7][8][9][10] claim that WPC is more environmentally friendly and requires less maintenance than the alternatives of solid wood treated with preservatives or solid wood of rot-resistant species. These materials can be molded with or without simulated wood grain details.[11] Production The first extrusion line to produce Plastic Wood, made by Covema WPCs are produced by thoroughly mixing ground wood particles and heated thermoplastic resin. The most common method of production is to extrude the material into the desired shape, though injection molding is also used. WPCs may be produced from either virgin or recycled thermoplastics including high-density polyethylene (HDPE), low-density polyethylene (LDPE), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polypropylene (PP), acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), polystyrene (PS), and polylactic acid (PLA). PE-based WPCs are by far the most common. Additives such as colorants, coupling agents, UV stabilizers, blowing agents, foaming agents, and lubricants help tailor the end product to the target area of application. Extruded WPCs are formed into both solid and hollow profiles. A large variety of injection molded parts are also produced, from automotive door panels to cell phone covers. In some manufacturing facilities, the constituents are combined and processed in a pelletizing extruder, which produces pellets of the new material. The pellets are then re-melted and formed into the final shape. Other manufacturers complete the finished part in a single step of mixing and extrusion.[12] Due to the addition of organic material, WPCs are usually processed at far lower temperatures than traditional plastics during extrusion and injection molding. WPCs tend to process at temperatures of about 28 °C (50 °F) lower than the same, unfilled material, for instance. Most will begin to burn at temperatures around 204 °C (400 °F).[13] Processing WPCs at excessively high temperatures increases the risk of shearing, or burning and discoloration resulting from pushing a material that is too hot through a gate which is too small, during injection molding. The ratio of wood to plastic in the composite will ultimately determine the melt flow index (MFI) of the WPC, with larger amounts of wood generally leading to a lower MFI. Wood-plastic composite is a type of engineered wood. Advantages and disadvantages Trex Composite Decking WPCs do not corrode and are highly resistant to rot, decay, and marine borer attack, though they do absorb water into the wood fibers embedded within the material.[14] Water absorption is more pronounced in WFCs with a hydrophilic matrix such as PLA and also leads to decreased mechanical stiffness and strength.[15] The mechanical performance in a wet environment can be enhanced by an acetylation treatment.[16] WPCs have good workability and can be shaped using conventional woodworking tools. WPCs are often considered a sustainable material because they can be made using recycled plastics and the waste products of the wood industry. Although these materials continue the lifespan of used and discarded materials, they have their own considerable half life; the polymers and adhesives added make WPC difficult to recycle again after use.[17] They can however be recycled easily in a new WPC, much like concrete. One advantage over wood is the ability of the material to be molded to meet almost any desired shape. A WPC member can be bent and fixed to form strong arching curves. Another major selling point of these materials is their lack of need for paint. They are manufactured in a variety of colors, but are widely available in grays and earth tones. Despite up to 70 percent cellulose content (although 50/50 is more common), the mechanical behavior of WPCs is most similar to neat polymers. Neat polymers are polymerized without added solvents.[18][19] This means that WPCs have a lower strength and stiffness than wood, and they experience time and temperature-dependent behavior.[20] The wood particles are susceptible to fungal attack, though not as much so as solid wood, and the polymer component is vulnerable to UV degradation.[21] It is possible that the strength and stiffness may be reduced by freeze-thaw cycling, though testing is still being conducted in this area. Some WPC formulations are sensitive to staining from a variety of agents. WPC sandwich boards WPC boards show a good set of performance but monolithic composite sheets are relatively heavy (most often heavier than pure plastics) which limits their use to applications where low weight is not essential. WPC in a sandwich-structured composite form allows for a combination of the benefits of traditional wood polymer composites with the lightness of a sandwich panel technology. WPC sandwich boards consist of wood polymer composite skins and usually low-density polymer core which leads to a very effective increase of panel's rigidity. WPC sandwich boards are used mainly in automotive, transportation and building applications, but furniture applications are also being developed.[22] New efficient and often in-line integrated production processes allow to produce stronger and stiffer WPC sandwich boards at lower costs compared to traditional plastic sheets or monolithic WPC panels." (wikipedia.org) "Danish design is a style of functionalistic design and architecture that was developed in mid-20th century. Influenced by the German Bauhaus school, many Danish designers used the new industrial technologies, combined with ideas of simplicity and functionalism to design buildings, furniture and household objects, many of which have become iconic and are still in use and production. Prominent examples are the Egg chair, the PH lamps and the Sydney Opera House (Australia). History See also: Danish modern The Danish Culture Canon credits Thorvald Bindesbøll (1846–1908) with early contributions to design in the areas of ceramics, jewellery, bookbinding, silver and furniture although he is known in the rest of the world for creating the Carlsberg logo (1904), still in use today.[1] The Canon also includes Knud V. Engelhardt (1882–1931) for a more industrial approach, especially in the rounded contours of his electric tramcar designs which were widely copied.[2] In the area of textiles, Marie Gudme Leth (1895–1997) brought the screen printing process to Denmark, opening a factory in 1935 which allowed her colourful patterns to be manufactured on an industrial basis.[3] August Sandgren introduced functionalism in the design of his masterful bookbindings. The forms and materials of Hans Wegner's Wishbone Chair are representative of the movement's aesthetic In the late 1940s, shortly after the end of the Second World War, conditions in Denmark were ideally suited to success in design. The emphasis was on furniture but architecture, silver, ceramics, glass and textiles also benefitted from the trend. Denmark's late industrialisation combined with a tradition of high-quality craftsmanship formed the basis of gradual progress towards industrial production. After the end of the war, Europeans were keen to find novel approaches such as the light wood furniture from Denmark. Last but not least, support in Denmark for freedom of individual expression assisted the cause.[4] The newly established Furniture School at the Royal Danish Academy of Art played a considerable part in the development of furniture design. Kaare Klint taught functionalism based on the size and proportions of objects, wielding considerable influence. Hans J. Wegner, who had been trained as a cabinetmaker, contributed with a unique sense of form, especially in designing chairs.[5] As head of FDB Møbler, Børge Mogensen designed simple and robust objects of furniture for the average Danish family. Finn Juhl demonstrated an individualistic approach in designing chairs with an appealing but functional look. In the early 1950s, American design also influenced Danish furniture. The American Charles Eames designed and manufactured chairs of moulded wood and steel pipes. These encouraged Arne Jacobsen to design his worldfamous Ant Chair, Denmark's first industrially manufactured chair. Furthermore, as Shaker furniture—and especially its reputation for stripped down chairs—began to be more and more known abroad, it also influenced Danish designers.[6] Poul Kjærholm, Verner Panton and Nanna Ditzel followed a few years later, continuing the successful story of Danish design. Kjærholm worked mainly in steel and leather, Panton left Denmark during the 1960s to continue designing imaginative but highly unconventional plastic chairs while Nanna Ditzel, who also had a strongly individualistic approach, was successful in helping to renew Danish furniture design in the 1980s. Modern trends Bernadotte's thermos jug, 2004 During the 1970s, Verner Panton made some of his most important designs, including the Pantonova and the 1-2-3 System. Danish furniture design during the 1980s did not include prominent contributions. By contrast, industrial designers began to prosper, making use of principles such as focus on the user, as well as attention to materials and to detail. For example, there are well known Danish designers, like Tobias Jacobsen (the grandson of Arne Jacobsen), who focused on the single elements of a violin when creating his chair "Vio" or on a boomerang when designing his eponymous sideboard.[7] The Bernadotte & Bjørn studio, established in 1950, was the first to specialise in industrial design, with an emphasis on office machines, domestic appliances and functional articles such as the thermos jug. The electronics manufacturer Bang & Olufsen, in collaboration with Bernadotte & Bjørn and later with Jacob Jensen and David Lewis, went on to excel in modern design work. Around the same time, the Stelton company collaborated with Arne Jacobsen and Erik Magnussen to produce their iconic vacuum jug, a huge international success. Another successful design field is medical technology. Danish design companies like 3PART, Designit and CBD have worked in this area with individual designers such as Steve McGugan and Anders Smith. In 2002 the Danish Government and the City of Copenhagen launched an effort to establish a world event for design in Copenhagen. Originally understood as a tool for branding traditional Danish design, the non-profit organization INDEX: shifted focus after worldwide research and coined the concept of Design to Improve Life, which rapidly became celebrated in Denmark and around the world. The organization now hands out the biggest design award in the world biannual in Copenhagen, tours large scale outdoor exhibition around the world, run educational program as well as design labs and hosts a global network.[citation needed] Today, there is strong focus on design in Denmark as industry increasingly appreciates the importance of design in the business environment. In addition, as part of its trade and industry policy, the Danish government has launched the DesignDenmark initiative which aims to restore Denmark to the international design elite." (wikipedia.org) "Scandinavia[b] (/ˌskændɪˈneɪviə/ SKAN-di-NAY-vee-ə) is a subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. Scandinavia most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. In English usage, it can sometimes also refer more narrowly to the Scandinavian Peninsula (which excludes Denmark but includes part of Finland), or more broadly to all of the Nordic countries, also including Finland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands.[4][c] The geography of the region is varied, from the Norwegian fjords in the west and Scandinavian mountains covering parts of Norway and Sweden, to the low and flat areas of Denmark in the south, as well as archipelagos and lakes in the east. Most of the population in the region live in the more temperate southern regions, with the northern parts having long, cold, winters. The region became notable during the Viking Age, when Scandinavian peoples participated in large-scale raiding, conquest, colonization and trading mostly throughout Europe. They also used their longships for exploration, becoming the first Europeans to reach North America. These exploits saw the establishment of the North Sea Empire which comprised large parts of Scandinavia and Great Britain, though it was relatively short-lived. Scandinavia was eventually Christianized, and the coming centuries saw various unions of Scandinavian nations, most notably the Kalmar Union of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, which lasted for over 100 years until the Swedish king Gustav I led Sweden to independence. It also saw numerous wars between the nations, which shaped the modern borders. The most recent union was the union between Sweden and Norway, which ended in 1905. In modern times the region has prospered, with the economies of the countries being amongst the strongest in Europe. Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Finland all maintain welfare systems considered to be generous, with the economic and social policies of the countries being dubbed the "Nordic model". Geography See also: Geography of Denmark, Geography of Finland, Geography of Iceland, Geography of Norway, and Geography of Sweden Galdhøpiggen is the highest point in Scandinavia and is a part of the Scandinavian Mountains. The geography of Scandinavia is extremely varied. Notable are the Norwegian fjords, the Scandinavian Mountains covering much of Norway and parts of Sweden, the flat, low areas in Denmark and the archipelagos of Finland, Norway and Sweden. Finland and Sweden have many lakes and moraines, legacies of the ice age, which ended about ten millennia ago. The southern regions of Scandinavia, which are also the most populous regions, have a temperate climate.[5][6] Scandinavia extends north of the Arctic Circle, but has relatively mild weather for its latitude due to the Gulf Stream. Many of the Scandinavian mountains have an alpine tundra climate. The climate varies from north to south and from west to east: a marine west coast climate (Cfb) typical of western Europe dominates in Denmark, the southernmost part of Sweden and along the west coast of Norway reaching north to 65°N, with orographic lift giving more mm/year precipitation (<5000 mm) in some areas in western Norway. The central part – from Oslo to Stockholm – has a humid continental climate (Dfb), which gradually gives way to subarctic climate (Dfc) further north and cool marine west coast climate (Cfc) along the northwestern coast.[7] A small area along the northern coast east of the North Cape has tundra climate (Et) as a result of a lack of summer warmth. The Scandinavian Mountains block the mild and moist air coming from the southwest, thus northern Sweden and the Finnmarksvidda plateau in Norway receive little precipitation and have cold winters. Large areas in the Scandinavian mountains have alpine tundra climate. The warmest temperature ever recorded in Scandinavia is 38.0 °C in Målilla (Sweden).[8] The coldest temperature ever recorded is −52.6 °C in Vuoggatjålme [sv], Arjeplog (Sweden).[9] The coldest month was February 1985 in Vittangi (Sweden) with a mean of −27.2 °C.[9] Southwesterly winds further warmed by foehn wind can give warm temperatures in narrow Norwegian fjords in winter. Tafjord has recorded 17.9 °C in January and Sunndal 18.9 °C in February. Etymology Scandinavia originally referred vaguely to Scania, a formerly Danish region that became Swedish in the seventeenth century. The original areas inhabited (during the Bronze Age) by the peoples now known as Scandinavians included what is now Northern Germany (particularly Schleswig-Holstein), all of Denmark, southern Sweden, the southern coast of Norway and Åland in Finland while namesake Scania found itself in the centre. The term Scandinavia in local usage covers the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. The majority national languages of these three belong to the Scandinavian dialect continuum, and are mutually intelligible North Germanic languages.[10] The words Scandinavia and Scania (Skåne, the southernmost province of Sweden) are both thought to go back to the Proto-Germanic compound *Skaðin-awjō (the ð represented in Latin by t or d), which appears later in Old English as Scedenig and in Old Norse as Skáney.[11] The earliest identified source for the name Scandinavia is Pliny the Elder's Natural History, dated to the first century AD. Various references to the region can also be found in Pytheas, Pomponius Mela, Tacitus, Ptolemy, Procopius and Jordanes, usually in the form of Scandza. It is believed that the name used by Pliny may be of West Germanic origin, originally denoting Scania.[12] According to some scholars, the Germanic stem can be reconstructed as *skaðan-, meaning "danger" or "damage".[13] The second segment of the name has been reconstructed as *awjō, meaning "land on the water" or "island". The name Scandinavia would then mean "dangerous island", which is considered to refer to the treacherous sandbanks surrounding Scania.[13] Skanör in Scania, with its long Falsterbo reef, has the same stem (skan) combined with -ör, which means "sandbanks". Alternatively, Sca(n)dinavia and Skáney, along with the Old Norse goddess name Skaði, may be related to Proto-Germanic *skaðwa- (meaning "shadow"). John McKinnell comments that this etymology suggests that the goddess Skaði may have once been a personification of the geographical region of Scandinavia or associated with the underworld.[14] Another possibility is that all or part of the segments of the name came from the pre-Germanic Mesolithic people inhabiting the region.[15] In modernity, Scandinavia is a peninsula, but between approximately 10,300 and 9,500 years ago the southern part of Scandinavia was an island separated from the northern peninsula, with water exiting the Baltic Sea through the area where Stockholm is now located.[16] Appearance in medieval Germanic languages The Latin names in Pliny's text gave rise to different forms in medieval Germanic texts. In Jordanes' history of the Goths (AD 551), the form Scandza is the name used for their original home, separated by sea from the land of Europe (chapter 1, 4).[17] Where Jordanes meant to locate this quasi-legendary island is still a hotly debated issue, both in scholarly discussions and in the nationalistic discourse of various European countries.[18][19] The form Scadinavia as the original home of the Langobards appears in Paul the Deacon' Historia Langobardorum,[20] but in other versions of Historia Langobardorum appear the forms Scadan, Scandanan, Scadanan and Scatenauge.[21] Frankish sources used Sconaowe and Aethelweard, an Anglo-Saxon historian, used Scani.[22][23] In Beowulf, the forms Scedenige and Scedeland are used while the Alfredian translation of Orosius and Wulfstan's travel accounts used the Old English Sconeg.[23] Possible influence on Sámi languages The earliest Sámi joik texts written down refer to the world as Skadesi-suolu in Northern Sámi) and Skađsuâl in Skolt Sámi, meaning "Skaði's island". Svennung considers the Sámi name to have been introduced as a loanword from the North Germanic languages;[24] "Skaði" is the giant (jötunn) stepmother of Freyr and Freyja in Norse mythology. It has been suggested that Skaði to some extent is modeled on a Sámi woman. The name for Skade's father Þjazi is known in Sámi as Čáhci, "the waterman"; and her son with Odin, Sæmingr, can be interpreted as a descendant of Saam, the Sámi population.[25][26] Older joik texts give evidence of the old Sámi belief about living on an island and state that the wolf is known as suolu gievra, meaning "the strong one on the island". The Sámi place name Sulliidčielbma means "the island's threshold" and Suoločielgi means "the island's back". In recent substrate studies, Sámi linguists have examined the initial cluster sk- in words used in the Sámi languages and concluded that sk- is a phonotactic structure of alien origin.[27] Reintroduction of the term Scandinavia in the eighteenth century Main article: Scandinavism See also: Politics of Denmark, Politics of Norway, and Politics of Sweden Scandinavism—a Norwegian, a Dane and a Swede Although the term Scandinavia used by Pliny the Elder probably originated in the ancient Germanic languages, the modern form Scandinavia does not descend directly from the ancient Germanic term. Rather the word was brought into use in Europe by scholars borrowing the term from ancient sources like Pliny, and was used vaguely for Scania and the southern region of the peninsula.[28] The term was popularised by the linguistic and cultural Scandinavist movement, which asserted the common heritage and cultural unity of the Scandinavian countries and rose to prominence in the 1830s.[28] The popular usage of the term in Sweden, Denmark and Norway as a unifying concept became established in the nineteenth century through poems such as Hans Christian Andersen's "I am a Scandinavian" of 1839. After a visit to Sweden, Andersen became a supporter of early political Scandinavism. In a letter describing the poem to a friend, he wrote: "All at once I understood how related the Swedes, the Danes and the Norwegians are, and with this feeling I wrote the poem immediately after my return: 'We are one people, we are called Scandinavians!'". The influence of Scandinavism as a Scandinavist political movement peaked in the middle of the nineteenth century, between the First Schleswig War (1848–1850) and the Second Schleswig War (1864). The Swedish king also proposed a unification of Denmark, Norway and Sweden into a single united kingdom. The background for the proposal was the tumultuous events during the Napoleonic Wars in the beginning of the century. This war resulted in Finland (formerly the eastern third of Sweden) becoming the Russian Grand Duchy of Finland in 1809 and Norway (de jure in union with Denmark since 1387, although de facto treated as a province) becoming independent in 1814, but thereafter swiftly forced to accept a personal union with Sweden. The dependent territories Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland, historically part of Norway, remained with Denmark in accordance with the Treaty of Kiel. Sweden and Norway were thus united under the Swedish monarch, but Finland's inclusion in the Russian Empire excluded any possibility for a political union between Finland and any of the other Nordic countries. The end of the Scandinavian political movement came when Denmark was denied the military support promised from Sweden and Norway to annex the (Danish) Duchy of Schleswig, which together with the (German) Duchy of Holstein had been in personal union with Denmark. The Second war of Schleswig followed in 1864, a brief but disastrous war between Denmark and Prussia (supported by Austria). Schleswig-Holstein was conquered by Prussia and after Prussia's success in the Franco-Prussian War a Prussian-led German Empire was created and a new power-balance of the Baltic Sea countries was established. The Scandinavian Monetary Union, established in 1873, lasted until World War I. Use of Nordic countries vs. Scandinavia   Scandinavia according to the local definition   The extended usage in English, which includes Iceland and the Faroe Islands, Åland and Finland Further information on this terminology: Nordic countries and Fennoscandia The term Scandinavia (sometimes specified in English as Continental Scandinavia or mainland Scandinavia) is ordinarily used locally for Denmark, Norway and Sweden as a subset of the Nordic countries (known in Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish as Norden; Finnish: Pohjoismaat, Icelandic: Norðurlöndin, Faroese: Norðurlond).[29] However, in English usage, the term Scandinavia is sometimes used as a synonym or near-synonym for what are known locally as Nordic countries.[30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39] Usage in English is different from usage in the Scandinavian languages themselves (which use Scandinavia in the narrow meaning), and by the fact that the question of whether a country belongs to Scandinavia is politicised, people from the Nordic world beyond Norway, Denmark and Sweden may be offended at being either included in or excluded from the category of "Scandinavia".[40] Nordic countries is used unambiguously for Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland, including their associated territories Greenland, the Faroe Islands and the Åland Islands.[30] A large part of modern-day Finland was part of Sweden for more than four centuries (see: Finland under Swedish rule), thus to much of the world associating Finland with Scandinavia. But the creation of a Finnish identity is unique in the region in that it was formed in relation to two different imperial models, the Swedish[41] and the Russian.[42][43][44] There is also the geological term Fennoscandia (sometimes Fennoscandinavia), which in technical use refers to the Fennoscandian Shield (or Baltic Shield), that is the Scandinavian Peninsula (Norway and Sweden), Finland and Karelia (excluding Denmark and other parts of the wider Nordic world). The terms Fennoscandia and Fennoscandinavia are sometimes used in a broader, political sense to refer to Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland.[45] Scandinavian as an ethnic term and as a demonym Further information on this terminology: North Germanic peoples The term Scandinavian may be used with two principal meanings, in an ethnic or cultural sense and as a modern and more inclusive demonym. As an ethnic or cultural term In the ethnic or cultural sense the term "Scandinavian" traditionally refers to speakers of Scandinavian languages, who are mainly descendants of the peoples historically known as Norsemen, but also to some extent of immigrants and others who have been assimilated into that culture and language. In this sense the term refers primarily to native Danes, Norwegians and Swedes as well as descendants of Scandinavian settlers such as the Icelanders and the Faroese. The term is also used in this ethnic sense, to refer to the modern descendants of the Norse, in studies of linguistics and culture.[46] As a demonym Additionally the term Scandinavian is used demonymically to refer to all modern inhabitants or citizens of Scandinavian countries. Within Scandinavia the demonymic term primarily refers to inhabitants or citizens of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. In English usage inhabitants or citizens of Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Finland are sometimes included as well. English general dictionaries often define the noun Scandinavian demonymically as meaning any inhabitant of Scandinavia (which might be narrowly conceived or broadly conceived).[47][48][49] There is a certain ambiguity and political contestation as to which peoples should be referred to as Scandinavian in this broader sense. Sámi people who live in Norway and Sweden are generally included as Scandinavians in the demonymic sense; the Sámi of Finland may be included in English usage, but usually not in local usage; the Sámi of Russia are not included. However, the use of the term "Scandinavian" with reference to the Sámi is complicated by the historical attempts by Scandinavian majority peoples and governments in Norway and Sweden to assimilate the Sámi people into the Scandinavian culture and languages, making the inclusion of the Sámi as "Scandinavians" controversial among many Sámi. Modern Sámi politicians and organizations often stress the status of the Sámi as a people separate from and equal to the Scandinavians, with their own language and culture, and are apprehensive about being included as "Scandinavians" in light of earlier Scandinavian assimilation policies." (wikipedia.org) "The Nordic countries (also known as the Nordics or Norden; lit. 'the North')[2] are a geographical and cultural region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic. It includes the sovereign states of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway[b] and Sweden; the autonomous territories of the Faroe Islands and Greenland; and the autonomous region of Åland.[4] The Nordic countries have much in common in their way of life, history, religion and social structure. They have a long history of political unions and other close relations but do not form a singular entity today. The Scandinavist movement sought to unite Denmark, Norway and Sweden into one country in the 19th century. With the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden (Norwegian independence), the independence of Finland in the early 20th century and the 1944 Icelandic constitutional referendum, this movement expanded into the modern organised Nordic cooperation. Since 1962, this cooperation has been based on the Helsinki Treaty that sets the framework for the Nordic Council and the Nordic Council of Ministers. The Nordic countries cluster near the top in numerous metrics of national performance, including education, economic competitiveness, civil liberties, quality of life and human development.[5] Each country has its own economic and social model, sometimes with large differences from its neighbours. Still, they share aspects of the Nordic model of economy and social structure to varying degrees.[6] This includes a mixed market economy combined with strong labour unions and a universalist welfare sector financed by high taxes, enhancing individual autonomy and promoting social mobility. There is a high degree of income redistribution, commitment to private ownership and little social unrest.[7][8] North Germanic peoples, who comprise over three-quarters of the region's population, are the largest ethnic group, followed by the Baltic Finnic Peoples, who comprise the majority in Finland; other ethnic groups are the Greenlandic Inuit, the Sami people and recent immigrants and their descendants. Historically, the main religion in the region was Norse paganism. This gave way first to Roman Catholicism after the Christianisation of Scandinavia. Then, following the Protestant Reformation, the main religion became Lutheran Christianity, the state religion of several Nordic countries.[9][10] Although the area is linguistically heterogeneous, with three unrelated language groups, the common linguistic heritage is one factor that makes up the Nordic identity. Most Nordic languages belong to North Germanic languages, Finno-Ugric languages and Eskimo–Aleut languages. Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are considered mutually intelligible, and they are the working languages of the region's two political bodies. Swedish is a mandatory subject in Finnish schools and Danish in Faroese and Greenlandic schools. Danish is also taught in schools in Iceland. The combined area of the Nordic countries is 3,425,804 square kilometres (1,322,710 sq mi). Uninhabitable icecaps and glaciers comprise about half of this area, mainly Greenland. In September 2021, the region had over 27 million people. Especially in English, Scandinavia is sometimes used as a synonym for the Nordic countries. Still, that term more properly refers to the three monarchies of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Geologically, the Scandinavian Peninsula comprises the mainland of Norway and Sweden and the northernmost part of Finland.[11][12][13][14][15] Etymology and concept of the Nordic countries The term Nordic countries found mainstream use after the advent of Foreningen Norden. The term is derived indirectly from the local term Norden, used in the Scandinavian languages, which means 'The North(ern lands)'.[16] Unlike the Nordic countries, the term Norden is in the singular. The demonym is nordbo, literally meaning 'northern dweller'. Similar or related regional terms include:     Scandinavia refers typically to the cultural and linguistic group formed by Denmark, Norway and Sweden, or the Scandinavian Peninsula, which is formed by mainland Norway and Sweden as well as the northwesternmost part of Finland. Outside of the Nordic region the term Scandinavia is sometimes used as a synonym for the Nordic countries. First recorded use of the name by Pliny the Elder about a "large, fertile island in the North" (possibly referring to Scania).[17]     Fennoscandia refers to the area that includes the Scandinavian Peninsula, Finland, Kola Peninsula and Karelia. This term is mostly restricted to geology, when speaking of the Fennoscandian Shield.     Cap of the North consists of the provinces and counties of Lapland in Finland; Finnmark, Nordland and Troms in Norway; and Lapland and Norrbotten in Sweden. This Arctic area is located around and north of the Arctic Circle in the three Nordic European countries Norway, Sweden and Finland and the Kola Peninsula in Russia.     Barents Region is formed by the Cap of the North as well as the Northern Ostrobothnia and Kainuu regions of Finland, Swedish provinces of Lapland, Västerbotten and Norrbotten, Russian Oblasts of Arkhangelsk and Murmansk, Nenets Autonomous Okrug, as well as the Republics of Karelia and Komi. This area cooperates through the Barents Euro-Arctic Council and Barents Regional Council" (wikipedia.org) "Early American furniture, furniture made in the last half of the 17th century by American colonists. The earliest known American-made furniture dates from the mid-17th century, when life in the colonies was becoming increasingly settled. Many of these early pieces were massive in size and were based on styles recalled from earlier days in England. In general, furniture styles followed those of England, with adaptations, after an interval of about 15 years. Instead of shaped legs or feet, American case furniture had legs and feet that were simply downward extensions of the rectangular styles. Decoration consisted of carved flower motifs or lunettes (crescent shapes) and chip carved (executed with mallet and chisel) scrolls and leaves, occasionally highlighted by painting, mainly in black, red, and yellow; but the carving was flatter, less finished, and more primitive than its English predecessors. Turned (shaped on a lathe) split balusters stained to look like ebony were also applied. Joinery was confined to simple rectangular panelling with mortise and tenon joints. Oak and pine were the commonest woods. In view of the still-unsettled existence of the early colonists, chests assumed particular importance because of their portability. The Connecticut and Hadley chests were clearly variants, their carved leaf, flower, and vine ornament bearing a marked Dutch flavour. Important, too, in wealthier households, was the court cupboard for storing utensils and the press cupboard for storing clothes and linen. Trestle tables, which could be dismantled easily, were in everyday use; and the stretcher tables—large rectangular tables with turned baluster legs joined by stretchers—served as dining or centre tables among better furnishings. Joint stools (small rectangular stools with four turned legs joined with stretchers) were the commonest form of seating, but Brewster and Carver chairs also came into use, the most popular chairs being simplified versions of English turned chairs. Chairs with slung leather seats of the Cromwellian type were used in more comfortable homes by the late years of the century. Most early beds had simple, low turned posts and plain, low headboards. Regional characteristics appeared at an early stage and are best represented in furniture surviving from the 17th century by the contrast between the chests from the Connecticut River valley mentioned above and the more austere varieties of the Massachusetts coastal settlements—sometimes painted but characterized particularly by severe, geometric carved lozenges and friezes of overlapping lunettes. This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper." (britannica.com) " "The culture of Denmark has a rich scientific and artistic heritage. The astronomical discoveries of Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), Ludwig A. Colding's (1815–1888) neglected articulation of the principle of conservation of energy, and the foundational contributions to atomic physics of Niels Bohr (1885–1962); in this century Lene Vestergaard Hau (born 1959) in quantum physics involving the stopping of light, advances in nano-technology, and contributions to the understanding of Bose-Einstein Condensates, demonstrate the range and endurance of Danish scientific achievement. The fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875), the philosophical essays of Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), the short stories of Karen Blixen, penname Isak Dinesen, (1885–1962), the plays of Ludvig Holberg (1684–1754), modern authors such as Herman Bang and Nobel laureate Henrik Pontoppidan and the dense, aphoristic poetry of Piet Hein (1905–1996), have earned international recognition, as have the symphonies of Carl Nielsen (1865–1931). From the mid-1990s, Danish films have attracted international attention, especially those associated with Dogme 95 like those of Lars Von Trier. Denmark has had a strong tradition of movie making and Carl Theodor Dreyer has been recognised as one of the world's greatest film directors.[1] Culture and the arts thrive as a result of the proportionately[clarification needed] high amount of government funding they receive, much of which is administered by local authorities so as to involve citizens directly.[2] Thanks to a system of grants, Danish artists are able to devote themselves to their work while museums, theatres, and the film institute receive national support.[3] Copenhagen, the capital, is home to many famous sites and attractions, including Tivoli Gardens, Amalienborg Palace (home of the Danish monarchy), Christiansborg Palace, Copenhagen Cathedral, Rosenborg Castle, Opera House, Frederik's Church (Marble Church), Thorvaldsens Museum, Rundetårn, Nyhavn and The Little Mermaid sculpture." (wikipedia.org) "A clock or a timepiece[1] is a device used to measure and indicate time. The clock is one of the oldest human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units such as the day, the lunar month and the year. Devices operating on several physical processes have been used over the millennia. Some predecessors to the modern clock may be considered as "clocks" that are based on movement in nature: A sundial shows the time by displaying the position of a shadow on a flat surface. There is a range of duration timers, a well-known example being the hourglass. Water clocks, along with the sundials, are possibly the oldest time-measuring instruments. A major advance occurred with the invention of the verge escapement, which made possible the first mechanical clocks around 1300 in Europe, which kept time with oscillating timekeepers like balance wheels.[2][3][4][5] Traditionally, in horology (the study of timekeeping), the term clock was used for a striking clock, while a clock that did not strike the hours audibly was called a timepiece. This distinction is no longer made. Watches and other timepieces that can be carried on one's person are usually not referred to as clocks.[6] Spring-driven clocks appeared during the 15th century. During the 15th and 16th centuries, clockmaking flourished. The next development in accuracy occurred after 1656 with the invention of the pendulum clock by Christiaan Huygens. A major stimulus to improving the accuracy and reliability of clocks was the importance of precise time-keeping for navigation. The mechanism of a timepiece with a series of gears driven by a spring or weights is referred to as clockwork; the term is used by extension for a similar mechanism not used in a timepiece. The electric clock was patented in 1840, and electronic clocks were introduced in the 20th century, becoming widespread with the development of small battery-powered semiconductor devices. The timekeeping element in every modern clock is a harmonic oscillator, a physical object (resonator) that vibrates or oscillates at a particular frequency.[3] This object can be a pendulum, a tuning fork, a quartz crystal, or the vibration of electrons in atoms as they emit microwaves, the last method of which is so precise that it serves as the definition of the second. Clocks have different ways of displaying the time. Analog clocks indicate time with a traditional clock face, with moving hands. Digital clocks display a numeric representation of time. Two numbering systems are in use: 12-hour time notation and 24-hour notation. Most digital clocks use electronic mechanisms and LCD, LED, or VFD displays. For the blind and for use over telephones, speaking clocks state the time audibly in words. There are also clocks for the blind that have displays that can be read by touch. Etymology The word clock derives from the medieval Latin word for 'bell'—clocca—and has cognates in many European languages. Clocks spread to England from the Low Countries,[7] so the English word came from the Middle Low German and Middle Dutch Klocke.[8] The word derives from the Middle English clokke, Old North French cloque, or Middle Dutch clocke, all of which mean 'bell', and stem from an Old Irish root.... Quartz Picture of a quartz crystal resonator, used as the timekeeping component in quartz watches and clocks, with the case removed. It is formed in the shape of a tuning fork. Most such quartz clock crystals vibrate at a frequency of 32768 Hz. The piezoelectric properties of crystalline quartz were discovered by Jacques and Pierre Curie in 1880.[60][61] The first crystal oscillator was invented in 1917 by Alexander M. Nicholson, after which the first quartz crystal oscillator was built by Walter G. Cady in 1921.[3] In 1927 the first quartz clock was built by Warren Marrison and J.W. Horton at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Canada.[62][3] The following decades saw the development of quartz clocks as precision time measurement devices in laboratory settings—the bulky and delicate counting electronics, built with vacuum tubes at the time, limited their practical use elsewhere. The National Bureau of Standards (now NIST) based the time standard of the United States on quartz clocks from late 1929 until the 1960s, when it changed to atomic clocks.[63] In 1969, Seiko produced the world's first quartz wristwatch, the Astron.[64] Their inherent accuracy and low cost of production resulted in the subsequent proliferation of quartz clocks and watches.... Operation The invention of the mechanical clock in the 13th century initiated a change in timekeeping methods from continuous processes, such as the motion of the gnomon's shadow on a sundial or the flow of liquid in a water clock, to periodic oscillatory processes, such as the swing of a pendulum or the vibration of a quartz crystal,[4][75] which had the potential for more accuracy. All modern clocks use oscillation. Although the mechanisms they use vary, all oscillating clocks, mechanical, electric, and atomic, work similarly and can be divided into analogous parts.[76][77][78] They consist of an object that repeats the same motion over and over again, an oscillator, with a precisely constant time interval between each repetition, or 'beat'. Attached to the oscillator is a controller device, which sustains the oscillator's motion by replacing the energy it loses to friction, and converts its oscillations into a series of pulses. The pulses are then counted by some type of counter, and the number of counts is converted into convenient units, usually seconds, minutes, hours, etc. Finally some kind of indicator displays the result in human readable form. Power source     In mechanical clocks, the power source is typically either a weight suspended from a cord or chain wrapped around a pulley, sprocket or drum; or a spiral spring called a mainspring. Mechanical clocks must be wound periodically, usually by turning a knob or key or by pulling on the free end of the chain, to store energy in the weight or spring to keep the clock running.     In electric clocks, the power source is either a battery or the AC power line. In clocks that use AC power, a small backup battery is often included to keep the clock running if it is unplugged temporarily from the wall or during a power outage. Battery-powered analog wall clocks are available that operate over 15 years between battery changes. Oscillator Balance wheel, the oscillator in a mechanical mantel clock. The timekeeping element in every modern clock is a harmonic oscillator, a physical object (resonator) that vibrates or oscillates repetitively at a precisely constant frequency.[3][79][80][81]     In mechanical clocks, this is either a pendulum or a balance wheel.     In some early electronic clocks and watches such as the Accutron, it is a tuning fork.     In quartz clocks and watches, it is a quartz crystal.     In atomic clocks, it is the vibration of electrons in atoms as they emit microwaves.     In early mechanical clocks before 1657, it was a crude balance wheel or foliot which was not a harmonic oscillator because it lacked a balance spring. As a result, they were very inaccurate, with errors of perhaps an hour a day.... Types Clocks can be classified by the type of time display, as well as by the method of timekeeping. Time display methods Analog See also: Clock face A modern quartz clock with a 24-hour face A linear clock at London's Piccadilly Circus tube station. The 24 hour band moves across the static map, keeping pace with the apparent movement of the sun above ground, and a pointer fixed on London points to the current time. Analog clocks usually use a clock face which indicates time using rotating pointers called "hands" on a fixed numbered dial or dials. The standard clock face, known universally throughout the world, has a short "hour hand" which indicates the hour on a circular dial of 12 hours, making two revolutions per day, and a longer "minute hand" which indicates the minutes in the current hour on the same dial, which is also divided into 60 minutes. It may also have a "second hand" which indicates the seconds in the current minute. The only other widely used clock face today is the 24 hour analog dial, because of the use of 24 hour time in military organizations and timetables. Before the modern clock face was standardized during the Industrial Revolution, many other face designs were used throughout the years, including dials divided into 6, 8, 10, and 24 hours. During the French Revolution the French government tried to introduce a 10-hour clock, as part of their decimal-based metric system of measurement, but it did not achieve widespread use. An Italian 6 hour clock was developed in the 18th century, presumably to save power (a clock or watch striking 24 times uses more power). Another type of analog clock is the sundial, which tracks the sun continuously, registering the time by the shadow position of its gnomon. Because the sun does not adjust to daylight saving time, users must add an hour during that time. Corrections must also be made for the equation of time, and for the difference between the longitudes of the sundial and of the central meridian of the time zone that is being used (i.e. 15 degrees east of the prime meridian for each hour that the time zone is ahead of GMT). Sundials use some or part of the 24 hour analog dial. There also exist clocks which use a digital display despite having an analog mechanism—these are commonly referred to as flip clocks. Alternative systems have been proposed. For example, the "Twelv" clock indicates the current hour using one of twelve colors, and indicates the minute by showing a proportion of a circular disk, similar to a moon phase.... Purposes Many cities and towns traditionally have public clocks in a prominent location, such as a town square or city center. This one is on display at the center of the town of Robbins, North Carolina Clocks are in homes, offices and many other places; smaller ones (watches) are carried on the wrist or in a pocket; larger ones are in public places, e.g. a railway station or church. A small clock is often shown in a corner of computer displays, mobile phones and many MP3 players. The primary purpose of a clock is to display the time. Clocks may also have the facility to make a loud alert signal at a specified time, typically to waken a sleeper at a preset time; they are referred to as alarm clocks. The alarm may start at a low volume and become louder, or have the facility to be switched off for a few minutes then resume. Alarm clocks with visible indicators are sometimes used to indicate to children too young to read the time that the time for sleep has finished; they are sometimes called training clocks. A clock mechanism may be used to control a device according to time, e.g. a central heating system, a VCR, or a time bomb (see: digital counter). Such mechanisms are usually called timers. Clock mechanisms are also used to drive devices such as solar trackers and astronomical telescopes, which have to turn at accurately controlled speeds to counteract the rotation of the Earth. Most digital computers depend on an internal signal at constant frequency to synchronize processing; this is referred to as a clock signal. (A few research projects are developing CPUs based on asynchronous circuits.) Some equipment, including computers, also maintains time and date for use as required; this is referred to as time-of-day clock, and is distinct from the system clock signal, although possibly based on counting its cycles. In Chinese culture, giving a clock (traditional Chinese: 送鐘; simplified Chinese: 送钟; pinyin: sòng zhōng) is often taboo, especially to the elderly as the term for this act is a homophone with the term for the act of attending another's funeral (traditional Chinese: 送終; simplified Chinese: 送终; pinyin: sòngzhōng).[91][92][93] This homonymic pair works in both Mandarin and Cantonese, although in most parts of China only clocks and large bells, and not watches, are called "zhong", and watches are commonly given as gifts in China. However, should such a gift be given, the "unluckiness" of the gift can be countered by exacting a small monetary payment so the recipient is buying the clock and thereby counteracting the '送' ("give") expression of the phrase." (wikipedia.org) "Justin Whitlock Dart Sr. (August 17, 1907 – January 26, 1984) was an American businessman, considered the "boy wonder" of the drug store industry. In college Dart had played football for Northwestern University. Biography     This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Justin Whitlock Dart Sr." – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) He was born on August 17, 1907. After marrying Ruth Walgreen, Dart became an executive with his father-in-law's (Charles Walgreen) company, the Walgreens Drugstore chain. At Walgreens, he introduced the concept of placing the pharmacy counter at the back of the drug store, which not only provided privacy for medical concerns, but forced patrons to walk past many items for possible purchase. Dart divorced his first wife, Ruth Walgreen, and left the Walgreen company shortly after. In 1943, Dart took control of the Boston-based United Drug Company. The chain operated under the Liggett, Owl, Sonta, and Rexall brands. Soon, Dart rebranded the stores under the Rexall name. After 35 years, Dart sold his stake in Rexall in 1978. Not long afterwards, he said "I would like my retirement and death to be simultaneous." During these years, Dart had acquired stakes in Avon, West Bend Housewares, Duracell, Ralph Wilson Plastics, Archer Glass and Hobart, which were collectively known as Dart Industries. In 1980, Dart sold his company to Kraft Industries. Although Dart Industries never owned Avon, it was the former parent company to Tupperware Home Parties. Dart Industries eventually merged with Kraft Foods." (wikipedia.org)
  • Condition: Used
  • Condition: In good, pre-owned condition. Please see photos and description.
  • Origin: Scandinavia
  • Movement: Quartz (Battery Powered)
  • Shape: Sun
  • Power Source: Battery
  • Color: Brown
  • Material: Plastic, Wood, Mixed Materials, Synthetic
  • Item Length: 22.25 in
  • Vintage: Yes
  • Brand: Syroco
  • Type: Wall Clock
  • Display Type: Analog
  • Era: Mid 20th Century (1941-1969)
  • Item Height: 22.25 in
  • Model: 4084
  • Style: Scandinavian
  • Original/Reproduction: Original
  • Theme: Fun & Curiosity, Sun, Moon & Stars
  • Features: Battery-Operated, Quartz Movement
  • Time Period Manufactured: 1960-1969
  • Country/Region of Manufacture: United States
  • Room: Any Room, Basement, Bathroom, Bedroom, Dining Room, Foyer, Guestroom, Hallway, Home Office/Study, Kitchen, Living Room, Lounge, Sunroom
  • Finish: Walnut
  • Item Width: 2.25 in

PicClick Insights - SYROCO SUNBURST WALL CLOCK vintage Danish MCM mid century modern Nordic atomic PicClick Exclusive

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