Modern Design Across Borders

This digital presentation is an abridged version of the exhibition, featuring selected highlights from the full installation. Visitors are encouraged, when possible, to experience the exhibition in its entirety at the Wolfsonian.

Modern Design Across Borders examines the cross-cultural web of connections among people, ideas, and movements that made modern design’s remarkable reach and lasting impact possible. Focusing on five spotlight subjects within the global story of interwar design—transportation, the 1925 Paris Expo, tea and coffee, plywood, and cocktail culture—the exhibition homes in on the innovation and trends that spread from country to country, expressing progress and new ideals.

Featuring products by designers such as Norman Bel Geddes, Josef Hoffmann, Alvar Aalto, and Charles and Ray Eames, Modern Design Across Borders draws mainly from the Wolfsonian collection and teases out the trademark design choices (geometry, clean lines, functionality) that defined novel visual languages of modern life and continue to shape design today.

Organized in celebration of The Wolfsonian’s 30th anniversary.

Ingenious designs for teardrop-shaped cars, trains, and planes entered the scene in the 1930s as symbols of progress and movement. Informed by turn-of-the-century scientific studies of aerodynamics and the 1909 Futurist Manifesto’s glorification of the beauty and dynamism of a racing car, designers pursued this fascination with the machine by streamlining the bodies of vehicles to increase speed.

Countries showed off their technological advancement through specific models, turning transportation imagery into markers of power in war and in peace. This cult of the machine soon influenced the design of household items, as seen in the Normandie pitcher inspired by the shape of the famous French ocean liner.

The 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts) was a key venue for introducing and globally disseminating ideas about modern design. With an official invitation to participating nations specifying that no historical styles were allowed, the exposition celebrated a new taste in architecture and decorative arts that had begun to develop in Europe before the First World War—characterized by geometric ornament, stylized natural elements, and symmetry. This style was later termed Art Deco, after “Arts Décoratifs” (in the expo’s title), during the 1960s.

Present in the fair were competing visions for what defined “modern.” In contrast with France’s decorative luxury pavilions and applied arts, the Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret rejected ornament in favor of utility, simplicity, and standardization. Other nations offered additional interpretations of the new style through their pavilions and applied arts that found broad exposure at the widely-attended event.

Coffee and tea services helped introduce modern design into daily life. Economic difficulties and social changes brought by the Depression and an emergence of more casual ways of life demanded functional approaches in tableware design. From the elaborate scalloped forms of Josef Hoffmann’s Melone coffee service to the pure geometric shapes of Marguerite Friedländer-Wildenhain and the midcentury fluidity of Eva Zeisel’s Tomorrow’s Classic, the evolving lines of these coffee and tea sets reflect an international exchange of ideas between designers, ceramists, and manufacturers.

Émigré designers from Europe further fueled the spread, introducing new shapes in American dinnerware and building consumer interest in European products.

Plywood, made up of thin wooden sheets glued together, emerged as a revolutionary material in the late 19th century. Because of its strength, lightness, and flexibility, modernist designers and architects of the 1930s began to exploit its ease of mass production and ability to be shaped into fluid forms. In their designs, they embraced plywood’s potential to create seamless, flowing lines—softening interiors, prioritizing comfort and efficiency, and embodying ideals of simplicity and functionality. Influential manufacturers, like Luterma in Estonia, pioneered plywood’s use for everyday products and became widely available and popular through global distribution.

Groundbreaking furniture helped make some leading designers familiar names both at home and abroad, from Alvar Aalto in Finland to Charles and Ray Eames in the United States. Several of their iconic chairs are still in production now, and companies continue to explore new birch plywood models, inviting ideas from designers all over the world.

Cocktail culture was a staple of the 1920s “Jazz Age” despite the United States banning the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages between 1920 and 1933, a period called Prohibition. With the help of advanced manufacturing technologies and materials such as Bakelite and chromed metals, designers conceived products characterized by simple geometric shapes, rounded edges, and continuous lines that not only facilitated mass production, but also aligned with the emerging visual language of modern design.

Their output contributed to a global exchange of taste, customs, and drinks, fueled by a common practice among many companies (such as liquor brands) to invite the most fashionable graphic designers of the time, sometimes from abroad, to lead new advertising campaigns. Shaped by these cross-cultural influences, many tools for cocktail making became emblems of American streamlined design.

This project is part of the Wolfsonian Labs where museum staff and FIU faculty and students are experimenting with new ways to tell the stories about our collections. These projects serve as proof of concept—allowing the museum to test ideas, refine approaches, and scale successful experiments for future visitor experiences.