Cranbrook: the Michigan school behind mid-century modern furniture

What Cranbrook is

Cranbrook Educational Community is a 319-acre campus in Bloomfield Hills, north of Detroit. Its institutions include a graduate Academy of Art, an Art Museum, an Institute of Science and college-preparatory schools. The National Park Service lists it as a National Historic Landmark, designated on June 29, 1989.

The founders were George Gough Booth, a Detroit newspaper publisher, and Ellen Scripps Booth, whose father founded the Detroit Evening News. They bought farmland here in January 1904 and named it after the English town the Booth family came from. Albert Kahn designed their house. The family moved in during June 1908.

George Booth was a leading patron of the American Arts and Crafts movement. After 1922 the couple began building institutions on the estate: three schools, a church, a science institute and an art academy. The Cranbrook Foundation, set up in 1927, endowed them.

Eliel Saarinen: campus architect, Academy president

Eliel Saarinen already had a career as an architect in Finland. In 1922 he placed second in the competition to design the Chicago Tribune building, and in 1923 he moved to the United States. He taught architecture at the University of Michigan, where the Booths’ son Henry was one of his students.

In 1925 George Booth asked him to plan an art academy. As chief architect for the campus, Saarinen designed Cranbrook School for boys, Kingswood School for girls, the Institute of Science, the Academy of Art, and the Art Museum and Library.

The Academy was formally established in 1932. Saarinen was its first president and held the post until 1946. Working artists lived and kept studios on campus. Students were expected to teach themselves alongside them. Saarinen said it was not an art school in the usual sense but a place to work.

1. 1904

   George and Ellen Booth buy farmland in Bloomfield Hills and name it Cranbrook.

2. 1925

   George Booth asks Eliel Saarinen to plan an art academy at Cranbrook.

3. 1932

   Cranbrook Academy of Art is formally established, with Saarinen as its first president.

4. 1939

   Saarinen asks Harry Bertoia to reopen the metalworking shop.

5. 1941

   The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) awards Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames two first prizes.

6. 1942

   The Art Museum and Library, Saarinen’s last major project on campus, is completed.

7. 1989

   Cranbrook is designated a National Historic Landmark.

The designers who studied and taught there

The Academy’s own history calls it the incubator of mid-century modernism. Five people show why.

• Charles Eames

  Fellow in 1938, then industrial design head

  Founded the Eames Office in Los Angeles with Ray, whom he married in June 1941. Their long collaboration with Herman Miller, of Zeeland, Michigan, produced the molded plywood chairs and the Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman.

• Ray Eames

  Then Ray Kaiser; a painter and student

  Studied under painter Hans Hofmann in New York. New to Cranbrook in 1940, she helped with the drawings for the MoMA entry, then ran the Eames Office with Charles.

• Eero Saarinen

  Eliel’s son; designed campus furniture, later taught

  Designed the Womb Chair (1948) and the Pedestal, or Tulip, chair (1958) for Knoll. His buildings include the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan.

• Florence Knoll

  Then Florence Schust; entered the Academy in 1934

  Joined Hans Knoll’s furniture company full time in 1943 and married him in 1946. She set up the Knoll Planning Unit and asked Cranbrook friends to design for the company.

• Harry Bertoia

  Student from 1937; metalsmithing instructor, 1939–1943

  Designed the wire chairs Knoll introduced in 1952, the Diamond Chair among them. He then worked mainly as a sculptor and completed more than 50 public commissions.

The 1940–41 MoMA competition

In the fall of 1940 the Museum of Modern Art in New York opened a competition for home furnishings. MoMA curator Eliot Noyes defined organic design as a “harmonious organization of the parts within the whole, according to structure, material, and purpose.” Winners were offered contracts with manufacturers.

Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen entered together from Bloomfield Hills. Their chairs used plywood shells molded in compound curves, shaped to support the body without thick padding. In early 1941 MoMA announced the result: first prizes in both living-room categories, seating and other furniture.

The jury praised the chairs for a technique that was new to furniture making. The exhibition ran from September 24 to November 9, 1941. Production proved harder. No one yet had the means to mass-produce the molded shells, and few chairs were made. The Eameses kept working on molded plywood after moving to Los Angeles.

Harry Bertoia: from Friuli to the Cranbrook metal shop

Harry Bertoia was born on March 10, 1915, in San Lorenzo, a village in Friuli, Italy. At 15 he moved to Detroit, where his older brother was already settled. He attended Cass Technical High School. In the fall of 1937 a scholarship brought him to Cranbrook as a painting student.

Most of Cranbrook’s early craft studios had closed in 1933, during the Depression. In 1939, when Bertoia was 24, Eliel Saarinen asked him to reopen the metalworking shop. Wartime demand for metal pushed him toward jewelry. He made wedding rings for friends, Ray Eames among them. By 1943 the metal was gone, and he spent his last year teaching graphics.

That year he left for California to work with Charles Eames on molded plywood. In 1950 Hans and Florence Knoll invited him to Pennsylvania. There he designed the wire chairs that Knoll introduced in 1952. He returned to Italy once, in 1957.

What a visitor can see today

• Cranbrook Art Museum. It occupies Eliel Saarinen’s 1942 building. Its collection runs from the twentieth century to the present and covers art, architecture, craft and design, with particular attention to Academy artists and Detroit. Its Collections Wing holds more than 6,000 works in storage vaults built for public access.
• Saarinen House. Eliel and Loja Saarinen lived and worked here from 1930 through 1950. The restored interior holds his furniture, her textiles and some of their son Eero’s first furniture designs. It opens for guided tours in season.
• The grounds. Buildings by Saarinen, fountains and bronze sculptures by Carl Milles, and Cranbrook House with its gardens.

Tour seasons and admission change. Check Cranbrook’s own websites before a visit.

Why it matters for a Metro Detroit home

Several of the designers behind mid-century modern furniture studied or taught on this campus in Metro Detroit.

Two opinions follow, offered as such. First, Noyes’s three terms still make a fair test for any piece of furniture: structure, material, purpose. Second, the way Cranbrook’s designers worked has a parallel in Italian furniture making.

Furniture by Cranbrook’s designers reached homes through partnerships with manufacturers: the Eameses with Herman Miller, Saarinen and Bertoia with Knoll. Italy’s Compasso d’Oro award, established in 1954, is given to a product and credits its manufacturer and its designer together.

The other parallel is technique. The 1941 jury praised a method that was new to furniture making. When MoMA showed 180 household objects from Italy in 1972, its press release pointed to new synthetic materials and advanced molding techniques.

The parallel is one of method. No shared history is claimed beyond Bertoia’s birthplace.