What’s exciting to see in “Shock of the Old” isn’t just Dresser’s visionary idea of bringing good design to the Industrial Revolution, but the resulting democratization of quality. Dresser was from a humble background, but his talent landed him in a government-run design school at the age of 13. He also studied botany–which is evident in the intricate abstractions of natural forms in his carpets, vases, wallpaper and lacy iron furniture. Early in his career he hooked up with the great English ceramic manufacturers–Minton and Wedgwood–as well as metal and silver companies. He was fascinated by a wide variety of materials and manufacturing methods. Later, seeking more control, he established his own pottery company and briefly ran a well-edited London design shop. The Art Furnishers Alliance was a kind of Conran’s of the 1880s, aimed at middle-class households (candleholders made of tin or electroplate, not silver): every object sold was either a Dresser design or vetted by him.
Dresser found inspiration globally. He believed in studying work “in which examples of bad taste are rarely met with,” such as objects from India, Persia and China, as well as ancient art from Egypt and Greece. (The upturned spouts on some Dresser jugs were inspired by a 4,000-year-old Cycladic pitcher in the British Museum.) The great 19th-century expositions–the trade shows of their day–brought designs from around the world to Dresser’s doorstep. But the key experience of his career was his three-month sojourn to Japan in 1877. He ended up referring to himself as a “designer,” not an “ornamentist”–for the Japanese experience had shown him that form was far more powerful than decoration.
After Japan, he began to design the remarkably modern-looking pieces that are the highlight of the Cooper-Hewitt show: elegantly simple glass and silver decanters; geometric tea sets and toast racks; austere pottery vases and jugs. Dresser’s explorations in design could be whimsical or wacky (and sometimes downright ugly) but he was undeniably prescient–a man both of his time and ahead of it. Decades before the modern masters decreed that mass production should be tapped to bring good design to everyone, Dresser had done it. And he’d made objects of such stunning simplicity, you’d snap them up today.
