Thermos pitcher

Designer: Henry Dreyfuss

1935

Enameled steel, glass, rubber, and chrome plating

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Henry Dreyfuss was perhaps the most understated of the early industrial designers. Like his teacher and main inspiration Norman Bel Geddes, he moved from theater design to industrial design, but took a more practical approach, developing long relationships with clients such as the Hoover company, John Deere, and the New York Central Railroad. Dreyfuss preferred the word cleanlining to streamlining, which distanced him from what he considered to be the excesses of the 1930s restyling movement. He was sufficiently self-promotional to write his own autobiography, <I>Designing for People</I>, in 1955, following in the footsteps of Bel G