Design Impact, Archival Discovery, and Digital Engagement: Expanding the Story of Modernist E. McKnight Kauffer

At the height of his career in the 1920s and 1930s, pioneering designer E. McKnight Kauffer (American, 1890-1954) was among the most influential artists in England. His iconic posters for London Underground, Daily Herald, Eno's Fruit Salt, and Shell-Mex were ubiquitous. He was the preferred illustrator of poet T.S. Eliot and authors Arnold Bennett and Leonard Woolf. He applied his design eye to commissions as diverse as film titles for Alfred Hitchcock's "The Lodger," murals at Charing Cross Station, costumes for theatrical productions and, in collaboration with his wife Marion Dorn, he created the graphic identity and interior designs for Orient Line cruises and carpets for the Royal Wilton Carpet Company. He was also a founding member of the 'X' group of artists and formed the Film Society in London. Throughout his career, Kauffer integrated emerging avant-garde styles into commercial work. As Eliot said in 1935, "[h]e did something for modern art with the public as well as doing something for the public with modern art." Yet Kauffer and his work remain largely forgotten in America.
Kauffer was a champion of new media and challenged the established hierarchy of the arts. He drew on emerging visual languages of cubism, vorticism, and surrealism and adapted them to the burgeoning fields of industrial design, interior design, and commercial art. Kauffer also expanded the scope and impact of his practice through collaborations with his avant-garde peers in art, literature, and film, including T.S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, Alfred Hitchcock, and Man Ray. He also worked extensively with his wife, designer Marion Dorn. The inventive results of Kauffer and Dorn's partnership and their connections with the greater modern-minded design community in both London and New York remain as of yet unexplored.
Bringing together never before published material alongside the leading collections of Kauffer at CHSDM and the V&A, this project will reveal a more nuanced understanding of Kauffer's creative, commercial, and personal network and explore its significance against the backdrop of modernism and design production in the twentieth century. Guided by Kauffer's multidisciplinary practice, this project will offer significant additions to scholarship that bridges academic fields and institutions, uniting ephemera, textiles, products, design sketches, films, and more from discrete museum, library, and archival collections.
The project is jointly led by CHSDM's Caitlin Condell, Associate Curator and Head of Drawings, Prints & Graphic Design and Emily M. Orr, Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary American Design. The outputs of research undertaken at the V&A and other UK resources will extend beyond the funding period, culminating in a 550 sq.-meter exhibition (fall 2020) at CHSDM with the prospect of international travel; the creation of new digital frameworks in the galleries to communicate these design histories and showcase CHSDM's digitized archive; CHSDM's collections website and blog to increase access beyond the museum's walls; and a 276-page. illustrated catalogue of essays written by scholars across the arts and humanities. These outputs are aimed at a wide audience, aligning the AHRC's goals and CHSDM's mission to educate, inspire, and empower through design.
The digitization of Kauffer material will boost audience engagement with the design history, while digital frameworks in the galleries and on CHSDM's website will enable users to discover the valuable connections that this research pioneers. The exhibition will shape new lines of thinking around how digital technologies can activate a visitor's experience by putting them in the position of designer and engaging them in analysis of the design process. This project is the ideal platform for the exchange of knowledge and resources between CHSDM, the only museum in the U.S. devoted to historic and contemporary design, and the V&A, the world's largest museum of decorative arts.