Streamline Moderne

Streamline Moderne is the late, American-facing phase of Art Deco: aerodynamics applied to objects that do not move. The teardrop, the rounded corner, the horizontal band and the chrome strip are borrowed from locomotives and aircraft and applied to radios, clocks, bar carts and refrigerators.

It is the first style in this museum produced by industrial designers rather than craftsmen — Loewy, Dreyfuss and their contemporaries designing for manufacture, with the machine now something to be shaped rather than hidden. The decoration is the suggestion of speed, and the material is whatever the factory could press.

Read it by how the object implies motion. A streamlined piece looks as if it should travel, and the tell is the transition: a continuous curve from front to back, with no edge left square.

The early 1930s apply the vocabulary to transport and architecture first, then to small domestic objects.

The late 1930s are the peak for radios, clocks and kitchenware — moulded plastic, chrome plate, and speed as a selling point.

The 1940s see it absorbed into postwar product design, where the streamline becomes one option among several rather than the style of the decade.