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(b New York, March 2, 1904; d South Pasadena, CA, Oct 5, 1972).

American industrial designer and writer. Dreyfuss was a member of the generation of American consultant designers—which also included Norman Bel Geddes, Raymond Loewy, and Walter Dorwin Teague—who emerged in the 1920s from both theatrical and commercial backgrounds and who, in the 1930s and beyond, applied their visualizing skills to a wide range of industrially manufactured goods.

Dreyfuss came from a Brooklyn-based family that supplied theatrical materials, and he moved naturally to the world of theatre as a designer of sets; he was apprenticed to Bel Geddes until 1924. Three years later he was asked by the department store Macy’s to work as a consultant, but his real breakthrough came when he won a ‘phone of the future’ competition in 1929, the year in which he set up his own design office in New York. His design creatively combined the receiver and transmitter in a single handset, thereby establishing a new format for the object which was to remain in place for decades. Dreyfuss worked for Bell Telephone Laboratories for many years, creating, among others, his Princess telephone in ...

(fl 1839; d Paris, c. 1889).

French publisher and furniture designer. He was an important disseminator of historical and contemporary designs in 19th-century France. After 1839 he published a constant stream of lithograph designs for furniture, both his own designs and illustrations of the products of commercial firms, which provide an important source for the study of furniture of the period. His chief work was the journal Le Garde-meuble ancien et moderne, which he edited from 1844 to 1882. After 1846 he also published a supplement, L’Ameublement et l’utilité, which soon merged with the parent publication: lithographic designs of seat furniture, case furniture and hangings were reproduced, aimed at both tradesmen and clients. The plates also include general views of interiors and plans of furniture layouts, which give a comprehensive view of the development of styles. Guilmard produced albums recording the furniture shown at the Expositions Universelles of 1844, 1849 and 1855 in Paris and a long series of albums showing designs for particular types of furniture, woodwork fittings or upholstery. He was an important figure in the developing study of historical ornament and design: as early as ...

(b Milan, Nov 18, 1891; d Milan, Sept 16, 1979).

Italian architect, painter, writer, designer and publisher. After serving in World War I, he graduated (1921) from the polytechnic in Milan, where he later held a professorship (1936–61). Working first (1923–7) with architects Mino Fiocchi and Emilio Lancia, and later (1927–33) in partnership with Lancia only, in his early years of practice he was attracted to the simplified classicism of the Novecento Italiano. As designer (1923–7) to the ceramic manufacturer Richard-Ginori he produced a porcelain that was exhibited at the first Monza Biennale (1923) and at the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (1925) in Paris, where the chairman of Cristoffle, Tony Bouilhet, commissioned him to make a new range of cutlery; he also asked him to design his villa (completed 1926) at Garches, Paris. This villa, together with the slightly earlier house (...