(1904-76)
From the 1930s onwards Wright was both a leading promoter of a Modernist aesthetic in the United States and advocate of a more informal way of living. He studied at the Cincinnati Academy of Art in 1921, followed by a brief period at the Art Students League in New York, then Princeton University to study law. After leaving early, he became involved in theatre design in 1924 but, following his marriage in 1927, he moved into mainstream design. Early projects included a range of spun aluminium household items that were successfully promoted in department stores and trade shows. He exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's annual exhibition of Contemporary American Industrial Art of 1934, the attention bringing him a number of commissions. These included radios and instruments for the Wurlitzer Company (1932), products in chromium-plated brass for the Chase Brass Company (1930s-1944), and furniture for the Heywood-Wakefield Company and the Conant Ball Company (the Modern Living and Blonde Modern ranges of 1935 and 1936). In 1935, in association with his wife and businessman-designer Irving Richards, he established Russell Wright Associates. An early company success was the American Modern dinnerware, designed in 1937 and manufactured by the Steubenville Pottery Company from 1939 to 1959, one of the best-selling services ever put into production. Wright's design for informal ‘modern living’ was organic yet functional and shared qualities with Scandinavian work of the period. Wright remained keen to promote an American version of Modernism, hoping to further this ideal through the launch of a modern homes furnishing scheme entitled the American Way. Seeking to demonstrate the vitality of American design, whether craft or mass produced, he selected work by leading American artists, craftsmen, designers, and manufacturers, and his travels took him across the USA to source items for the scheme. Chosen products were displayed as model room ensembles in department stores across America in order to suggest to consumers the ways in which they might combine products and further a particular ‘lifestyle’. Despite a promising start the scheme was abandoned in 1942, beset with difficulties of supply and quality control. Wright's better-known design ranges after the Second World War included the Casual China range, manufactured by the Iroquois China Company (from 1946), the Residential plastic dinnerware manufactured by Northern Industrial Chemical (1953), and the colourful school furniture manufactured by the Schwayder Corporation (1955).
