Authenticity Is a Commodity

As October turned into November, I became the very proud owner of an excellent selection of books from the library of Charles Niedringhaus -- a man who shares a quality with five other individuals in the whole, wide world: one of five students in the first graduating class of the Institute of Design in May, 1942. As a student, he served Institute Director Laszlo Moholy-Nagy as an assistant in the Basic and Product Design Workshop, as well as assisting the Director in two seminars on Contemporary Art and Design problems. As all top-shelf students of my website know, I am into all things Bauhaus, especially the peculiar Midwest institution known as the New Bauhaus.

When I heard that a shelf of Niedringhaus books were coming onto the market, I did exactly what I had to do: I bought them. The 45-book lot arrived in Austin and I had a blast extracting the long-forgotten ephemera and examining inscriptions from fellow travellers Sigfried Giedion, Harry Bertoia, James Prestini and Moholy himself. Collating these books was as much fun as I can possibly have with all my clothes on. As a recovering graphic designer, I believe it better to sell a product than a service. But my mercantile lifestyle tends to jade me. The shock of the new quickly wore off, and I rolled up my sleeves and started my due diligence, researching the man and the shadow he cast through his books.

I discovered Niedringhaus' student work was well-represented in VISION IN MOTION, with multiple b/w reproductions of molded plywood furniture formed by a machine co-developed with Nathan Lerner. This furniture was infinitely more useful than the prototype machine dubbed the “Smell-O-Meter," featured in the slim Wittenborn edition of THE NEW VISION and ABSTRACT OF AN ARTIST. Anybody credited with the furniture design at the New Bauhaus was okay by me. I cross-referenced Niedringhaus (along with Bertoia) as a design research assistant to Herbert Matter on the production of the KNOLL INDEX OF DESIGNS in 1950. I was onto something.

Bouncing between books in the stacks and that Internet, I picked up his tracks long after Niedringhaus' skills in furniture design and production had come to the attention of Hans Knoll -- always on the lookout for designers to work for what was then Knoll Associates. Niedringhaus enjoyed a long and fruitful career with Knoll; earning a patent with Florence Knoll on July 21, 1953 for their design of a sofa/daybed on angular steel frame. Throughout his long career with Knoll, Niedringhaus often acted as an artistic liaison linking the inspired visions of designers such as Isamu Noguchi with Knoll's engineers, draughtsmen, and marketing departments. This confluence of art and business was fundamental to Knoll's identity and success. That same confluence of art and business first encountered as Moholy-Nagy's student in Chicago helped Charles Niedringhaus secure his rightful spot in the pantheon of American Modernism. And here I was, with a nice selection from his personal library, reading his history like a botanist examining the rings of a redwood tree. But as the most advanced form of hunter and gatherer -- the collector -- I wanted more.

Like every collector (except for possibly Merrill Berman), I thought my primary source material was somewhat ... lacking. I needed to know more about the hierarchy at 247 Ontario Street: who did what, where, when and why. Who was responsible for bringing the doughnuts? There were gaps that needed to be plugged, credit that needed attribution. After a certain point, there is only one avenue left to the Modern seeker -- eBay.

The auction listing titled 1941 Moholy-Nagy ~ School of Design BROCHURE, Bauhaus caught my attention -- an original enrollment form for the 1941 Summer classes in Chicago and Sommonauk, Illinois. Unlike old issues of National Geographic, this is not the kind of ephemera that has been actively preserved. It is rare. And very desirable to certain individuals. I did what I had to do: I bought it.

The Brochure arrived a week later. I tore open the priority envelope and examined the brochure. Let me pause here for a moment to remind you that I am a recovering Graphic Designer. I love examining old books, periodicals and ephemera and tracing my fingertips along the embossed ridges flanking hand-set lines of letterpressed type. I use a 10-X engravers loupe to marvel at crisply-cut halftone plates. In the right context, the production methodology is frequently as significant as the material being presented; you know that whole form and function thing. This was one of those times.

I was the less-than-proud owner of a Canon color copy of a 1941 School of Design Brochure. It was a damn good copy -- full-color on two sides of a glossy oversized sheet trimmed and hand-folded to resemble an original document. Anybody that has ever had their breath taken away by a printed item produced before World War II would not be fooled by the heavy blacks and the weird, off-kilter CMYK replication of spot color and 100% K type. Maybe I'm kidding myself. In terms of technical skill, this was not a bad knock-off; the premeditation literally dripped off the page. Maybe there's a graphic designer or production artist out there who has this wonderful original document and is actively counterfeiting it -- thinking that nobody will know the difference.

If you're out there and come across this post, I can only ask: Why Are You Doing This? I can understand the desire to duplicate $20 bills, food stamps, stock certificates, drivers licenses, etc. But if you took the time to counterfeit the Brochure for Two Summer Sessions of the School of Design in Chicago, ask yourself: don't you have something better to do than attacking our common Design heritage?