Walter Dorwin Teague
Walter Dorwin TeagueIn a time when money was little to be found and the effects of the depression had long since set in, the American people tried to do what they could to live happy lives. Movies and sporting events were good outlets, but none stacked up to gathering around with a group of friends and family to listen to the radio. This experience soon led designers to take a new look at this staple of 1930’s life.
In 1934 Walter Dorwin Teague designed an innovative series of radios called the Bluebird Collection. Teague was born in 1886 in Germany. He attended college at one of Germany’s government schools where he got an associates degree in architecture. With this associates Teague began designing interiors until he was sent to America to work on a government funded nuclear warfare project. After this project Teague freely designed whatever he liked. He worked on interiors, structures, cameras, and of course radios. Teague preferred to design for the times and tried to touch on the current trends of the day. The Bluebird collections style was incorporating the current trend of art deco, and from other designers such as Raymond Loewy. It is also thought that the radios style was influenced by technological advances and new machinery. Art Deco design from this time was thought to be the taking of machinery and translating that into sleek art forms. Art deco of this time used blues and peach in their color schemes, and incorporated materials with a high shine, like chrome and mirror. These trends were obviously translated into the radios design. The radios use thin chrome accent strips along the front of the blue-mirrored front panel. The Bluebird collection consisted of four models, two of which were the same but only with different part...
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