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 numbers for sales in Canada and the U.S. The most popular model was the 506. This was the smaller desktop version for U.S. sales. The radio used the standard internal components with a round-mirrored face. The mirror is 14 inches in diameter and has a felt backing. Chrome strips rap around from the back and come together in a circular bezel. This bezel houses the controls, which are three wooden knobs. Inside the bezel is a circle of metal mesh, which appears to be the speaker location, however this is just for decorative purposes. This mesh area further illustrates the idea of just using the existing components with a decorative face. Another example of this is the two black wooden feet, which also serve only a decorative purpose. The radios weight is all resting on a frame on the wooden casing around the components. The radios casing is painted black with only a slight detail of white on the side louvers.
The other Bluebird style was a larger floor model named the Nocturne. This radio stood about four feet in height and mimicked the 506’s styling. It also used the mirrored front panel, which was extremely heavy and fragile. This radio was a poor seller not only because of the size but also the cost, which was extremely expensive for this time of depression.
The Bluebird collection started production in 1934 by the Sparton Company. This company was started in 1900 by the Withington brothers who started out making small machinery parts but later evolved and made their first radio in 1920. They then in 1926 made the first battery operated radio followed up by a series of wooden carved radios. Then in 1934 began production on their first two mirrored radios, which were the Bluebird’s.