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Modern Eye for the
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Modern Eye |
The country needs and demands bold, persistent
experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try
it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above
all, try something.
Designers believe that if you can make something look good, the world will be a better place. In the 1920s and 30s, there was a utopian fever in the air. Our mythological heroes were working men and women who were racing to build what appeared to be futuristic Art Deco style high-rise cities. |
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Laborers were immortalized in the art of the day through murals, graphic design and sculpture. The real world was grim with war and depression but the future looked bright and promising. With Streamline Modern design, all that darkness could be left behind in a hurry. Even space travel was considered to be one of the new promises of an enlightened technological society and everyone fantasized what it would be like to be the comic strip space hero Buck Rogers. |
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After World War II, mass production of goods loaded the store shelves with more products than there were buyers. The make do, use-it-up generation was ready to shop. Hand tools were being re-designed by leading industrial designers to make them look contemporary. Advertisers were hired to write copy daring do-it-yourself first time homeowners to buy tools they'd never seen before. New materials were being experimented with or combined with traditional ones. Tough unbreakable plastic and lightweight non-rusting aluminum were popular with the new colors of red, light gray and silver replacing the traditional browns, black, and gold. In the hardware stores of this period, these new improved, highly efficient, imaginative and bold tools must have shone as bright as neon lights next to their out-of-style counterparts. |
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Millers Falls produced a line of hand tools that would have made any space hero proud. The drills were shaped like rockets and the planes and saws were radically streamlined in order to create a feeling of constant motion even when the tools were at rest on a workbench. They have been nicknamed "The Buck Rogers Tools" by collectors. Stanley and other companies made aluminum planes in a variety of sizes and styles but the planes proved to be too light for any real practical use. Hammers made out of the new metal could only be used with soft materials or in non-sparking applications. Aluminum was initially successful in rules, levels, saw and tool handles but soon lost its popularity. Plastic survived but was used in more traditional style tool handles and knobs and soon was considered a cheap alternative to wood rather than the marvelous new material with artistic possibilities it had promised the tool world it would be. |
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Pie in the sky often leaves a bitter aftertaste. The modern style future just couldn't live up to all of the fantastic promises it had made. New technology came too fast and began to make the public nervous with its lack of humanity and its inability to be controlled. In time, everyone in the world began to collectively fear the devestating destruction they had begun to manufacture and mass produce. There was a movement to return to a slower pace but the present had been set in fast forward motion. Hand tools went back to the more traditional designs but it was power tools and machines that would become the new frontier. |
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Today collectors and users look for grandfather's pioneer hand tools and appreciate all of the lost quality and craftsmanship while lamenting that very little today is even made in the USA or with any style at all. The once futuristic Buck Rogers space age tools still draw us in with all of their flash and dated imagination. In spite of our failures and broken dreams, we still want to build or discover in another galaxy a utopian City of Tomorrow where even an ordinary life will be extraordinary and much better designed than it is today. -LP |
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