#schreckengost

Viktor Schrekengost, Cleveland, Ohio industrial designer, created this glazed ceramic Jazz Bowl circa 1930, at the age of 26. It's on display at The Cleveland Museum of Art.

The History Behind American Girl Molly’s China Tea Set

Molly’s China Tea Set was inspired by “Posey Shop” (alternatively named “Manhattan Flower Shop,” or simply “Flower Shop”), a dinnerware pattern designed by American artist Viktor Schreckengost for American Limoges of Sebring, Ohio. 

Viktor Schreckengost (1906-2008) was one of the most influential and prolific designers in America...and, odds are, you’ve never heard of him. 

According to a 2006 article from The New York Times (mirror), Schreckengost “designed a punch bowl that sold at Sotheby's in 2004 for $254,400, and a metal lawn chair that became a 20th-century icon. He changed the economics of the trucking industry by moving the engine under the cab, eliminating the nose and creating a larger payload. And he redesigned the pedal car so that it could be stamped out cheaply, inspiring some to call him the Henry Ford of children's toys.”

Industrial design democratizes high style, and Mr. Schreckengost was widely considered among the most democratic industrial designers. He made, quite literally, the stuff of life — things found routinely in homes, backyards and garages in this country and around the world. He designed bicycles for Sears and everyday china for American Limoges. He designed children’s toys and pedal cars; flashlights, furniture and fans; lawn chairs, lawn mowers and golf carts; baby walkers and artificial limbs. [Source]

In his decades of work for companies that made toys, dinnerware and commercial equipment, Mr. Schreckengost never tried to claim the spotlight of a star. Instead, he practiced an unpretentious Midwestern approach to design, pragmatic yet ambitious. [...] 

A third-floor studio, where Mr. Schreckengost has worked for decades, has stacks of the watercolors he used to create dinnerware patterns. Among the patterns are the Manhattan Flower Shop, for American Limoges, which is so quintessentially of its time that a miniature tea set is now made with the pattern for Molly, the 1940's-era American Girl doll.

Mr. Schreckengost's dinnerware, now collectible, was at one time sold at stores like Sears, Roebuck, where products — not their designers — were promoted. "Just as Martha Stewart gave easy access to good taste and design," Mr. Ostergaard said, "so too did Schreckengost — but without a name." [Source]

Schreckengost believed that design should be affordable and that innovation should be available to everybody. “Design is not only about how a product looks; it must make an emotional connection with the customer.”

The “Flower Shop” pattern was first introduced in 1935, and it continued to be produced until 1949. It was one of Schreckengost’s “most popular modern American dinnerware designs. His bright, bold, cheerful decorative schemes were strikingly different from the Victorian designs of the past. The Flower Shop pattern was so popular that within a year of its appearance in 1935, as many as 38 knock-offs had appeared from places as far away as Japan and Czechoslovakia.” [x]

Teapot

Design Paul Schreckengost