Kem Weber for Lloyd Art Deco Machine Age Chromium Writing Desk F2594

Measures 35 3/4" x 30" x 20". Some wear to the finish, see photos.

Karl Emanuel Martin "Kem" Weber (1889–1963) was an American furniture and industrial designer, architect, art director, and teacher who created several iconic designs of the 'Streamline' style.

Once considered the dean of West Coast Modernism, German émigré Kem Weber helped shape 20th-century American mass society. The works that most readily come to mind include his streamlined tubular metal furniture pieces from 1928; his cantilevered Air Line armchair from 1934; and the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, completed in 1939, which comprised a series of buildings and custom furnishings in colors evoking the California desert. His office equipment for Disney is still sought by collectors; Peter Blake Gallery in Laguna Beach exhibited half a dozen pieces, including an animator’s desk, at Design Miami/ last December. (All sold.)

But to call Weber a proto-Modernist doesn’t seem quite right. Rather, he was a linchpin bridging the turn-of-the-century European avant-garde and gathering Modernist currents in the United States. In his designs, one can sense competing contemporary influences forged at a time when the course of design, and modern life, was intensely contested on a global scale.

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