Centerpiece

In the years 1930–31, Peter Müller-Munk began to gain critical acclaim for his modernist silver after being included in the exhibition "Decorative Metalwork and Cotton Textiles The Third International Exhibition of Contemporary Industrial Art," organized by the American Federation of the Arts. The exhibition travelled to four cities including New York, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and prompted the French critic C. De Cordis to feature Müller-Munk in La Revue Moderne Illustrée des Arts et de la Vie. The critic praised his work for a purity of form, links to nature, and simplicity of proportion. The four applied ribs serve as decorative accents that unify this centerpiece’s base and body. Eventually shifting from silver to steel and other new materials and technologies, Müller-Munk would continue to make important contributions to American design as an associate professor at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh and through his industrial design firm Peter Müller-Munk Associates (PMMA).