Tray

This tray is part of a tea set designed by Paul A. Lobel, who immigrated to the United States as a child and studied mechanical drafting, communications, and commercial art at various New York City institutions. Lobel began to focus on metalwork after visiting the International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris in 1925, and he participated in many exhibitions of industrial design in New York City during the late 1920s and the 1930s, demonstrating his talent in many materials.

The tea set comprises several geometric forms: the rectangular tray, the spherical bodies of the teapot, sugar bowl, and creamer, and the cantilevered cylindrical handles. The dramatic interplay of these forms substitutes for the applied decoration that was eschewed by modernists of the period. Eliel Saarinen also adopted the sphere as the primary form for his distinctive tea urn and tray (MMA 1999.27.1a-c). Both Lobel and Saarinen may have been influenced by Jean Puiforcat, who designed his "Sphere" tea set in 1928. The Lobel tea set was exhibited at the 1934 exhibition "Contemporary American Industrial Art" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.