Centerpiece and Garnitures

This centerpiece and garnitures belong to Peter Müller-Munk‘s early oeuvre as a silversmith and reflect his exceedingly precise craftsmanship and signature forms—a masterpiece of Art Deco. Architect Ely Jacques Kahn recommended Müller-Munk for this commission to his clients Mr. and Mrs. Alfred L. Rose while remodeling their Park Avenue apartment.

In the years 1930–31, 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 Illustree des Arts et de la Vie. The critic praised his work for a purity of form, links to nature, and simplicity of proportion. 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).