Robert J. King

Designer Robert J. "Bob" King, best known for his 1950’s Contour flatware and his Celestial Centerpiece at the 1964 World’s Fair, was a leader in the organic modernist silver design movement in mid-century America. King’s work was motivated by his lifelong enjoyment and passion for art and design and for new, modern designs in particular. After World War II, the United States was optimistic about the state of its future and wanted to herald a new age of design that was nationalistic and modern instead of the traditional, ornamented designs of the past. King wanted to emphasize the beauty of form and material in his silver works so that exterior decoration would not be necessary. His designs were strongly influenced by Scandinavian artists and their modern organic movement, as well as his teachers at the School for American Craftsmen in Alfred, New York. These were some of the influences that inspired his design work.

Born in 1917 in Wisconsin, King began his art training before World War II, receiving his bachelor’s degree in arts education from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. There he took a metalworking class with Professor John Van Koert. After graduating in 1941, King continued his artistic collaboration with Van Koert and Mary Norton, working in their commercial design studio in Madison making jewelry and novelties for about a year. King was then drafted into World War II and assigned to the Air Force as a photographer, serving in England.

After the war ended, King decided to attend the School for American Crafts (SAC) at Alfred, New York in January of 1947. SAC was the first American professional school solely devoted to educating craftsmen and was founded by Aileen Osborne Webb, who married into the Vanderbilt family. The purpose of SAC was to raise the standards of handmade craft in the US to a professional level. The curriculum was intensely studio-centered with both students and faculty expected to work forty hours a week. King studied enameling and metalworking at SAC alongside some of the most accomplished American craftsmen of the time, including Mitzi Otten, Lauritz Christian Eichner, and John Prip. Prip was American-born but his father was Danish and Prip himself had lived in Denmark much of his life and studied metalworking there. He brought his considerable knowledge, skills, and interest in Danish Modernism to the school as teacher and head of the department. This was the type of modern design that also appealed to and inspired King. At SAC King would receive his fundamental professional preparation and education in the art and craft of metalworking. It was also at SAC that he was to meet his future wife, Carol Thomson, a ceramics student.

After King graduated from SAC in 1949, Van Koert offered him a job in the design department at Towle Silversmiths, where he was now head designer. King married Carol and together they moved to Newburyport, Massachusetts where King started to work as a silver designer with Van Koert as his boss. He asked King to design and make a prototype of a flatware set that would be biomorphic and sleek like the modern Scandinavian designs that were gaining attention in the international design community. King created a silver design called Contour in 1950, which would be the first American sterling pattern to demonstrate post-World War II organic modernist design. It was first introduced in Knife, Fork, and Spoon, which was a traveling exhibition co-sponsored in 1951 by Towle and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Van Koert filed the company patent as the designer of Contour, but in actuality, it was King who designed and made the flatware prototype and subsequent matching holloware. Contour is aptly named. The design is biomorphic and highlights soft, graceful curves. Contour was different from other designs in that several features of the utensils were slightly smaller than in the past. Most radically, the flatware had no decoration. King said that his approach was to “evolve a form that is decorative in itself without having to apply decoration on top."

The Museum of Modern Art included Contour in its 1951 Good Design exhibition, which helped promote the design commercially. It was also the only production-line American flatware ever included in Good Design. A six-piece place setting, along with a serving spoon, cream ladle, tablespoon, and carving set, was selected by the judges. The Good Design exhibitions opened up opportunities to create modern designs no longer utilizing external decoration. King’s handmade work was exhibited in the American Pavilion at the Brussels World's Fair in 1958. King’s pieces that were shown were a silver buffet server and silver ladle, along with a six-piece setting of flatware.

After thirteen years of working with Towle, King left the company in 1962 to become a staff designer at International Silver Company in Meriden, Connecticut. International was the only silverware manufacturer displaying its products at the New York World’s Fair in 1964. The exhibit was located in the Pavilion of American Exteriors and the highlight of International’s installation was the Moon Room. The focus of the room was a suspended table and floating chairs, all made of clear plastic and bathed in light to suggest stars and the galaxy. King designed a piece for the show called the Celestial Centerpiece which was a circle of six candleholders surrounding a silver flower-like form tipped with 133 spinel sapphires. He also designed a pair of tapered candlesticks with blue enamel trim and a pair of five-light candelabra with spherical shapes that evoked planets. A carafe that King had made independently around 1952 was also displayed. Earlier it had been accepted for the competition and exhibition Designer Craftsmen USA 1953 and featured prominently in a Glamour magazine article of the same year.

Although King was forced to retire in 1977 when International’s Meriden branch closed, he continued to create art in his home studio into his nineties. Starting in 1969 he taught himself pottery, quickly becoming an accomplished ceramic artist and a lifelong member of Wesleyan Potters in Middletown, Connecticut. He continued to win awards for both his metalwork and pottery. In 2006 he was honored for his silver design achievements in the exhibition Modernism in American Silver: 20th Century Design at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian in DC, with his Celestial Centerpiece as a featured highlight. King’s early silver designs are indicative of the post-World War II era in America that looked optimistically to the future. In turning away from external decoration, the inherent beauty of organic form and material might best be realized. King passed away on April 17, 2014 in Wallingford, CT at the age of ninety-seven.

(Condensed from article written by granddaughter Janna King and published in Silver Magazine, Sep/Oct 2016 issue)