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people out of work and struggling financially during the Depression luminaries of Industrial Design,
years, it is extraordinary how many radios were sold between 1929 and and much more famous for
1935. Its success is measured by the fact that after 1933 there were their subsequent commissions.
many more table-top radios sold than consoles. This was a burgeoning These designs for cheap
market in an otherwise commercially depressed era. Hundreds of radio radios were not for major
manufacturers looked for opportunities to expand their markets and the corporations and clearly not
confluence of several diverse factors created a unique moment in the prestigious, as they were generally
evolution of this medium. ignored in later homages and
biographies. But the larger and
Industrial Design more complete picture confirms that
The new profession of Industrial this was the moment that Art met
Design contained people who had Industry and it was the embedding of
come from other areas such as electronics into consumer products that
graphic design, theatre sets, fashion gave rise to a radical shift in both
illustration, and architecture. They design possibilities and people’s
all had little or no work during the relationships with objects. For the
Depression. However, the new first time, the potential presence
table-top format radio offered an and functionality of a product were
integrated, more user-friendly Pacific “Elite,” disconnected from its physical form.
apparatus of an appropriate New Zealand, 1934 Radio became an object which
portable size creating the consumers chose for their home not
potential for multiple units just based on what they would hear but how it would look.
in the home and workplace. Radio became a visual as well as an aural experience. Every
In stepping away from the company manufacturing radios was forced to modify their
constraints of the large cabinet designs each year (whether or not there were internal
wooden console radio in the technical advances) as choice and change became synonymous
living room, the table-top radio AWA “Radiolette” with Cigarette Box, with retail marketing.
effectively changed the listener Australia, 1934 & 1936 The industrial designers were innovators and enablers,
from the family to the individual creating a benchmark for other radio makers to aspire to and an
and broadened the scope of radio programs for the incentive for quality styling to be used in radio
listening audience. Importantly, the concurrent design. They used a wide range of materials
spread of domestic electrification also under- (mainly plastics, but also glass, metal, and wood)
pinned the expansion of radio sales and usage. but their coherent bond was the shedding of
Added to this was the utility of the new fussiness in favor of streamlined design. The
non-flammable synthetic plastics (bakelite, collateral effect over the next ten years was
urea-formaldehyde [plaskon, beetleware], and significant in the U.S. and all around the world.
Catalin) which could be mass-produced much Australia is a good example of a country with
more cheaply per unit than wood radio cabinets, no known radio designers yet the style of locally
the latter requiring more skill and time for made radios in the mid-1930s clearly was
production and finishing. Here we see the artisan influenced by the radios created by American and
replaced by the assembly line. English Industrial Designers. A true anomaly is
The new plastics offered a broader scope in the very rare wooden console Pacific ‘Elite’ made
which to incorporate the new modern style of in New Zealand in 1934 which shows how good
design (which today we call Art Deco or design can overcome the inherent limitations of
Streamlining) and created a whole new type of the material and a furniture mentality. By 1950
radio cabinet that reflected modernity and Kadette K25 “Clockette,” U.S., 1937 in the U.S., many cheap deco-style radios sold
progress. Some radios clearly derived their look through department stores were made from metal
from other streamlined deco objects; and painted. A small portion were chromed
skyscrapers, trains, and rockets while and today these little gems are highly sought
others from the aerodynamic shape by collectors.
of a bullet, a sled, or the grill of a
car. Reduction in the size of radio Collecting Radios by
tubes in the mid-1930s allowed Country and Designers
for small cabinets to be produced This small, sub-set of radios from the
and, almost exclusively in the 1930s only represented a minuscule
USA and Australia, a wide proportion of global radio production and
choice of colors allowed for sales, but by virtue of their aesthetic
targeted marketing directed at attributes and clever incorporation of radio
women to place radios in all components they influenced all radio cabi-
rooms of a house. netry to some extent. Their influence was global,
reinforcing the spread of the Art Deco aesthetic
Design Becomes Essential in radios all around the world. It should be
Many smaller radio companies noted that the impact of the Depression and
commissioned industrial designers then the upheaval leading into World War 2
to create radios that would allow a meant that in many countries’ consumer
cost-effective home appliance to radio production was halted or severely
be mass-produced and mass- limited, and the pre-war designs only
marketed. These designers were emerged when production resumed in
all early in their careers and the late 1940s and even early 1950s. Most
almost all of them went on to of these radios are rare today and some are lim-
be founders of Streamlining, Raymond Loewy, U.S., Colonial New World Radio, 1933 ited to a few remaining examples. They

32 Journal of Antiques and Collectibles