Here is an original item(s) designed by Will Gerth (see below) , i was lucky enough to purchase a bunch of his work. this is a sketch for the design of part of a refrigerator. it is not signed. if you search for Will Gerth either in active or completed items on ebay you will find many more examples of what i have or had from his collection. he also did a lot of work with his wife Ruth.
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THIS item came from a collection of work, from the amazing artist Will
Gerth. ------who had "a list of clients as long as your arm. Designed
products and advertising no end for top-drawer New York Agencies, Chase
Brass & Copper, Oneida community (silverware, etc.) and yards of
others. Designed packages all over the industrial and commercial world.
Keeps to himself a lot. Averages 20,000 miles a year in his Franklin,
enjoying New England. Is meticulous in his work. Plays Masterworks music
while he labors. His midtown Manhattan studio in the Beaux Arts
Apartments is a delight to see and sit in. Makes delicious fried cheese
sandwiches, coffee. Has no etchings."
---and here is a bit of info on Will from the October 1933 brochure called "Closure News," GERTH & GERTH
"making
a smart table lamp out of an old toilet floater is an odd way to gain
distinction as a designer, but to a woman it's more or less second
nature. It happened a couple of years ago when Chase Brass &
Copper's building market sagged, and they feverishly launched a line of
consumer merchandise to keep the machines going. After the showroom was
laid out, Chase tried to reclaim old dies for some of the new products,
and it was here that Ruth Gerth showed her flair for making things over.
The lamp sold up in the hundreds of thousands.
Ruth
Gerth is the feminine section of "The Gerths," industrial designers at
307 E. 44th st., NYC. The other section is composed of Will Gerth,
former Chicago Art Institute instructor, who in 1917 discovered in his
class a pretty, ambitious blonde girl with the name of Ruth Koch, which
he promptly changed. She had a fled an architectural school because the
males hazed the solitary female beyond endurance, but being ambitious,
switched to the Institute. Since then the Gerths have done industrial
design side by side.
When
they came to New York, Richard Bach of the Met. Museum of Art was among
the first to discover them, and his recommendations resulted in their
first big-time commissions. Now, after working quietly for a few year,
they design for people like Chase Brass & coper, Oneida Silver,
Keystone Watchcase, Consolidated Safety Pin, Dura Hardware, Pratt &
Lambert, Bond Electric, Owl Drug, Altman's, Cushman Bakeries, Dennison's
and other large firms. They've done flat silver, metal specialties,
automobile and refrigerator hardware, Illonois and Hamilton watchcases,
powder boxes, compacts and lipsticks, kitchen utensils, drug packages,
flashlights and lighting fixtures---most of it in the modern manner, and
most of it grand stuff.
They
work together, these two Gerths, and their teamwork amazes ordinary
married mortals. Though often handling accounts separately, their work
reflects their combined talents---Will being conceded the better artist
and Ruth the more practical. Recently she gave the R.C.A. licensees a
chalk-talk, her three-hundred-and-umpteenth paid lecture on design, and
she tosses off magazine and newspaper articles on design and color quite
regularly....."
he was part of a Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition in 1937, but he is not well known today. but his work is great.