Seldom seen Isamu Noguchi Radio Nurse AND Guardian Ear.

Very good condition considering the age. Not currently functional. 

  It's uncommon to have both of these items together. The "Ear" transmitter is not seen as important to some collectors, but we disagree as it was an essential part of the original product design.

History:  The 'Radio Nurse' baby monitor was one of the earliest industrial designs by sculptor Isamu Noguchi. It invokes both the solemnity of a Kendo warrior's mask, in which Noguchi acknowledges his Japanese heritage, and the American 'Machine Age' sculpture of the 1930s. Created as a sculptural form to be sited in a living room, the speaker was to be accompanied by the 'Guardian Ear' transmitter that would have been located in the infant's room. This device was first commissioned by Zenith Radio Corporation's president to monitor his daughter on his yacht, and was one of several sophisticated domestic security products created in the wake of the Lindbergh kidnapping in 1932. Noguchi was responsible for the styling of the system’s most visible, and audible, component—the Radio Nurse receiver. Minimally, he had to create a vessel to house and protect a loudspeaker and its associated vacuum tubes, but actually his task was much more challenging: He had to find a way to soften a potentially intrusive high tech component’s presence in a variety of domestic settings. His solution, remarkably, was both literal and paradoxical: He created a faceless bust, molded in Bakelite, fronted by a grille, and backed by the suggestion of a cap—an impassive abstract form that managed to capture the essence of a benign yet no-nonsense nurse. Shimmering in a gray area where the abstract and figurative appear to meet, it strikes a vaguely surrealist note—it wouldn’t be out of place in an image by Giorgio de Chirico or Man Ray. A touch of whimsy is incorporated: Adjusting the concealed volume control wheel amounts to a kind of tickle under the unit’s chin, subtly undermining the effect of the stern Kendo mask–like visage. Still, with its human-yet-mechanical features, the Radio Nurse remains slightly sinister and finally inscrutable.