As a professional industrial designer, Channing Gilson recognized the significance of the historical design record. A chance encounter in 1948 sparked his interest in collecting: while visiting a chainsaw manufacturing company he found that companies were routinely discarding prototypes, models, and products once they were put into production. He resolved to start collecting obsolete mass-produced everyday items. For the next 40 years, he sought out well-designed objects, especially those with radically new styling made possible by the application of emerging technologies and materials to consumer products in the post-World War II era. Thanks to his foresight, many significant midcentury design objects have been preserved in this collection.

Representative pieces by well-known industrial designers such as Henry Dreyfuss and Raymond Loewy, as well as those by lesser-known individuals who made important contributions to the field, are all part of the general collection. In addition, the archives of two notable American industrial designers who at one time had offices in Pasadena, Jean Otis Reinecke and Channing Gilson himself, are included.

In the 1930s, Reinecke's firm designed toasters, clocks, an ice crusher, a bottle-washing machine housing, tape dispensers, can openers, fruit juicers, electric mixers, and a streamlined farm tractor, among other things. Many products reflected new styling trends made possible by developments in the plastics industry. Over time, Gilson acquired several of these objects designed by Reinecke, resulting in both designers being represented in the donation by the Channing Gilson Trust, to Cal Poly Pomona, after Gilson's passing in 2007.

The general collection includes domestic products that have become modern design classics– vacuums and thermostats by Henry Dreyfuss, chairs by Eero Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, and Charles and Ray Eames, as well as bottles by Raymond Loewy and tableware by Russel Wright. As for office equipment, the collection also includes noteworthy typewriters by Eliot Noyes and Mario Bellini, plus calculators by Bellini. Most of these items were designed in the three decades after World War II.

The entire collection provides a unique window into the industrial design process in the mid-20th century. It presents a sample of midcentury U.S. design, which was shaped by new technologies, new manufacturing processes and refinements, a new aesthetic, new merchandising techniques, and the rising middle-class demand for mass-produced consumer goods.

Cal Poly Pomona is proud to present its Channing Gilson Industrial Design Collection for the first time since its donation, along with the release of The Gilson Collection, a publication co-authored by former faculty Maren Henderson, PhD, and former visual art resource librarian Therese Mahoney, PhD, and designed by current professor Babette Mayor, MFA. The exhibition and publication are certain to be a valuable resource that helps to document this historical record and preserve America's midcentury design heritage.

Curated by Michele Cairella Fillmore, Gallery Director
Co-curated by Erika De La Parra