1930s Herman Miller Modernist Art Deco Table/Alarm Clock • Gilbert Rohde

Here is an extremely rare 1930s Herman Miller Modernist table/alarm clock designed by Gilbert Rohde. It is all original and has been fully restored/rewired to perfect working condition. This is a stunning example of the most forward-thinking Modernist design of the 1930s. The cylindrical case of the clock is made of a heavy and polished black bakelite while the bar that visually “pierces” the clock is made of gleaming chromed brass. There is a brass second hand, black straight minute hand and a black hour hand in the trademark teardrop shaped design.

About Gilbert Rohde 
(b New York, 1894; d New York, 16 June 1944). American industrial designer. He learned cabinetmaking in his father’s shop in the Bronx, New York, and then worked as an illustrator of furniture for several New York retail shops. In 1927 he made a trip to Paris and there saw examples of the modernism known subsequently as Art Deco. On his return to America he undertook freelance interior design projects and made custom-built modern furniture for private clients In 1929 he opened a design office in New York, concentrating on interior design and developing furniture in the early modernist style. In 1930 he established a relationship with Herman Miller Inc. of Zeeland, MI, a firm that had previously made products imitating various traditional styles. Rohde convinced the firm of the superiority of the ideas of modernism at a time when this direction was virtually unknown in the USA; he developed an extensive line of furnishings that combined functional ideas and simplicity of form with decorative details that were characteristically ‘modernistic’.

About Herman Miller 
Herman Miller began in 1923 as a manufacturer of traditional residential furniture, became a leader in “modern” furniture in the 1930s and 1940s; developed lasting ties through the 1950s with legendary industrial designers like Gilbert Rohde who led us in new directions.