This exhibition of more than 125 important works by some fifty designers explores the rise of an unmistakably American, undeniably modern design style that developed during a fifteen-year period between the world wars. Curated by J. Stewart Johnson and drawn from the collections of John C. Waddell and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the exhibition reveals the influence of Art Deco and functionalism, tracing the emergence of the streamline aesthetic at a time when economic, industrial, and technological conditions were changing the course of design in the United States. Featured are a wide array of objects, many of which have become iconic of the era, that are distinguished by the absence of traditional ornament, the use of new technologies and materials, and the application of techniques of mass production. Furniture, appliances, tableware, textiles, and graphics by leading designers, among them Norman Bel Geddes, Donald Deskey, Raymond Loewy, Lurelle Guild, Eliel Saarinen, and Frank Lloyd Wright, are presented.