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Design for Penguin Donkey

Design
ca. 1939 (made)
Artist/Maker
Isokon Furniture Company (manufacturer)
Egon Riss (designer)
Place of origin
London (made)

Design for Penguin Donkey bookcase, Egon Riss for Isokon Furniture Company, pencil and coloured pencil on paper, London, ca. 1939

Object details

Categories
Designs
Furniture
Object type
Design
TitleDesign for Penguin Donkey (generic title)
Brief description
Design for Penguin Donkey bookcase, Egon Riss for Isokon Furniture Company, pencil and coloured pencil on paper, London, ca. 1939
Dimensions
  • Backing paper height: 64.8cm
  • Backing paper width: 77.1cm
Style
Modernism
Gallery label
Egon Riss and Jack Pritchard (1899-1992)
Design for the Penguin Donkey bookcase
British, 1939
Pen, pencil and coloured pencil

Riss was a distinguished Viennese architect who fled to Britain in the late 1930s. As he did for many others, Jack Prichard helped him by providing work and accomodation in the Lawn Road Flats. The Donkey was designed as a bookcase to hold Penguin paperback books and a free advertising campaign was arranged with the publishers. The donkey was to be made of plywood by Pritchard's firm, Isokon. Unfortunately production had to be postponed because the outbreak of war prevented supplies of plywood reaching Britain from Estonia.
Associated objects
Collection
Prints, Drawings & Paintings Collection
Accession number
CIRC.239-1975

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Record createdJune 30, 2009
Record URL
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1036816/design-for-penguin-donkey-design-egon-riss/
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