Hidden treasure?

Hidden treasure?

Fans of mid-century modernism recently got a gift from on high. High above a drop-paneled ceiling, that is. In St. Louis, home of Eero Saarinen’s Gateway Arch, an exhibition focused on “mid-mod” drew attention to works from the era of space exploration. Drawings and maquettes highlighted works in the region that once were.

Soon after, a “lunar landscape” emerged, designed in the mid-1940s by Isamu Noguchi for the American Stove Company-Magic Chef Co. After seeing the modernism show, the president of the U-Haul Company, which now owns the building, took down the paneling to reveal Noguchi’s space-age biomorphic ceiling.       —Diane Richard, writer, May 12, 2016 

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Photo: top: Isamu Noguchi with architecture by Harris Armstrong, ceiling for American Stove Company, photographed for ‘The Architectural Forum: Magazine of Building’ (October 1948) (courtesy Harris Armstrong Collection, University Archives, Department of Special Collections, Washington University Libraries);bottom:courtesy U-Haul Company of St. Louis

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News source: Allison Meier, “A Noguchi Ceiling in a U-Haul Showroom Is Restored to Its Former Glory,” Hyperallergic, May 5, 2016