One of the great treasures of modernist typography and graphic design. In 1935, Moholy-Nagy and his wife Sibyl briefly lived at Lawn Road Flats, headquarters of Isokon, before finding a nearby home for their growing family. The brochure was designed in March 1937 and printed over the next few years with several variants, such as the present example’s paper band announcing price reductions for the Long Chair. Highlights include the photo illustration drawn by Moholy-Nagy of a male figure reclining in the chair, pipe in hand, with arrows pointing to the pressure points where the chair supports the body. Other examples of the brochure are in the collection of MoMA, New York; the Pritchard Papers, University of East Anglia; and the Isokon Gallery, London.
- James Zemaitis
At the intersection of scholarship and connoisseurship lies Curated: The Design and Library of James Zemaitis—an offering that reflects a career spent exploring, documenting, and shaping the discourse around modern and contemporary design. This carefully assembled selection includes both a compelling group of design works and a rich library of publications that have guided and inspired James Zemaitis throughout his decades in the field.
As Director of Museum Relations at R & Company since 2016, James has played a central role in developing exhibitions and fostering institutional partnerships. His recent curatorial projects, including Born Too Tall: California Women Designers, Postwar to Postmodern, demonstrate a thoughtful and inclusive approach to design history. Prior to his time at R & Company, James held leadership positions at Sotheby’s and Phillips, producing over fifty design sales and helping shape the trajectory of the postwar and contemporary design market.
This collection reflects James’s deep engagement with the material and intellectual history of design. The included library—rich with foundational texts, rare catalogues, and scholarly references—provides a rare window into the ideas and research that have underpinned his work as a curator, advisor, and educator.
This auction brings together design and scholarship in a way that reflects a lifetime of passion and purpose. We are honored to invite collectors, curators, and enthusiasts alike to discover a collection shaped by insight, research, and enduring care.
László Moholy-Nagy 1895–1946
Born in Hungary in 1895, László Moholy-Nagy was one of the most prominent members of the Bauhaus School. First studying law in Hungary, Moholy-Nagy was later drafted into the army to fight in World War I. He was wounded in combat, and while convalescing, he began to draw and write. Moholy-Nagy started to take courses in painting and became a part of the newly-formed Avant-garde group known as “MA”, or Magyar Aktivizmus which means Hungarian Activism. In 1920, Moholy-Nagy married photographer Lucia Moholy (née Shulz) and the couple often experimented with photographic methods; Moholy-Nagy’s Photograms, made without the use of a camera or negatives, stand as enduring part of his legacy. In 1922, Moholy-Nagy was invited by Walter Gropius to become a Master at the Bauhaus School in Weimar. At the Bauhaus, Moholy-Nagy taught the famous foundational course and was head of the metalsmithing workshop. He left the Bauhaus in 1928 and moved to Berlin where he founded his own graphic design firm. With the rise of the Nazi party, in 1934 Moholy-Nagy left Germany for Amsterdam. A year later, he moved to London, where he continued to work as a graphic designer. In 1937 Moholy-Nagy moved to Chicago at the urging of Walter Gropius and together they founded the New American Bauhaus. Due to financial difficulty, the school closed in 1938, but reopened again in 1939 as the Chicago School of Design and is now known as the Illinois Institute of Technology. Moholy-Nagy was director of the school until 1945. He died the following year. His expansive and cross-disciplinary career was honored in 2016 with a retrospective entitled Moholy-Nagy: Future Present at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
