Industrial designer and architect Walter Dorwin Teague (1883-1960) was a pioneering American modern industrial designer. Best known for his design of the Ford Building at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, Teague was also responsible for the interior design of Detroit-based industrial architect Albert Kahn’s (1869-1942) Ford pavilion at the Century of Progress exposition (Chicago, 1933-34). Teague impressed the public with his minimalism and dramatic lighting, a style that can be seen in his designs for cameras, radios, graphics, textiles and more. The Cleveland Museum of Art owns ten of Teague’s silk textiles in eight different patterns inspired by the architectural installations at the Century of Progress exposition.

Built from a small dry goods store in the 1850s, Marshall Field and Co. (1852-2006) was one of the United States’ largest department stores by 1930. Marshall Field offered international luxuries—boasting oriental rug galleries and French dressing parlors. In the summer of 1933 alone, store guides (called Sightseers) led over 100,000 tours. In 1930, the company opened the Chicago Merchandise Mart, a massive expansion of their wholesale operations into a new building that was at the time the largest building in the world. It has its own zip code! Walter Dorwin Teague’s Century of Progress silk prints were manufactured and printed by Marshall Field and Co. in celebration of the Century of Progress exposition, held in Chicago in 1933-34. Walter Dorwin Teague’s silks, trademarked under the name Silks Beau Monde, were exhibited on the fourth floor of the Merchandise Mart; they were woven, dyed and printed in Marshall Field’s mill in Union Hill, New Jersey.