Rowena Reed Kostellow Digital Archive
The scope and longevity of Rowena Reed Kostellow’s impact on 20th-century design is evident in this digital tribute to Pratt Institute’s Industrial Design program co-founder, professor, and former chair.
Sourced via open call from members of the Industrial Design department and broader community, these objects, ephemera, and stories pay homage to Kostellow’s tremendous career and wide-reaching influence on new generations of designers. The archive was curated with the assistance of an advisory group composed of current and former Pratt students, including those who worked closely with or were inspired by Rowena Reed Kostellow.
The materials collected in this section of the archive relate to the various aspects of Kostellow’s curriculum, which has been taught in Pratt’s industrial design department in one form or another since 1938. Many of her students became teachers themselves, spreading her philosophy of how to see and create beauty to thousands of designers far and wide. Some of her former students teach in the department today. Rowena once called teaching “a marvelous adventure—like having a huge laboratory in which to carry out our experiments.”
In foundation-level classes, design students work through a series of form exercises to learn about hierarchy, proportion, axial movement, and relationships in space and composition. A variety of exercises train specific skills in 3D representation. Rectilinear Problems prompt them to think about static hierarchy and proportion. Curvilinear Problems add the challenge of dynamic axial relationships. Fragment Problems ask students to create dynamic form relationships in small groupings. Planar and Linear Problems emphasize how forms relate to each other in space.
Once students move beyond the foundation exercises, they are presented with a whole new set of challenges. Construction Problems demand the balanced organization of many forms in space. Convexity and Concavity Problems introduce the challenge of sculpting compelling forms while considering surface transitions, translating the previous lessons into a single, dynamic form.
While Kostellow’s innovative curriculum was largely about abstract representation, the lessons were designed to include beauty in design, empowering students to create real world products that would be aesthetically compelling as well as functional. Her students, and their students after them, went on to develop impressive works in design and art.
When students achieved a grasp on the nuance inherent in different forms, it was time to put those forms to use. Here are a variety of student projects; they range from the practical to the artistic, and from concepts to realized objects. Whatever the case, each began through considerations of the basic formal problems discussed above.
Industrial design touches all parts of our lives, including the device on which you are currently reading these words. Rowena Reed Kostellow’s legacy can be seen in some of the most beautiful, yet still practical, daily goods from the past century.
Missouri-born Rowena Reed enrolled in the Kansas City Art Institute in 1922, where she met and eventually married Alexander Kostellow. After graduation the couple moved to Pittsburgh, where Alexander Kostellow had secured a teaching position at the Carnegie Technical Institute. The pair arrived at Pratt in 1938, where they formed the Institute’s Industrial Design Department. Rowena Reed Kostellow became that program’s chair in 1962, a role she held until 1966. Even after she stepped away from her official role, she continued to teach Pratt’s design students well into the 1980s. That entire time, she lived as she taught. According to her former student Sharon Skolnick-Bagnoli,
“Miss Reed was a spectacular teacher. During one of our after-class conversations, she said she was buying a car. When I asked her what color the car would be, she replied, ‘no color.’ That stuck with me. What color was no color?
“A few months later, I saw her driving by in her new car. Beautiful lines and the three-dimensionality she so cherished. The car was silvery-gray, the color of the metal itself. It was no color.”
Finally, here is a collection of short anecdotes from the woman herself. They provide some additional insight into the mind that educated some of the most significant designers of a generation.
The Rowena Reed Kostellow Digital Archive was assembled with invaluable guidance from an advisory group comprised of the following members:
Linda Celentano, BID ’80
Tarik Currimbhoy, BID ’79 and Masters of Architecture ’88
Meghan Day, MID ’23
Kate Hixon, BID ’81
Rose Moon, BID ’23
Additional feedback was provided by Anita Cooney, Dean, School of Design and Ignacio Urbina Polo, Chair, Industrial Design.
Digital Archivist: Bucky Miller
Special thanks to Bronsin Ablon, Andress Belk, Eugene Bergmann, David Caccamo, Greg Durbin, Bruce Hannah, Debera Johnson, Jeff Kapec, Haig Khachatoorian, Edward D. Krent, Philip Kropf, Yihong (Hugo) Li, Alex Morpugo, John Muccicolo, Carl L. Olsen, Jerry Qu, Tom Patti, Gordon Randall Perry, Sharon Skolnick-Bangoli, Laura Lisa Smith, Karen Stone, Tucker Viemeister, Haiwen Yang.
The Rowena Reed Kostellow Digital Archive is made possible by the generous support of Laura Lisa Smith, Industrial Design ’77.