Tom Lee

In addition to manufacturers making and promoting innovative domestics products from plywood to synthetic upholstery, popular magazines such as Life captivated their readers with designs for new homes.

Demonstration house for U.S. Plywood, identified as "Home is the Hunter; a Weekend Pavilion"

Highlighted in this exhibition hall at New York’s Rockefeller Center, innovative domestic technologies such as television flooded the American home after World War II.

Founded in 1838 by Horatio Bigelow and his brother Erastus, inventor of the power loom, the Bigelow Company was a pioneering American producer of carpeting. In the 20th century the company catered to commercial clients, using the tagline: “A title on the door rates a Bigelow on the floor.” At the time of Lee’s design, the showroom was located at Madison Avenue and East 31st Street.

Tom served as the design consultant for a new Design Center for Interiors that opened in 1958 in midtown Manhattan. He and his staff conceived the overall layout of the block-long exhibition hall and information center and also collaborated with manufacturers of home furnishings, such as furniture, fabrics, lamps, and new materials, on the display design of their individual spaces.

“Trilok” was an upholstery fabric that combined linen, mohair, viscose, cotton and polyethylene. Moving beyond the industrial realm, Trilok was featured in a 1956 exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art titled Textiles U.S.A.