A Handbook of California Design, 1930-1965: Craftspeople, Designers, Manufacturers

$37.95 at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

More than 140 illustrated biographical profiles map the innovative modern California design community. Mid-twentieth-century California offered fertile ground for design innovations. The state's reputation as a land of unlimited opportunity, its many institutions of higher learning, and its perpetually booming population created conditions that allowed designers and craftspeople to flourish. They found an eager market among educated and newly affluent Californians, and their products shaped the material…