Walter Dorwin Teague

To pioneer industrial designer Walter Dorwin Teague, geometry served as the basis of all good design. The ''Nocturne'' radio, today celebrated as one of the top icons of modernity and ''Machine Age'' aesthetics, embodies many of Teague’s fundamental design principles and personifies his quest for the ideal relationship of forms and dynamic symmetry. The radio is composed of a perfect circle of mirrored glass framed by a precise steel arc, with the controls, dials and speaker organized within a steel grid. The monumental façade of the radio almost entirely conceals the mechanical devices of the instrument. The receiver and speaker are conspicuously housed in a lacquered wood box attached to the reverse.

In addition to the ''Nocturne,'' Teague designed several console and table-top radios for the Sparton Corporation in the mid 1930s. The ''Nocturne,'' distinguished in Teague’s design drawings as a special model, was presumably manufactured in a limited edition to appeal to fashionable night clubs, lounges and hotels. Today, less than twenty-five examples of this impressive floor radio are known to exist, many of which now incorporate re-silvered glass and replaced components. The originality and integrity of the present example, which bears no evidence of restoration and retains all original parts, distinguishes it as one of the finest examples to appear on the marketplace in recent years. Other examples of the model reside in the collections of The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, High Museum of Art, Atlanta and The Wolfsonian-Florida International University, Miami.