Prototype Jar
name: label: maker
content: Landor Associates
notes: label: Description
content: This is a prototype of a mustard jar created by Frances Mair for Landor Associates. It is made of solid wood and is stained dark brown with spiral fluted shoulders.
label: Description
content: Francis Marion Mair was born in Streator, Illinois to Alexander Morrison Mair and Jessie C. Williams on May 5, 1916. He began his career as an artist and designer at the University of Illinois School of Design in Chicago receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting in 1938. That year he joined the United States Navy and where he designed visual aids for the Naval Training School in Chicago, Illinois.
label: Description
content: Even at this early stage in his career, acute design sense and humor are evident in his work. In 1949, he joined Landor Associates in San Francisco, California where he worked for forty years, retiring in 1989. At Landor, he specialized in designing packaging and labeling for beverages.
label: Description
content: He also was the director of Landor's Museum of Packaging History which shared quarters with Landor Associates on the Ferryboat Klamath. Throughout his career, Mair took on diverse freelance projects. One of his most successful was the Suva line of rattan furniture and decorative objects for Decorative Imports. Mair published articles in Advertising Age, Industrial Design, Advertising Techniques, and Wines and Vines. Mair died on April 29, 1991 in Contra Costa County, California.
label: Description
content: In 1939, Walter Landor arrived in the United States to help install the British training pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. At twenty-six years old, Landor had left his home in Germany to study art and design in Britain, where he became the youngest Fellow of the Royal Society of Industrial Artists. With whispers of war circulating around Europe, Landor decided to stay in the United States and travelled to the West Coast in search of design work.
label: Description
content: In 1941, Landor and his new wife Josephine Martinelli founded Walter Landor and Associates (today Landor) in their San Francisco apartment. The company specialized in packaging and label design for a number of iconic brands ranging from Marlboro cigarettes to Aunt Jemima to Sara Lee. As the company expanded, Landor’s base of operations moved from his home through several locations until it settled in 1962 on the Klamath, a docked ferryboat in the San Francisco Bay that would become an iconic part of Landor’s own brand.
label: Description
content: In order to test and perfect packaging silhouette and shape, Landor designers created wooden and plastic prototypes.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Manufacturing
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of LaVeda Mair
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1996.0196.03
label: accession number
content: 1996.0196
label: catalog number
content: 1996.0196.03
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Prototype Jar
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 9.5 cm x 7.5 cm; 3 3/4 in x 2 15/16 in