Atomic Age Design

There’s an old saying that “nothing good happens after midnight.” It’s a reminder that after the clock strikes 12, our brains can be more susceptible to risky decisions, especially if alcohol is involved.

Fortunately, this is not always the case. Sometimes great things can come after midnight — and too many drinks — like the invention of one of the most iconic pieces of the Atomic Age that heavily influenced the design world and was part of an optimistic movement inspired by the atom bomb.

Good Timing

One night in 1947, George Nelson, one of the fathers of Mid-Century Modern design and founder of the innovative company George Nelson Associates, was working on designs for the Howard Miller Clock Co. Nelson and his team, which included his design director Irving Harper, were basing their clock designs around the belief that numbers on the face of a clock were no longer needed to tell time, and wall clocks could put form over function thanks to the popularity of wristwatches.

After Harper and two other colleagues, architect and futurist Buckminster Fuller, and artist and architect Isamu Noguchi, stopped by Nelson’s office, the four celebrated designers shared a few bottles of wine and took turns at the drawing table sketching potential wall clocks, according to the Swiss company Vitra, which has sold reissues of clocks designed by Nelson’s company since 1999.

What emerged from those late-night scribblings was one of the most famous designs of the Atomic Age: the Ball Wall Clock. Becoming a quintessential Modernist accessory when it hit the market in 1949, the Ball Clock resembles the structure of an atom, with its central (and numberless) face and radiating starburst of spokes with colored balls at the ends. It changed the way people thought about postwar modernism and time, and marked the start of a playful approach to design.

While the clock continues to be known as Nelson’s, the design is credited to Harper, known for his sculptural time pieces that were manufactured by Howard Miller, including his Sunburst Clock, another mid-century icon.

Harper’s Ball Clock significantly influenced Atomic Age design and the “atomic starburst” aesthetic, which became a wildly popular motif in the 1950s due to its abstract and futuristic appearance, and was widely adopted for furniture, tableware, wallpaper and other decorative items.

Harper and Nelson also co-designed the “Marshmallow Sofa,” another influential Atomic Age design reflecting spherical and playful elements of the movement, with its circular, puffy cushions representing atomic particles.

More than 75 years later, these designs and others created during that time still look futuristic and have a place in today’s ongoing Mid-Century Modern revival.

A Fanciful Aesthetic Born Out of Destruction

The Atomic Age was ushered in after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945, causing an estimated 210,000 deaths, immeasurable destruction and the end of World War II. As millions of soldiers returned home, the words “atomic” and “nuclear” were on the minds of everyone because of the horrific way the war ended. Atomic technology became a national obsession and so did the atom, brought to visually inventive life by the new movement of Atomic Age design.

Picking up where Streamline Moderne left off, the Atomic Age, from the late 1940s through the early 1960s, introduced a modern scientific reference into domestic design and played on the themes of atomic science, nuclear energy, and space exploration.

While often used interchangeably with Mid-Century Modern, Atomic Age design is a subset of MCM and specifically refers to an aesthetic heavily inspired by nuclear energy and the post-WWII fascination with atomic science; it has a more pronounced focus on atomic images like starbursts, which became ubiquitous in homes and businesses, and geometric shapes related to nuclear energy. Though MCM includes elements of Atomic Age, it represents a broader design movement encompassing the mid-20th century and also incorporates other stylistic influences.

Atomic Age design also embraced innovation and new materials and designers experimented with fiberglass, metal, and plastic to create groundbreaking pieces. These materials allowed for bold, sculptural forms and introduced a sense of lightness to decor and furniture.

The design movement also overlapped with the Space Age, which began in 1957 with the launch of the Soviet’s Sputnik 1, the first satellite in space. While Space Age design incorporates atomic motifs, it was more about conquering space and going to the moon and introduced new elements like sputniks and rocket ships.

At their core, all three design movements are visions of what people thought life in the future would look like.

Whimsical Shapes, Cheerful Colors

Despite its dark roots, Atomic Age design was defined by its vibrant colors and playful shapes, including amoebas, boomerangs, diamonds, starbursts/sunbursts, and other geometric patterns that drew inspiration from the ball-and-stick representations of an atom model, electrons spinning around an atom, and other elements of nuclear science.

These shapes were enthusiastically welcomed in both interior and exterior residential and commercial spaces in the forms of sleek, streamlined furniture, light fixtures, bathroom and kitchen hardware, decorative objects, patterns and prints that embellished upholstery, flooring and wall coverings, marquee signs, and boomerang-shaped swimming pools.

The design also embraced a vibrant palette of primary hues, with shades of blue and teal, orange, red, and yellow. Pink was a notable exception and often paired with different greens, which was a popular color scheme for bathrooms.

A Legacy of Retro-Cool Collectibles

Everything Mid-Century Modern remains as popular as ever and incorporating Atomic Age design into modern interiors is a growing trend. There are plenty of ways to add elements into your space, whether you simply appreciate the historical significance of this design movement or enjoy a retro aesthetic.

While reproductions are widely available, there are still plenty of authentic and original Atomic Age designs on the secondary market, from fabric and furniture to jewelry and smoking pipes, that can be found at auctions, antiques stores, estate sales, flea markets, and e-commerce sites like eBay, Etsy and Ruby Lane.

Among the other most notable Atomic Age designs collectors can still find include:

The Hang-It-All: Evoking atom models, this colorful rack was developed by Ray and Charles Eames in 1953 using the same welding techniques they developed for their wire chairs and table bases. With round wooden balls as hooks, this was made for hanging things like coats, hats, scarves, and even toys.

The Sputnik Chandelier: The iconic Sputnik chandelier’s design, with its classic starburst of metal spokes of varying angles and lengths, each one ending with a tiny bulb, was actually first developed in 1939 by Italian designer Gino Sarfatti. Subsequent copies and reinterpretations of the design in the 1950s and ’60s became synonymous with the era and were named Sputnik in recognition of the satellite. Its bold futuristic design makes it a popular choice with collectors.

Franciscan Ceramics’ Starburst Pattern: Introduced in 1954 by Gladding, McBean & Co., Franciscan Ceramics’ Starburst dinnerware was a favorite on tables during the mid-century and remains a big hit with collectors today. Starburst’s fun decal-pattern Atomic design in aqua, green, and yellow, was adorned on a variety of dishes and decorative tiles.

The juxtaposition between the atomic bombings and the optimistic Atomic Age design movement they inspired might be jarring, but as some historians speculate, the lighthearted visual interpretation of the atom was a way of quelling anxieties over the catastrophic power of atomic weapons. The exuberant style gave people a hopeful version of the future and continues to inspire and captivate us today. 

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