The collection
Set of four glass mixing bowls nested together. Each bowl has a white interior. The exterior colors, from smallest bowl to largest, are yellow, yellow-green, pale green, and medium green.
1957

Bowls, Cinderella

Designed by
Philip Johnson (1906–2005)
Material
Pyrex glass
Produced by
Corning Glass Works, Corning, New York
Dimensions
Largest: 10 x 27.5 x 22 cm

The Liliane and David M. Stewart Program for Modern Design, 2014.12.1–4

Corning Glass Works introduced Pyrex heat-resistant laboratory and kitchen glass in 1908. The designer of these nesting bowls was famed American architect Philip Johnson. He admired the simplicity of form and innovative material of Pyrex products and included laboratory glass in the 1934 exhibition Machine Art.

These nesting bowls are Johnson’s 1957 redesign of Pyrex colored-glass bowls: he added handles, one serving as a spout. Corning marketed these popular mixing bowls to North American homemakers in a variety of colors and patterns into the 1980s, though only the undecorated sets would qualify as Good Design.

The Stewart Program for Modern Design, photo: Denis Farley.