The collection
Aluminum percolator-style coffeemaker with matching angular black handles on each piece and a metal lid with a black finial.
1932

Coffeemaker, Wear-Ever, Model no. 5052

Designed by
Lurelle Guild (1898–1985)
Material
Aluminum, Bakelite
Produced by
Aluminum Company of America, Wear-Ever Aluminum Inc. Division, New Kensington, Pennsylvania
Dimensions
20.8 x 25 x 12 cm

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Liliane and David M. Stewart Collection, gift of Paul D. LeBlanc, 2016.452

Guild studied painting at Syracuse University and moved to New York after graduating in 1920. He established his own industrial design firm in 1928. Guild’s designs for the Aluminum Cooking Utensil Co. were publicized in the early 1930s. In 1936, Art and the Machine illustrated this coffeepot with the comment that Guild was “restudying the basic forms of pots and pans and all manner of products for aluminum use.”

His sleek streamlined design for Wear-Ever updates a traditional coffeepot form in aluminum and Bakelite—modern materials that replaced the silver and wood of earlier periods. In 1936, Forbes magazine named Guild one of the five foremost industrial designers in the United States.

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, photo: Denis Farley.