Gopnik's Daily Pic: The "Normandie" pitcher

The latest feed from my morning musings about art and objects at www.blakegopnik.com.

(Courtesy the British Museum)

The "Normandie" water pitcher, launched on the American market in 1935 by German designer Peter Müller-Munk. Museums all over - the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the British Museum - show this piece as the ultimate example of Moderne or Streamline design. But I think it's more than just exemplary of its own moment in the history of style. I believe it's one of those rare objects that seem to achieve a kind of perfect internal coherence, as though they simply get art making right. Raphael's "Alba Madonna" and Barnett Newman's "Onement 1" are two others I'd put in that category.