The Ghosts of Art Deco – Tube Radios

by: Sophia Walker

Zenith 12-A-58

Nothing more perfectly embodied pre-war America’s dual obsessions with Art Deco and consumer electronics than the tube radio.

Yes, even in the 1930s Americans loved their gadgets…

Tales of American families huddled around the radio listening to Al Jolson singing or Edward R. Murrow reporting from strife-torn Europe are ingrained in the American psyche (or at least they used to be), and back then the radio was the centerpiece of living rooms across the country and around the world.

Radios were immensely popular consumer goods in ‘20s – ‘40s, with dozens of companies producing all manner of radios to quench America’s thirst for what was then high-tech home entertainment.

It’s probably worth saying that radios were the flat screen TVs of their time, and while I doubt people were trampling each other to death in a rush to buy radios like they do flat screen TVs today, there is no question that in their heyday radios were highly sought after status symbols as well as being groundbreaking electronic marvels.

The Art Deco era heralded a boom in home electronics as it brought new designs and materials to radio manufacturing. Where early radios would have been primarily made of wood, man-made materials such as plastic, chrome and aluminum were incorporated into Deco design.

The use of plastic in particular allowed the inexpensive, mass production of radios, and in shapes and colors previously unattainable.

Molded resins like Bakelite, Plaskon, Catalin, and Beetle became extremely popular and were often dyed and colored with wonderful swirls or marbled patterns.

That being said, beautiful Deco radios were also made of wood, and often featured the “waterfall” design made of veneer over wood, a hallmark of the reasonably priced, mass-produced Art Deco furniture that flooded American homes throughout the 1930s and ‘40s.

Here is a gallery of radios from the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s.

They are wonderful ghosts of Art Deco