Photograph, Photograph of Spiral Staircase in Robert Mallet-Stevens House, Paris

This object is not part of the Cooper Hewitt's permanent collection. It was able to spend time at the museum on loan from Smithsonian Libraries and Archives as part of Making Design.

M. Therèse Bonney was an American photographer and publicist. Born in Syracuse, New York in 1897, she immigrated to France in 1919. She became one of the first women to graduate from the Sorbonne. Assimilating herself into French society, she founded the first American illustrated press service in Europe, in 1924. The Bonney Service specialized in design and architecture.
From ca. 1925, she thoroughly documented the French decorative arts through photography, focusing on the impact of modernism in European design. This photograph of a spiral staircase represents her acumen in capturing French modernist architecture in the 1920’s-30’s. This nautilus-inspired design was incorporated into the house of its architect, Robert Mallet-Stevens.
A tireless promoter of modern design, Bonney donated more than 4,000 photographic prints to the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, providing unique documentation of a design era.

This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition Making Design.