A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Now, to the latest entry in our series America in Pursuit to celebrate 250 years of culture, history and objects in American life. NPR’s Anastasia Tsioulcas takes us back to a home telephone with character.
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ANASTASIA TSIOULCAS, BYLINE: The Sculptura is not just any phone. It’s a whole personality.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Contemporary and novel describe Sculptura – probably the most eye-catching telephone you’ll ever see.
TSIOULCAS: It’s a gorgeously curved thing, two crescent moons coming to meet in the middle. And it is bright yellow, the kind of yellow you’d see in the Sunday comics or in a Roy Lichtenstein painting. And now it’s on display at the Cooper Hewitt, the Smithsonian Museum of Design in New York.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: It’s a functional, convenient telephone that marks you as a decorator who is sensitive to every aspect of your home’s decor.
TSIOULCAS: That’s from a 1979 promotional film for the Sculptura and other home telephones. The Sculptura demands your attention, says Cooper Hewitt curator Emily Orr.
EMILY ORR: So rather than the phone standing out as this technical object in an interior, a phone like the Sculptura telephone could blend in with an interior design.
TSIOULCAS: But there were larger market forces at work. Back then, a majority of households rented their home phones instead of buying them, Orr says.
ORR: This was a standard-issue black telephone that was rented most often from the Bell Labs division of AT&T.
TSIOULCAS: AT&T had another subsidiary called Western Electric, which made telephones. The Sculptura was part of a campaign to get Americans to buy their phones. There were other models, too.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: All you have to do is pick the one that’s just right for your personality or your room’s decor.
TSIOULCAS: One that looked like a colonial candlestick for your patriotic living room, perhaps.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: It’s the Early American.
TSIOULCAS: Or if you’re looking for a little whimsy…
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Good grief. It’s Snoopy and Woodstock.
TSIOULCAS: But unlike many of its peers, the Sculptura still reads as stylish. That yellow, as bright and appealing as a piece of candy, is always going to turn heads in a home or at a museum.
Anastasia Tsioulcas, NPR News, New York.
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TOMMY TUTONE: (Singing) Eight, six, seven. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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