The Enduring Influence of Jazz

This year marks the 100^th anniversary of the first recordings of American jazz.  More than just a style of music, jazz would go on to have a profound influence on American life in the 1920s and early 1930s — in what we now call Jazz Age.  The music demanded dancing, and dancing demanded new types of clothing — especially for women.  The syncopated rhythms of jazz also influenced the design of everything from visual art to housewares (especially decanter sets, despite the Jazz Age occurring during Prohibition). 

The exhibition “The Jazz Age, American Style in the 1920s” at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, looks at this confluence of music, art, fashion, and commerce to examine this watershed moment in American cultural history. 

The "Muse with Violin Screen" features a stylized image of performer Josephine Baker on a fire screen created in 1930.

(The Cleveland Museum of Art, On Loan from the Rose Iron Works Collections. Photo: Howard Agriesti/Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum)

Doors for the Music Room of Mr. and Mrs. Solomon R. Guggenheim from 1925–26, designed by Seraphin Soudbinine.

(Gift of Mrs. Solomon R. Guggenheim/Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum)