Alfonso Iannelli and the Studios

Until recently, Alfonso Iannelli remained a fringe figure in scholarship about American design history. Today, that's changed to include his name among the first rank of Twentieth-Century designers.

Like Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes, Iannelli was a major figure in industrial design and he either worked alongside or knew architects Frank Lloyd Wright, Bruce Goff and Erich Mendelsohn or companies Sunbeam, Oster and Prudential. He also was one of the major sculptor/architects who created works for Chicago's World's Fair of 1933.

Even though Iannelli Studios in suburban Chicago's Park Ridge was a major company in the years before World War II, the name of Alfonso Iannelli was virtually forgotten after his death in 1965. But because his archives and remaining artworks were still considered important by a few historians, the Chicago Architecture Foundation saved the contents of his studio in Chicago's Glessner House on Prairie Avenue. There, they remained until they were acquired by a major art gallery and the upward climb of Iannelli's reputation today.

ArchiTech Gallery acquired the bulk of Iannelli's archives shortly after opening in Chicago's River North gallery district fifteen years ago. The gallery's director and owner, David Jameson, published "Alfonso Iannelli: Modern by Design," which helped cement Iannelli's reputation as the creator of sculptures, illustrations and architectural decorations as well as modern appliance design through the Twentieth Century.