Three furniture designers are among those honored on the new Pioneering Industrial Designers series of first-class postage stamps by the U.S. Postal Service.

Gilbert Rohde, Russel Wright and Donald Deskey are among 12 “of the nation's most important and influential industrial designers” of items ranging from furniture and appliances, to architectural buildings and transportation.

The others in this series of Forever stamps include: Peter Muller-Munk, Frederick Hurten Rhead, Raymond Loewy, Walter Dorwin Teague, Henry Dreyfuss, Norman Bel Geddes, Dave Chapman, Greta von Nessen and Eliot Noyes.


Each stamp features the name of the designer and a picture of an object created, as well as a description and the year. Of those with ties to the woodworking industry, perhaps the best known is Rhode, an early advocate of “American modernism” who helped with design at Herman Miller, Heywood-Wakefield Co. and Widdicomb, among others. Deskey, according to reports, incorporated mass production and other technological developments into his furniture and lighting designs. His designs utilized traditional materials, such as wood and veneer as well as the nontraditional: chrome, cork, linoleum and aluminum. And although best known for his theater designs, Wright also created affordable modern furniture and tableware.

The stamps were dedicated on June 29 at the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.