
07/24/2025
Welcome to Day 5 of a midcentury modern takeover with !
In the early 1950s, designer Joel Robinson was poised for a notable career in design after his Ovals textiles were featured in The Museum of Modern Art’s 1950–55 Good Design shows, in which MoMA prescribed “good” modern design to the American consumer. Winning submissions were bestowed with Good Design tags at retail stores, visibly marking MoMA’s institutional stamp of approval. Joel Robinson was notably featured in three of the five Good Design shows, where he was the only Black designer selected.
His textiles, which include Glen Plaid, Ovals #1 and #2, Roman Candle, and Honeycomb, were produced by New York-based textile manufacturer L. Anton Maix Fabrics. Like most of the Robinson textiles for Maix, Glen Plaid is screen-printed on a cotton plain weave. The design features overlapping rectangles of varying sizes, shape, and colors that play with the viewer’s eye. Glen Plaid’s yellow, red, and brown color scheme adds a warm depth to the geometric, exacting design.
By the mid-1950s, it appears that Robinson pivoted away from textile design and toward advertising and art direction, working with David D. Polo Advertising Agency, Mego, Manhattan School of Printing, the National Distillers Products Company, and others. It is unclear whether this career change was of his own volition or whether the discriminatory nature of the design industry pushed him away.
Robinson's Glen Plaid textile is a part of the collection at Cranbrook Art Museum and is currently on view as part of their summer exhibition, “Eventually Everything Connects: Mid-Century Modern Design in the US” through September 21, 2025.
Joel Robinson, Glen Plaid, 1952. L. Anton Maix Fabrics. Screen-printed cotton. Photo: PD Rearick