Wall hanging

This object can be seen as the product of an extremely talented family. The angular leaping fish and muted colors are hallmarks of the American Art Deco style, and are attributed to Eero Saarinen. The piece was created in the studio of his mother, Loja, at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, a leader in the development of modernism in the United States. Cranbrook was itself a family affair, guided by Loja and her husband, architect Eliel Saarinen. In the late 1930s, Loja and Eliel’s daughter, Pipsan, and her husband, J. Robert F. Swanson, placed the hanging in the Charles J. Koebel residence in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. Swanson designed the house and Pipsan designed the interiors.