In the fusion of function and form, Zaha Hadid created seating that is both sculpture and furniture.

Temperance, a social movement against the consumption of alcohol, increased from a whisper to a cry to arms during World War I.

President Kennedy's mission in 1961 to reach the moon culminated in the successful voyage of the Apollo 11 spacecraft in 1969. The exploration of space and the efforts of the National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) to accomplish this objective exerted a powerful influence on the decade.

Space Age imagery entered the cold war design vocabulary after the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik in 1957. A short time afterward formal and metaphoric references to the zeitgeist began to appear in American industrial silverware and other products. The fascination with space in popular culture grew in the years between Sputnik and the moon landing in 1969.

The Dallas Museum of Art began a major effort to collect, exhibit, and interpret silver in 1987 with the gift of the Hoblitzelle Collection of English and Irish silver. In 1989, the Museum purchased several pieces from the Sam Wagstaff Collection including an example of Gorham Manufacturing Company's extraordinary iceberg bowl, marking the first efforts to build a world-renowned collection of late 19th-century American silver.

Robert King graduated in 1941 from the University of Wisconsin where he was a student of John Van Koert's. From 1939 to 1941, he worked in Van Koert's commercial studio, making jewelry and small novelties using the lost-wax process. During World War II, King served in the Army Air Forces from 1943-1946.

Glittering with 133 gemstones mounted on stems radiating from a starburst cluster, the Celestial Centerpiece was exhibited as one of the triumphs of the International Silver Company at the 1964 New York World's Fair. Designer Robert J.

Ward Bennett, who designed silver for Tiffany & Co. in the 1960s, created his own line of holloware for a short period in the 1970s and early 1980s.