Draft:Jack Denst

Jack Denst (John R. Denst; 1923 – September 7, 2009) was an American wallpaper designer based in Chicago.^[1][2] With Donald K. Soderlund he co-founded the custom wallpaper firm Denst and Soderlund in 1947; after the partnership dissolved in 1961, he formed Jack Denst Designs, Inc.^[3][4] His screen-printed wallcoverings are held in the permanent collections of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.^[5][6]

Denst was born in Chicago in 1923.^[1] He studied at the Chicago School of Design (later the IIT Institute of Design) under the painter and photographer László Moholy-Nagy.^[1] His studies were interrupted by the Second World War, during which he served in the United States Army as a radar operator in Hawaii.^[4] After the war he resumed his studies and graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1946.^[3]

In 1947, Denst and fellow Art Institute of Chicago graduate Donald K. Soderlund founded the custom wallpaper firm Denst and Soderlund, beginning the business in a small Chicago basement room that had previously been used for coal storage.^[3][4] The firm became known for large, boldly patterned screen-printed wallpapers, and its work was sought by decorators from New York to Las Vegas.^[4] The partnership dissolved in 1961, and Denst formed his own company, Jack Denst Designs, Inc.,^[4][3] which operated from 7355 South Exchange Avenue on Chicago's South Side.^[7]

After the company supplied wallcoverings for the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, it began receiving orders from film set designers, and its papers appeared in Play Misty for Me (1971) and Bandits (2001).^[3][1] Denst gave his designs whimsical titles such as "Overproduction in a Box Factory" and "Isadora D. with Companion, Walking in the Rain", which led to a guest appearance on the television program What's My Line? in the early 1960s.^[1][3] The company issued dozens of wallcovering sample books, including The Great American Happy Birthday Book (1975), a trade catalog held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Thomas J. Watson Library.^[1] Denst maintained a showroom at Chicago's Merchandise Mart for more than 25 years.^[2]

Denst received the American Institute of Interior Designers (A.I.D.) award for Good Design in 1961 and the Justin P. Allman Award in 1967.^[5] His homes in Chicago and Beverly Shores, Indiana, which he decorated with his own wallcoverings, were featured in Architectural Digest in 1968–69 and 1972.^[1]

His work is held in the permanent collection of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, which holds objects by both Denst and Soderlund and by Jack Denst Designs,^[5][3] and in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, which holds three of his wallpapers from about 1968.^[6] The Chicago History Museum holds the records of Jack Denst Designs, Inc., donated by Denst, along with wallpaper sample books by the firm.^[8]

A lifelong bachelor, Denst retired in 1992 and later moved to Florida.^[1] He died on September 7, 2009, at the age of 86.^[2] The company he founded continued to operate under later ownership.^[1]