Thank You, Black Industrial Designer Charles Harrison

Charles “Chuck” Harrison has made substantial contributions to your everyday life, and you may not even know it. Born in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1931, Harrison is credited as the first African-American executive for Sears, Roebuck and Company as a designer.

Prior to his controversial hire with Sears and Roebuck, Harrison first attended all-black George Washington Carver High School in Phoenix, Arizona, where his design interest began to take off. After his completion of a four-year degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), he was drafted to the US Army and served dutifully for two years. Upon his return to the States from West Germany, he began his Masters program at SAIC.

It was the program and the people he met at SAIC that would launch his career and not only change his life, but ultimately change the lives of consumers.

His exceptional talent captured the attention of Henry Glass, an Austrian industrial designer, and he went on to serve as Harrison’s mentor for the duration of his life. It was Glass who gave Harrison a start within his design firm in 1956, before Harrison moved to Robert Podall Designs.

1958 was the most influential year of design for Harrison. It was in this year that he ran the design team that updated the Model F View Master. (The view master will be most familiar to Baby Boomers and Millennials as it was a toy that greatly shaped their childhood.) The View Master is his most well known design achievement to date, but his favorite design is the polypropylene garbage can that he designed while he was working under Sears.

Through his undoubted skills and ability as shown through the view master, Sears, Roebuck and Co hired Harrison in 1961 after rejecting him a few years prior for being Black. During his 32 years of employment, Harrison became the chief product designer and was credited with about 750 every day use designs. You can nod a thank you to Chuck the next time you use or see a hair dryer, a toaster, a sewing machine, a see through measuring cup and more. Should you find yourself curious or are intrigued about the life of an American designer, you can find Harrison’s memoir here.

Harrison was known for wanting to create straightforward solutions, and it is evident through household designs that are still useful even 25+ years later. His dyslexia aided in this thinking and led to revolutionary rethinking of many original designs. As Harrison went on to reshape household items, he designed them to be self-evident, so consumers were aware of their purpose— simply by design.

While we may have missed the history lesson on Harrison in school, rest assured that he did get his flowers while he was alive. Harrison was awarded the Lifetime Achievement National Design Award by Cooper- Hewitt in 2008 and became the first Black recipient of this award. The award came to him for his contributions to contemporary design as they were relevant, fresh and aged so precisely. He had an eye unlike any other, one that could capture the simple essence of fabric and use it to illuminate light and make it a lamp shade.

Did you know even the design of a lamp shade can be credited back to Harrison?!

Harrison made the most of the years he lived on this earth and made substantial additions to American households that will last beyond the 21st century. Aesthetics may change but the foundational design for many functional pieces of our everyday lives will be credited to Harrison, the first Black industrial designer Sears said yes to.

Charles “Chuck” Harrison passed away at the age of 87 in Santa Clarita, CA. Genius does not begin to scratch the surface of the work and talent he displayed. There are not enough hours in the day to say as many thank you’s as Mr. Harrison deserves. After he retired from designing, Harrison went on to teach industrial design at The University of Illinois and Columbia College Chicago. He made a great point of mentoring students of color to show them not only is there a seat at the table, but he was giving them the sketches to design the table too. It is clear that Harrison wanted to inspire the next generation of Black industrial designers to combine passion and efficiency to create a legacy. Perhaps he wanted to give them the opportunity to also be able to say, “ I designed that,” for many years to come.