Image description: The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum recently launched Object of the Day to showcase the more than 217,000 objects in their collection.

This image, “Design for Streamline Sleeper Car with Two Seat Compartment,” is one of the featured objects. It was created by Raymond Loewy, an industrial designer,  on January 16, 1935. Loewy created designs for the original Coca-Cola contour bottle and logo, the Exxon logo, and the Avanti car in the 1950s and 1960s design. He is lesser known for his work for the Pennsylvania Railroad. Learn more about this object.

Image description: This photograph of stuffed specimens was taken in 1906 by Thomas Smillie, the first photographer for the Smithsonian. It is an example of the day-to-day documentation of Smithsonian life and museum installations that Smillie and his staff regularly performed. He used blue cyanotypes like this one to keep track of the glass-plate negatives his staff made, in part because the medium presented a quick and inexpensive way to create photographic prints. 

Image courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Archives