In May 1930, the Cranbrook Foundation voted to appoint a board to oversee the development of the Cranbrook Institute of Science (CIS) and to design a building for the Institute’s programs. Initially, CIS was a department within the Foundation, but by Dec 1931, George Gough Booth concluded that it had proven itself such an important unit in the Cranbrook educational group, that it should no longer be an activity of the Foundation. It became a separately organized trust which held title to the land and buildings and operated its programs independently.

In Dec 1935, then-CIS Director, Robert T. Hatt, wrote to well-known painter and illustrator, Rockwell Kent. Hatt had been drawn to a volume of Kent’s bookplates that he had in his collection, and asked him if he would create a new seal for the Institute. By Feb 1936 Kent submitted his final design to Hatt, stating, “it is entirely unlike both what you originally suggested and the sketch that I submitted.”

Rockwell Kent’s final design for the CIS emblem, 1936.

In the CIS sixth annual report, Hatt described the new seal: “the triangle is the basic geometrical figure. The two figures looking respectively upwards at the stars and downwards at the earth represent the field of Science as both extensive and intensive.”

Rockwell Kent created bookplates for the Rochester (NY) Public Library, Joseph Kennedy, the Library of Congress, and many others. Kent was also a prolific illustrator. His work includes well-known editions of Moby Dick, Candide, Leaves of Grass, the Canterbury Tales, and Beowulf (among others). In addition to Kent’s enduring design legacy at CIS, his gift of archaeological relics from Greenland in 1937 was the first material from that area to be accessioned into the Institute’s collection.

– Gina Tecos, Archivist