A few weeks stand between you and the official publication date of Gilbert Rohde: Modern Design for Modern Living (Yale University Press), Phyllis Ross's splendid new monograph (11 years in the making) about the best modern designer you've (probably) never heard of. The good news is that Ross might be coming to a museum, city, or World Art Deco Congress near you—perhaps even before your pre-ordered copy arrives.

Having already enthralled an audience at the Museum of the City of New York with tales of Rohde's achievements in adapting European design for an American lifestyle, Ross moves a few blocks downtown next Wednesday evening, when she'll discuss his legacy at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Joining Ross will be contemporary designers Ayse Birsel (Birsel + Seck) and Pablo Castro (OBRA Architects) and design historian Russell Flinchum, who will moderate a panel discussion about "Gilbert Rohde and Design Now." Then it's on to Boston, Chicago, and other locales listed here. We caught up with Ross after her MCNY lecture and learned the value of a little Bauhaus-related sleuthing and why Rohde is not a household name—yet.

What drew you to Gilbert Rohde as a subject?
I first became aware of Gilbert Rohde's furniture designs at one of the Modernism shows in New York in the late 1980s. At the time I had no idea I would ever write a book about him! I was looking for some pieces to furnish my apartment. A few years later I enrolled in the Cooper-Hewitt Parsons Masters program in the history of decorative arts, having decided to change my career path away from landscape architecture. It so happens that the scrapbooks Rohde assembled to document the voluminous publicity he received during his design career had been given to Cooper-Hewitt. During my graduate studies there I interned two summers at the Henry Ford Museum which has the largest collection of his furniture. I became fascinated with his role at the Herman Miller Furniture Company, where he inaugurated modern design in 1932.

What was the most interesting, surprising, or remarkable thing you learned in the process of writing this book?
Probably just how significant his career was—his biomorphic furniture designs were the first manufactured biomorphic furniture; he conceived the first office furniture system, which became a model for later high-end office furniture systems. That said, there were many surprises and discoveries along the way (the project took 11 years) since no archive of personal papers survives. Lots of detective work was required to reconstruct the outline of his life and career. For example, it was known that he had traveled to Europe in 1927, but the significance of that trip remained murky, until I was able to determine that it had been a four-month stay, including a visit to the Bauhaus.

Why do you think that Rohde remains largely a "designer's designer" and is not more widely known?
He made the mistake of dying at a fairly young age: 50. Herman Miller discontinued manufacturing Rohde's work in 1946. George Nelson, who succeeded Rohde at Herman Miller, and introduced his own new lines of furniture, along with those of the Eameses, effectively eclipsed Rohde's work.