Renowned as an industrial and interior designer, Kem Weber was recognized by the influential architectural critics, Sheldon and Martha Cheney, in their book, Art and the Machine (1936), “as the first West Coast designer to bring a tradition free, machine-age creativeness to American interior design” (Helfrich: 2001, n.p.). Born Karl Emanuel Martin Weber in Berlin, Germany, in 1889, Weber’s initial training came in 1908 when he attended the School of Decorative Arts, in Berlin (Kem is an acronym for his three given names). 

In 1918, Weber moved to Santa Barbara. Opening a design studio in the nineteenth century Covarrubias adobe he taught art classes at the Santa Barbara School of Arts before moving to Los Angeles in 1921 to work for Barker Brothers; the prestigious furniture store hired Weber to design a new line of modish and avant-garde furniture. Three years later Weber was appointed their art director, responsible for furniture design, store displays, and packaging (in that same year, 1924, he became a United States citizen). In 1925, Weber traveled to Europe, where, invigorated by the ideas of the European Modernists, he developed a line of furniture and decorative objects based on the machine aesthetic. A year later Weber’s fashionable designs became the focal point of Barkers’ ‘Modes and Manners’ shop. By the late 1920s Weber had opened his own industrial design studio in Hollywood. From this point on he worked independently. 

By the 1930s, like a number of other avant-garde Modernists, Weber, already drawn to the ideals of the machine aesthetic and the mass-produced object, turned to principles of the Streamlined Moderne style. With its rounded corners and obliteration of right angles, the style implied speed and forward movement. “Employing new materials like aluminum, chrome, rubber and plastics, the Streamlined Moderne optimistically embraced the potential of technology to create a total design approach” (Helfrich: 2001, n.p.). For Weber, this translated into designs for clients such as the Lawson Clock Company (1934), the biomorphic shape of the ‘Airline’ chair (1934-35), the steel tubular furniture for the Lloyd Manufacturing Company (1934) and the residential architecture of houses like the W. E. Bixby residence (1936-37). Despite the harsh economic times of the Depression years, Weber continued to enjoy a productive and successful professional life. A man of varied interests, he pursued an eclectic career as an industrial designer of furniture, decorative objects, and industrial products, as well designing houses and at least one commercial building. By the 1930s he was recognized as one of the world’s leading industrial designers. 

In 1945, Weber returned to Santa Barbara with the intention of going into semi-retirement. Initially, he and his wife, Erika, lived at 270 West Alamar Street (City Directory, 1946). Three years later, in 1949, the couple moved to 1111 Mission Canyon Road, where he built an artist’s studio; several years later he designed a house for the property (City Directory, 1949). While Weber had ceased almost entirely his work as an industrial designer, he continued to accept both residential and non-residential architectural commissions. By the mid-1940s his residential designs had abandoned “the Streamlined Moderne style for a personal version of the woodsy Bay area mode” (Gebhard & Von Breton: 1969, 44). Some of his Santa Barbara residential commissions during this period included, among others, the DeWitt house (1946), a house at 1451 Orange Grove Avenue (1947), the Weber house (1952), and the Wakefield house, 1955. Unlike his residential designs, however, his commercial work continued to reflect his prewar industrial aesthetic, including his design for the buildings at 1301-1303A State Street, which continued to demonstrate his commitment to Modernism. In 1963, eight years after the completion of his last residential commission, the Wakefield house, Weber died in Santa Barbara.