John Ebstein began his career designing billboards, building on this experience to join Raymond Lowey in 1938. Over his years with Lowey, he used photo retouching to express design ideas and worked in design, architecture, and packaging on several industrial design projects from department stores to the Studebaker Avanti. In 1963, he left Lowey to work for a toy company and remained there until he retired in 1985. In his oral history, Ebstein describes in detail his time with Raymond Lowey from a photo retoucher to becoming a vice president. His first work was using photographs to show clients design ideas, and design assistant for Lord and Taylor department stores in Long Island and Detroit, and the Chrysler building for the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Ebstein was soon assigned to the Studebaker design team and discusses his time there, working on the President, Champion, as well as the 1947 post-war Studebaker. In the 1950s, he worked on the Lark facelift and later was named chief executive for the Avanti. Ebstein discusses the design process for the Avanti as well as his work in France on the general production prototype. In his oral history, he discusses Lowey and his design process, along with many of the other designers he worked with over the years. He wraps up his oral history discussing his time designing toys and toy showrooms which he was still doing on a contract basis at the time of the interview.

Collection contains 4 cassettes, 4 WAV files, 4 MP3 files, 1 diskette, 1 bound transcript, and 1 PDF transcript. Uploaded July 23, 2021 and December 4, 2024.