Retro-futurist Klaus Bürgel began his career with a one-year stint at a graphic design studio, but soon enough he ventured out as an independent illustrator. Inflected with a Cold War sensibility, Bürgel is known for his meticulous drawings of futuristic cities and space exploration, and was commissioned to illustrate popular science fiction books and magazines throughout the 1950s and 1960s. His elaborate metropolises feature the sort of notional infrastructure—subterranean tubes, monorails—that we recognize today as hallmarks of the midcentury imagination. Bürgel's work in jewelry design shares a similar futuristic aesthetic.