The Modern Interior

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An American young woman’s bedroom-cum-office, decorated by Hazel Dell Brown and
illustrated in Winifred Fales’s What’s New in Home Decorating, 1936.
French magazine from the same period, La Decoration de la Maison,
revealed, however, that although ‘Moderne’ was a real choice – images of
Une Salle a Manger Moderne, Un Salon Moderne and Un Studio Moderne
appeared in its pages exhibiting the familiar Art Deco style – French home
decorators could also choose Une Piece Rustique dans L’Esprit Moderne
(a hybrid interior featuring a ladder back chair and a sofa covered in a
rustic fabric); Une Salle a Manger Béarnaise (which featured solid wooden
furniture and ceiling beams); or Un Salon xviii Siècle. In that pot pourri
of possibilities the Art Deco-inspired ‘moderne’ interior was just one
option – albeit the only ostensibly modern one – among many other
traditional alternatives.
Several other attempts were also made in the first decades of the
twentieth century to define modern decoration. In their 1929 book The New