The Modern Interior

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234 Acknowledgements This book is the result of my attempt to address some of the unanswered questions that arose in the late 1990s and early 2000s while researching the work of the pioneer American interior decorator Elsie de Wolfe. The scope of the book I wrote then did not permit me to dwell in any detail on the meaning of the modern interior in the first half of the twentieth century. My overriding question at that time had been whether de Wolfe, working as she did in French eighteenth-century period styles for the most part, was a ‘modern’ decorator or not. That deceptively simple question took me to the vast literature on the subjects of modernity and identity, especially where they touched on issues relating to gender, class and sexuality. Indeed, I had already begun to interrogate those themes in my 1995 publication, As Long as It’s Pink: The Sexual Politics of Taste, which had led me to Elsie de Wolfe in the first place. While researching The Modern Interior I was reminded again that the scholarship on the subjects of modernity and identity in the fields of history, the social sciences, the humanities and cultural studies operates at a considerable distance from work undertaken in the visually oriented areas of the history and theory of art, architecture and design. This book is a modest attempt to help make that bridge a bit more crossable. Writing this book has not just been an academic exercise, however, but rather a lived experience. The fact that it exists at all is due to the countless memorable visits I have made to many modern interiors over the years with colleagues, friends and family, and alone. It couldn’t have been written, for example, without the experiences of the annual overseas study trips made with the staff and students of the Royal College of Art/Victoria and Albert Museum History of Design ma course, between 1982 and 1999, during which we visited many fascinating modern interior spaces. Hvitträsk knee-deep in snow, and Carl Larsson’s house in Dalarna, where we met remaining family members, are among the many memories that come immediately to mind. For those I thank Gillian Naylor, Charles Saumarez Smith, Paul Greenhalgh, Jeremy Aynsley and Christopher Breward, among many others. Among the many debts that I owe to friends and family, one must go to Wendy Caplan who kindly took me to the Eames’s Santa Monica House, and another to my daughter Molly, who proved an able research assistant on visits to Gerrit Rietveld’s Schroeder House and Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, among others. Equally, this book couldn’t have been written without the support of my fellow researchers at Kingston University – Trevor Keeble, Anne Wealleans and Brenda Martin in particular – who constitute the core members of the Modern Interiors Research Centre (mirc). The Centre’s annual conferences, held from 1999 onwards, have provided an important international forum in which many of the ideas presented in this study were rehearsed and debated. The us-based
visiting professors to the Centre, Alice Friedman and Pat Kirkham, and the numerous speakers and delegates who have travelled from all over the globe – among them Bridget May, Pauline Metcalf, Christopher Reed, Joel Sanders, Rebecca Strum, Nancy J. Troy and John Turpin from the usa; John Potvin from Canada; Hilde Heynen from Belgium; Charles Rice from Australia; and Mark Taylor and Julieanna Preston from New Zealand – have also been, and continue to be, an inspiration to me. Many of the doctoral students with whom I have worked at the Royal College of Art and at Kingston University – Susie McKellar (my co-editor on Interior Design and Identity), Viviana Narotzky, Nic Maffei, Quintin Colville, Maiko Tsutsumi, Fiona Fisher, Patricia Lara and Anthea Winterburn among them – have also opened my eyes to new ways of thinking about the modern interior. Working as my research assistant, Fiona also acquired most of images for this book, for which I owe her an enormous debt, while my pa, Maureen Hourigan, and members of Kingston University’s Learning Resource Centre and its Media Department, have been enormously supportive throughout the process. My sincere thanks go to them all. In making it possible for me to reproduce the images that I have included I would like to thank Lynne Bryant at Arcaid; Paul-Etienne Kisters at the Archives et Musée de la Littérature, c/o Bibliothèque Royale, Brussels; Eike Zimme/Eva Farnberger at the Austrian National Library; Annette Handrich at the basf Corporate Archives and Projects; Sabine Hartmann at the Bauhaus Archiv; Marcel van de Graaf at Beeldrecht; Laure Lefrancois at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; Ruth Jansen at the Brooklyn Museum; Patricia M. Virgil at the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society; Edgar van Riessen/Cecile Ogink at the Centraal Museum, Utrecht; Jason Birch at the City of London Libraries and Guildhall Art Gallery; Coi Gehrig at the Denver Public Library; Jessica Casey/Christian Zimmerman at the Design and Artists Copyright Society; Alyson Rogers at English Heritage, National Monuments Record; Whitney French at the Farnsworth House; Isabelle Godineau at the Fondation Le Corbusier; Ben Blake at the Hagley Museum and Library; Franziska Wachter at imagno; Howard Doble at the London Metropolitan Archives; Tracy Hartley/Jane Parr at Manchester City Council; Katja Leiskau at the Marburg Picture Archive; Mark Vivian at the Mary Evans Picture Library; Laura Whitton at the riba Library Photographs Collection; Magdaleno Mayo at the Science and Society Picture library; Mrs. K. Miskova at the Netherlands Architecture Institute; Kristina Watson at the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland; Monique Comminges at the Roger Viollet Agency; Wendy Hurlock Baker at the Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Art; Christopher Coutlee at the Toronto Public Library; Elke Handel at the University of Applied Art, Vienna; Bridget Gillies at the University of East Anglia, and Amy Purcell at the University of Louisville, above all. I would also like to thank the British Academy for providing funding to cover the acquisition of, and the rights to reproduce, the images. Finally I would like to thank Vivian Constantinopoulos at Reaktion Books for her help and imaginative suggestions for improvements to the text, and my husband, John, and three daughters – Molly, Nancy and Celia – for their patience in putting up with my obsession with modern interiors, and for the all too frequent detours that occurred during family holidays to visit many of them. 235
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The Modern Interior Penny Sparke
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The Modern Interior Penny Sparke re
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Contents Introduction 7 Part 1: Ins
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8 A shopping mall in Calgary, Alber
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10 Mrs Sarah Du Prau and Mrs T. Seb
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12 image, as an assemblage of mater
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ideo logical assumption within west
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16 broadcast from 1996 to 2004, was
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18 1850 and 1939 were further playe
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A Victorian parlour in Manchester,
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22 the second half of the nineteent
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24 Al ‘Bucky’ Lamb’s home in
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26 The dining room of Sedgley New H
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28 notwithstanding, those ‘cottag
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30 The drawing room car on a late-1
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32 Trellis Restaurant, Colony Club,
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‘A Drawing Room Corner’, fronti
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36 attraction, fascination, aura an
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38 new synthesis that would not onl
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40 Henry Van de Velde’s Studio in
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42 The daughter’s bedroom in Pete
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44 When the Scottish architect Char
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46 An umbrella- and coat-stand in t
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48 A sitting area in the Palais Sto
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50 embraced the equally fashionable
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52 The Café Museum in Vienna, desi
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54 furniture as an enhancement to t
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56 A breakfast table set with a ser
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A couture dress by Paul Poiret in a
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60 upper middle-class woman, might
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62 spectacle to entice customers in
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64 for a lot of legwork. It doesn
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66 Georges Djo-Bourgeois, study for
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68 possible anywhere in the exhibit
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70 Raymond Loewy and Lee Simonson,
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72 commercial and ideological messa
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74 psychological link between them.
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76 creations and a marker of his ow
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78 Eileen Gray, Pirogue chaise long
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80 A bedroom for a French house in
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82 Elsie de Wolfe in a couture dres
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84 boudoirs for her female clients
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86 While the haute couture professi
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88 fashion show became a widespread
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90 and modernity. It also highlight
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92 the nineteenth century, therefor
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94 An advocate’s consulting room
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96 both grew from it and was integr
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A dining-room in a Small Town House
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100 Josef Frank, a large living roo
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102 Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann, the liv
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104 An American young woman’s bed
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106 styles available at that time.
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108 equivalent. In that context wom
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110 the public arena to a significa
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The Passage de l’Opéra, Paris, c
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114 employed by nineteenth-century
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A print of an interior view of the
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118 nineteenth century/early twenti
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The interior of the National Museum
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122 A San Francisco can-making fact
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124 processing of administrative ta
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The Central Court of the Larkin Bui
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128 Lyons Tea Shop and waitresses,
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130 of the Gesamtkunstwerk. Archite
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132 An ‘Efficient Grouping of Kit
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134 were linked to a general desire
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The kitchen in the Haus am Horn, de
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138 Erna Meyer’s kitchen in the h
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140 fronts were a deep blue (althou
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142 A chaise longue, designed by Le
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144 ceilings to add a level of rest
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146 that time, governed consumption
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148 Workers assembling Model ‘t
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150 about the interior through the
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152 settlements alone’, one write
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154 saw the furniture items he incl
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The dining room in an apartment, de
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158 created for the apartment build
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160 remained the enhancement of the
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162 Metropolitan Museum of Art, the
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164 including the main hall and the
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166 of Vassar graduates living in i
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168 within it as items of equipment
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170 desire to sever art’s links w
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172 Theo van Doesburg, tiled corrid
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A facade of the house designed by G
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176 The first floor of the house de
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178 A view of the interior looking
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180 apartments he designed for the
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182 The interior in Rudolf M. Schin
Page 186 and 187: 184 the abstract interior had lost
Page 188 and 189: 186 became a popular ideal as well.
Page 190 and 191: 188 and above all equal to, archite
Page 192 and 193: 190 Charles Eames’s Tandem Sling
Page 194 and 195: 192 A 1960s interior, designed by V
Page 196 and 197: 194 An interior containing a range
Page 198 and 199: 196 Davis Gillies, also included an
Page 200 and 201: 198 A combined living and dining ar
Page 202 and 203: 200 which were characterized by the
Page 204 and 205: 202 A bathroom in the Park Hyatt Se
Page 206 and 207: 204 Conclusion Wouldn’t you rathe
Page 208 and 209: 206 intrusion of the media into our
Page 210 and 211: 208 modern interior. They are portr
Page 212 and 213: 210 nonetheless - fulfil the same m
Page 214 and 215: 212 gondolas of Italy’s Venice ha
Page 216 and 217: 214 questioned (see A. Vickery, ‘
Page 218 and 219: 216 33 Ibid., p. 187. 34 Ibid. 35 I
Page 220 and 221: 218 38 Ibid., p. 67. 39 K. Wilson,
Page 222 and 223: 220 8 Ibid. 9 Rice, The Emergence o
Page 224 and 225: 222 20 Rappaport, Shopping for Plea
Page 226 and 227: 224 15 See Thirties: British Art an
Page 228 and 229: 226 Conclusion 1 ‘50 Expert Ideas
Page 230 and 231: 228 Blumin, S., The Emergence of th
Page 232 and 233: 230 Guillén, M. F., The Taylorized
Page 234 and 235: 232 pp. 187-208 Rice, C., The Emerg
Page 238 and 239: 236 Photo Acknowledgements The auth
Page 240 and 241: 238 Djo-Bourgeois, Georges 66, 68 d
Page 242: 240 Saarinen, Eliel 186 Saint-Gaude
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The Modern Interior

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