Author: Elsie de Wolfe
Publisher: Courier Dover Publications
ISBN: 0486819272
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
"Good taste can be developed in anyone, just as surely as good manners are possible to anyone. And good taste is as necessary as good manners," declared Elsie de Wolfe, the "first lady" of American interior design. Although de Wolfe decorated the homes of wealthy, socially prominent clients, she always maintained that her vision of elegant but comfortable living is attainable to all. This timeless 1913 book, written in a friendly, conversational tone, explains how to design, furnish, and decorate a house in order to make it a beautiful, useful, and livable home. De Wolfe pioneered the concept of the home as a representation of the owner's identity, and this book defines her decorating methods, philosophy, and approach to creating spaces for gracious entertaining. Part step-by-step manual and part aesthetic treatise, this volume advocates for simpler yet more refined decor. In contrast to the Victorian penchant for dark furniture, bric-a-brac, and heavy draperies, de Wolfe advised her readers to let in natural light, to replace gaudy colors with beige and ivory, and to abandon clutter. Her practical suggestions, illustrated by period photographs, illuminate the attitudes of a century ago while retaining their resonance for modern-day interior designers.
Author: Elsie de Wolfe
Publisher: Courier Dover Publications
ISBN: 0486826236
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
The "first lady" of American interior design defines her methods and philosophy in this timeless volume. Practical approaches illuminate the attitudes of a century ago while retaining their resonance for modern-day designers.
Author: Elsie De Wolfe
Publisher: Ayer Company Pub
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 344
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Book Description
Author: Richardson Little Wright
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Interior decoration
Languages : en
Pages : 155
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Book Description
Author: Elizabeth Darling
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415284486
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 178
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Book Description
What was different about the environments that women created as architects, designers and clients at a time when they were gaining increasing political and social status in a male world? Through a series of case studies, Women's Places: Architecture and Design 1860-1960, examines in detail the professional and domestic spaces created by women who had money and the opportunity to achieve their ideal. Set against a background of accepted notions of modernity relating to design and architecture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this book provides a fascinating insight into women's social aspirations and identities. It offers new information and new interpretations in the study of gender, material culture and the built environment in the period 1860-1960.
Author: Jessica H. Foy
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9780870499074
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
Between 1890 and 1930, the daily life of the American family began to reflect rapid advances in technology, aesthetics, and attitudes about American culture. Pictorial, literary, musical, and decorative arts from this era all reveal a shift from clutter to clarity and from profusion to restraint as modern conveniences, ranging from pre-stamped needlework patterns to central heat, were introduced into the domestic environment. However, the household arts were also affected by an enduring strain of conservatism reflected in the popularity of historically inspired furnishing styles. In this collection of essays, ten experts in turn-of-the-century popular and material culture examine how the struggle between modernity and tradition was reflected in various facets of the household aesthetic. Their findings touch on sub-themes of gender, generation, and class to provide a fascinating commentary on what middle-class Americans were prepared to discard in the name of modernity and what they stubbornly retained for the sake of ideology. Through an examination of material culture and prescriptive literature from this period, the essayists also demonstrate how changes in artistic expression affected the psychological, social, and cultural lives of everyday Americans.
Author: Peter Dedek
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000552128
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 174
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Book Description
The Women Who Professionalized Interior Design explores the history of interior decorating and design from the late nineteenth century to the present, highlighting the careers and contributions of significant American female interior designers who were instrumental in the creation of the field of residential and commercial interior design in the United States. This book explores how interior design emerged as a distinct, paying occupation in the nineteenth century thanks to a growing middle class and an increase in available cheap household goods following the Industrial Revolution. Focusing primarily on the period from 1905 to 1960, it addresses the complex relationships among professionals in the design fields, the social dynamics of designer-client relationships, and how class, culture, and family influenced their lives and careers. The book emphasizes significant female interior decorators and writers on design including Candace Wheeler, Elsie de Wolfe, Edith Wharton, Nancy McClelland, Ruby Ross Wood, Dorothy Draper, Eleanor McMillen Brown, and Sister Parish, all of whom are underrepresented in the historical record, relating their stories within the context of the history of design and architecture. This book is an ideal and concise resource for students and faculty of interior design and women’s history.
Author: Carma Gorman
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443809462
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
In Objects, Audiences, and Literatures: Alternative Narratives in the History of Design, five art historians tap a variety of unexpected literary sources to reveal the dynamic relationship between intention and reception in architecture, interior design, costume, and the decorative arts. The essays consider both handcrafted and serially produced objects from the eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, including a japanned high chest from colonial Boston, German and Austrian Artistic Dress, Tiffany lamps, the architecture of the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels in Paris, and the “dream homes” portrayed in two popular postwar American films. The five chapters demonstrate that a complex and even contradictory mixture of stakeholders determines the meanings of designed objects. Each author examines popular forms of literature in order to reveal the preconceptions that viewers brought with them to the experience of looking at and using objects. The authors’ attentiveness to viewers’ class and gender provides a methodological model for approaching the study of reception within the field of design history. "Objects, Audiences, and Literatures introduces a new generation of historians of design and decorative arts with five superb case studies. Looking beyond the laconic historical data that has formed the backbone of scholarship in this field these authors plumb popular culture—films, advertisements, and especially novels—to understand contemporaneous meanings of objects. Using these polyglot sources with an eye particularly on narrative and gender they suss out heretofore unnoticed dissonances between the prescriptive pronouncements of avant-garde “insiders” and the reception that design innovation found in broader publics. These wide-ranging essays are marked by imagination, exuberance, and acuity; I look forward to using it in my teaching." —Margaretta M. Lovell, University of California, Berkeley "This is a welcome addition to the literature that addresses the growing scholarly and popular interest in design and design history. Drawing on an impressive array of examples, the authors explore how class, gender, and cultural context shaped the reception of architecture, interior design, costume, and the decorative arts at various moments in the modern era. The collection is noteworthy for the way each of the contributors draws upon literary sources for insights into design and material culture that transcend the specific examples under review. Models of methodological rigor, these essays should appeal to scholars in multiple disciplines." —Dennis P. Doordan, University of Notre Dame
Author: Sandra Alfoldy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351570811
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
Constructed space is defined by its shape, by the materials with which it is enclosed and by the objects that are placed within or decorate its exterior or interior. The interaction of these crafted objects or decorated surfaces with space provides viewers or inhabitants with visual clues about the environment as well as visual cues about decorum: viewers can know what kind of behaviour is expected and what the space means. Furnishings and dress, textile panels and clay pots, stained glass and gesso panels, all defined as craft or decorative art, give architectural space, defined as high art, its character: without craft, architecture is empty and devoid of meaning. This engaging collection of essays presents the first sustained exploration of the relationship of craft to architectural spaces. The book unravels the complex ways in which craft controls, manipulates, organises and defines space, to highlight how the relationship between craft and space can be understood as a form of communication between related parts that combine to form a unified whole.
Author: Paula Lupkin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315520729
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 212
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Book Description
Bringing together 12 original essays, Shaping the American Interior maps out, for the first time, the development and definition of the field of interiors in the United States in the period from 1870 until 1960. Its interdisciplinary approach encompasses a broad range of people, contexts, and practices, revealing the design of the interior as a collaborative modern enterprise comprising art, design, manufacture, commerce, and identity construction. Rooted in the expansion of mass production and consumption in the last years of the nineteenth century, new and diverse structures came to define the field and provide formal and informal contexts for design work. Intertwined with, but distinct from, architecture and merchandising, interiors encompassed a diffuse range of individuals, institutions, and organizations engaged in the definition of identity, the development of expertise, and the promotion of consumption. This volume investigates the fluid pre-history of the American profession of interior design, charting attempts to commoditize taste, shape modern conceptions of gender and professionalism, define expertise and authority through principles and standards, marry art with industry and commerce, and shape mass culture in the United States.
