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This vintage dining room set is up on Last Day ebay – but I love it so much I have the feature it down here for posterity. I’m hammering away at this issue right now: Mix up your decor! This set is so eclectic – the color, the scalloped table edge, the upholstered chairs with their unusual back – it’s probably not what you would go looking for – but it would be smashing nonetheless. Keep you mind open and your interior, delightfully unpredictable.
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Continuing the theme of the week, another great interior to scrutinize and learn from.
This 1952 living room dining room comes courtesy the interior designers at Armstrong Flooring. To be sure, this company had a massive influence via their advertising in establishing the postwar look. Seems like they were among the first to figure out that if you employed interior designers to finish a whole room — especially as it was a new look for America — it would be lots easier to sell the pieces — starting with the floor. Heck yeah there is more…
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I feel like I’ve been very focused on kitchens and bathrooms the past several months, so for the next several weeks I will be trying to spotlight a greater selection of 40s 50s and 60s living rooms, dining rooms and bedrooms.
Let’s start with this amazing living room dining room from 1952. The color combination is simply mesmerizing – to me, at least. This particular shade of pink (touch of salmon?) is so inviting…its relationship to the paneled wall is brilliant – I would never have thought of trying this…and the ‘peek’ into the aquamarine kitchen is terrific, too.
Notice also how they’ve matched the floor-to-ceiling pinch pleat draperies to at least one chair, a classic designer trick. And last, I think it’s so wonderful how — again — they’ve included colonial details like the gorgeous oil painting and the dining room table (laquered in black to modernize it). This addition of the unexpected…makes this room all the more perfect.
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One of my pet peeves is that decorating pundits always seem to associate 50s with only modern…atomic. In fact, colonial was wicked hot and even French provincial was extremely popular. It’s not that I don’t love atomic — I do. It’s just that, well — it didn’t rule. Those of us with Capes and Colonial and Split Levels — and the eclectic quasi traditional decor to go with them — are proudly postwar, too.
Those cool illustrations from 1958 showed housewives how they could take the same furniture and through accessories — swing either Modern or Provincial.
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This Danish Modern take from Heywood Wakefield is beautiful, don’t you think? Again, the company is so well known for its iconic blonde furniture, we forget they were a full-line manufacturer. This ad for their new, 1959 Contessa line says there are 45 pieces in all, including for the bedroom.
A pretty vignette, altogether — and notice the walls, which I peg as grasscloth. I put grasscloth in a similar colorway in my living room, dining room about two years ago, and we love it. I’ll do a post soon on this very classic and versatile wall covering option.
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