I started out, all about the 50s. It wasn’t long before I totally adored the 60s. And now, I will do my best to suck you into the Best of the 70s vortex, right along with me. Despite the fact that I came of age — with all the associated horrors — during the 70s, I have to say that much of the design now appeals to me. Immensely. Today: A Palm Springs time capsule spotted by reader Frank. This first bedroom: Awesome.

This Palm Springs time capsule has the most wonderful decor. I especially love the three bedrooms shown on the listing. This  master bedroom has PERFECT feng shui.

The guest room bedroom: Totally typical tropical decor. My husband’s nana in Florida had a Pier I-style bedroom set just like this. I LOVE the quilted bedspreads, both the style and the fabric. Quilting — with piping around the edges, look close — is de rigueur all the way into the late 80s, I’d say. (This style of bedspread is not easy to find today, though… I need to hunt.) And look: The drapes are in the same fabric. Oh and I love the wallpaper, too. This is a fabulous bedroom. I know that I do not feature bedrooms enough on the blog – and will keep working at it.

A big thanks to Frank for spotting the time capsule and the real estate agent’s website.

And, thanks to real estate agent Miles Kuhn for giving me permission to feature these photos. See the entire listing here — it’s worth it, I promise.

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Susan has an original brochure showing the layout of her 1962 Jack and Jill bathroom

JACK AND JILL bathrooms… or Jack ‘n Jill bathrooms were a design that saved space by letting two users, or sets of users, have their own toilet and sink — and share the tub. Here, it’s called a 2-1/2 bath. A famous Jack ‘n Jill bathroom: The one shared by the Brady Bunch kids.

Susan writes:

“The Jack and Jill was to be the bathroom of the future! Many of the homes in our neighborhood have them (or had them. People tend to redo them). The bigger, more narrow side of the bathroom is the guest bath which is accessible from the hallway. The smaller one is attached to the master bedroom. We are pretty sure the star burst light fixtures are original. The tile is in sad shape but we think a good professional cleaning and sealing will make it almost new again.”

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It’s a small world — I literally bumped into reader Cindy (center) as I headed to shop in Northamptom this weekend. This is really kind of freaky, because that’s a half hour from her house and an hour from my house, and there are 6,497,967 people in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Cindy had been going to tag sales with friends. She picked up this trio of vintage seagull wall art for $5. I think you’d call them “in the danish modern style” – although it might be more true to say “popular 70s.” I think these are great for patios… I have a brassy seagull wall hanging, also a steal $, above our barbecue in the U-shaped patio at the front of our house. Well done, Cindy. See you at the James Taylor concert at Tanglewood in two weeks!

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This is not my house. It is the first room in Huckleberry’s Chair Fetish – a midcentury modern shop near the campus of the University of Kentucky in Lexington. Regular readers will recall that I visited Lexington last Thanksgiving to meet up with Sumac Sue aka Judi for a look at her house, her neighborhood, a pink bathroom, an aqua bathroom — and yes, a little side trip to this mid mod furniture shop she had recently discovered. Even though it’s taken me a while to get to this post, it is not for lack of immediate love of the place starting with the name, Huckleberry’s Chair Fetish. First there’s the surname Huckleberry, it goes with Earlene – the proprietress.  Then there’s Chair Fetish. Earlene is calibrated as nutso as the rest of us for this mid mod stuff. Her eyes had that wild look when she talked about her store and all its contents. Fetish. That  just about sums it up. And I bet that putting it into the headline of this post is going to bring me a whole new slew of readers. Oh joy.

The sign out front. Please note, I do think that mid-century with the hyphen is the correct spelling. I usually write midcentury, though. Because it’s my blog, and hyphens annoy me. I also am really trying to lay off the exclamation points, as well as the excessive use of adjectives and adverbs. Em dashes, though, I’m all about em dashes.

This is my my sister Jenni driving, she gets major snaps for coming along, and despite the fact I made her pose in the pink bathroom shot here, I think she even had fun. That’s Judi in the passenger seat. I don’t for a minute believe they are both natural blondes at this point, but who am I to talk? I plan to never ever know what my natural hair color is again.

This is Earlene. She basically told us that she had recently discovered mid century modern , and was immediately, irrevocably sucked into the retro vortex. There was no stopping it. She had to open the shop and seek out all she could find. Earlene is a force of nature to be reckoned with. The shop is normally closed on Sundays, the day we came, and Judi had called her ahead of time to see if we could get in. Thanks, Earlene, for hosting us! You get an exclamation point!

This white leather lounge chair was definitely my #1 object of desire. So impractical.

A lucite bar and matching bar stools.

This upholstered Danish club chair (I think you’d call it) was upstairs. I really like the stripes and the pukey colors. Really.

Thayer-Coggin, maybe? I’m just starting to get to know the high style designers. These kind of remind me of baseball mitts.

Earlene had a collection of tiny chairs. See the label inside? That’s a 3/4″-1″ price tag. So it gives you a sense of the size of this piece. As I recall, this miniature was worth more than most of us would consider paying for a fullsized chair…

There were other kinds of furniture, too, like this poster bed. 80s? So fabulous. And I like how Earlene backs the whole thing with a mirror to play up the silvery metal. I am not keen on the placement in a real life bedroom, though — bad feng shui, as I recall.  For that matter, feng shui masters wouldn’t advise a metal bed, anyway. Too cold. Beds must be made of natural materials, as I recall. Oh well.

Sweet lamp and shade. As you can begin to tell, it doesn’t appear that Earlene is a slave to any one niche. Just quality, wonderful stuff.

This buffet was in the entry way. Darnit, I think I noted the maker somewhere. Usually I just take a photo of any labels I see, but hmmmm, not there.

And of course I snooped around. Out the upstairs back window I spotted stuff out back waiting to be brought inside. If you look closely – there are some fab looking mod orange pinch pleats in a pile by the blue containers. I hinted to Earlene about taking a look. But she didn’t bite. So, I restrained myself. Drats.

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Longtime readers may recognize this photo, it’s one of my favorite images of idealized 50s family life ever. And ooooh, I like that colonial-modern kitchen, too! But look, it also includes pots of red geraniums on the window sill. In my detail-focused time travels back into retroworld, I have most definitively noticed a trend to include red geraniums in postwar kitchen designs. I have a few theories why: 1) Geraniums are big and bold – in synch with the times. 2) They are middle class… egalitarian. 3) They need sun, and we were California-livin’. 4) They look really good with cool colors like aqua and robin’s egg blue. 5) They also play into the patriotic sensibilities of the time. I run a flickr group called Midcentury Modern Red Geraniums -  take a look at about 50 images in all. The majority of them come from flickr friend American Vintage Home, who has quite an online archive of vintage photography. Thank, you American Vintage!

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READER NANCY (of the yellow bathroom and beautiful-but-uncleanable-brick fireplace) sends us a happy July 4 image – the wall hanging above has been by the front door all 50 years! Thanks, Nancy, and happy holiday, all!

Hi Pam – We are getting ready for the 4th of July & our granddaughter’s 2nd birthday. Wanted to show you how happy our 50’s home is. Don’t you think that the front almost looks like a happy face? Had to include the wall hanging by the front door – that has been there for all the 50 years & I love to decorate for holidays.

Have a great weekend!
Nancy

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HERE IS A REALLY GREAT SURVEY OF VINTAGE OUTDOOR LIGHTING, from my 1961 Progress Lighting catalog. I started with this photo because: Just look at the little umbrella landscape light. It is phenomenal! The careful addition of outdoor lighting can be one of the easiest and relatively cheapest ways to improve the curb appeal of your midcentury ranch house, Cape, colonial or contemporary. At minimum, think: High quality, well maintained wall lanterns adjacent to or above the entry door and garage, and a lamp post either at the front of the driveway or closer to the house next to a walkway heading toward the door. Landscape around the lamp post – this is also a great piece of ‘hardscape’ to launch a decorative fence. Light are “sentinels”. Use them to ultimately draw attention toward your front door…they are tools to make your house say a big, warm “Welcome.”

All of these lamp post styles are “around” — except, as far as know, for the decorative steel one, #3. I did feature a metal post for a mailbox that might be able to be adapted for this use. I also must say, I am not quite sure where to get a post that includes the hanger thingy shown above on all the posts. We had to drill ours in, it was a real hassle. Finally, on this topic – I know where to get a nice, heavy duty custom name-and-number plate to hang on your lamp post. We have one! It is so cool! Will do a post soon. A post post tee hee.

1961 post lanterns. SO COOL. LOVE that guy in the upper right with the house numbers included. Swoonable.

A couple more. The three colonial styles can *pretty much* be found today. See my Lighting Fast & Easy Page. I like the white and gold, so scrumptiously cheesy. Seriously, I really like it!

Oh, and here’s some more. Nice! These lanterns – hmmm, nothing like them available today, I fear. ?

Wall lanterns to match. Hanover (see Fast and Easy Page) make lanterns with the scrolly thingys, like the example at the top. This style goes over the garage, center. You need to make sure you fascia is tall enough. Be careful about scale. In fact, scale is a very Important issue regarding all these lights: You don’t want your lights to be too big, or too dinky. You want them to be just right. One of my biggest pet peeves is the houses today with their gargantuan wall lanterns. Ugh. You want people to see your House. Not your Wall Lantern. These are like jewelry. Agonize over this decision, please.

More outdoor retro lighting. P5970 at the left, middle: You can get this from Rejuvenation – see the Fast & Easy page. Love 5973! Tim Wetzel: Can we have this one, please?

The three colonial style ceiling fixtures on this page – ubiquitous in the 50s and 60s. Everywhere! Easy to find replacements today. But they can be cheap looking. Spend a little extra to get solid heavy construction. It will subconsciously comfort you even though the inexpensive big box store lights look the same. Also: I always see LOTs of outdoor lights at the Re-Store. Tim: We want P5978, too, please – a lovely ‘colonial-modern’ bridge.

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Jennifer gets snaps for sending us this very nice midcentury style post lantern, with matching wall lantern. to consider for out front. Finding appropriate outdoor lighting is always a hot topic, with not *that many* resources on our list yet. So this is a very welcome addition. Here’s what Jennifer writes:

I’ve been searching for a nice mid-century outdoor post lamp for a long time and finally found one that fits the bill perfectly. It’s made by Besa Lighting, model 3356. Here’s a link to it. I haven’t ordered it so I can’t speak to the quality but I was so excited about it, I thought it’d be nice to share with others. – Jennifer

Yes, you are nice to share, Jennifer, thank you! I poked around the site – and I agree that you have nailed the model that has the best a retro/midcentury feel. It’s that hood-umbrella thingy – you see those in midcentury homes. The other Besa lighting fixtures (while appealing and I especially like their ribbed glass globes, so cool) are too contemporary/Euro-style/today for our older houses, I tend to think.  Good eye, J.

Hey, you have me all inspired. I have some 1961 Progress outdoor lighting in my archive – I’ll run it tomorrow/Sunday.

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I spent a few hours on the internet Sunday, researching mailboxes suitable for a midcentury home — including modern and more traditional colonials and ranches. Like toilets, many decorator mailboxes today seem to be “Victorian on steroids” or otherwise just too precious. But — I did assemble a good group of choices, at a variety of prices. I also stumbled upon a few mailbox posts with the decorative 50s scroll work we like so much.

The mailbox at the left , and the one at the top are from a New Zealand company has a wonderful selection of nicely designed modern mailboxes. They do appear to be quite expensive, noting that I did not look up the exchange rate. Thanks to Jenn Ski, I first saw mention of this company on her site.

I purchased the mailbox (left) for my colonial-ranch from Rejuvenation, and I like it quite a lot – especially with the decorative newspaper hooks attached. These give it a bit more style. Home Depot offers some similar styles that cost less.

In fact, Home Depot had some other good choices as well. This “Metropolis” mailbox:

This Florence mailbox:

And traditional mailboxes, but heavy duty:

Another alternative: Vintage, from ebay and places like hardtofindhouseparts.com (as pictured below). Hmmm. Another business opportunity here? To find old mailboxes, powder coat and re-sell them? Perhaps not a lot of money in it – but a labor of love.

Finally, if you need a post for your mailbox, it looks like that is another research afternoon altogether. A post post tee hee. But to start, how about this scrolled design from Home Depot. Might work also as a post for an outdoor light although I do not know whether electric code would allow for exposed conduit. You certainly see style of vintage lighting posts still around today.

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SHAUN SPOTTED THIS WONDERFUL TIME CAPSULE, a 1953 home built by architect Eugene Kinn Choy in the Los Angeles foothills. The house, which is currently for sale, is large and expensive by most standards, but even so, I think that there are a lot of design touches on the interior that provide ideas for a retro renovation on any budget. In fact, the more that I look at this house, the more that I love its unpretentiousness. The new American dream, perhaps?

The house has four full bathrooms. All are quite beautiful … featuring, for example, colorful tile and ornamental lattice work … and appear to be original. For this post I’ve spotlighted them. Thanks to real estate agent Jeffrey Young for giving me permission to use the images — and please do check out his complete website about this hous for sale, and featuring 40 images in all.  For example, you also will not want to miss the Western Holly double ovens…and catch the Eames womb-sofa and chairs in one of the many rooms overlooking the pool. As Shaun says, ” I love and hope will be preserved by the new owners (whoever ends up buying it).” Thank you, Shaun!

 

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