Excerpt from the Journal of Advanced Appraisal Studies

Earlier this week I posted on an article in a Kansas City newspaper about appraisers and valuation which featured fellow appraiser Soodie Beasley (to read that post, click HERE). Soodie is a member of ASA and an independent furniture and decorative arts appraiser with a special interest in furniture designed by designers and decorators. She teaches several college courses on the History of Interior Design, and also has worked in the field, designing interiors and procuring furniture.

Soodie wrote an interesting article on furniture by decorators, focusing on Elsie DE Wolfe, Syrie Maugham, and Dorthy Draper. To order the Journal of Advanced Appraisal Studies, click HERE.


Excerpt from the 2009 Edition of the Journal of Advanced Appraisal Studies, Discovering a New Collecting Category: Furniture by Decorators, by Soodie Beasley.

In the first half of the twentieth century the concept of interior decoration underwent a complete reassessment. It was led by a few progressive women who recognized the potential for interiors that not only honored the past but addressed the problems of the future. Because of their efforts, house decoration was revolutionized. New standards for room layout, lighting, color, and furniture arrangement were established; these works today form the foundation of traditional interior design.

It has been over a century since many of the first high priestesses of design such as Elsie de Wolfe, Syrie Maugham, Frances Elkins and Dorothy Draper were born, but their special visions today are being lauded for their uniqueness and originality. With recent publications such as Penny Sparke’s Elsie de Wolfe: The Birth of Modern Interior Decoration, Stephen Salany’s Frances Elkins: Interior Design, and Carleton Varney’s In The Pink: Dorothy Draper America’s Most Fabulous Decorator, these women are beginning to receive the attention they deserve.

This essay is a selective study of four designers and the furniture they created during the first half of the twentieth century. These women were not formally trained to be designers. Each could be described as a visionary creator who derived inspiration from both her native intuitive talent and the ideas that had already been established by earlier designers.
The history of interior design has yet to be seriously treated by scholars and historians. After all, what is a well-decorated room compared to an acknowledged work of art? The interior design of rooms is fleeting, composed of everyday objects -- paint, fabric, ornaments, furniture and knickknacks. They can change as quickly in color and detail as the leaves on a tree. While the initial visual impact may be memorable, its longevity is limited and subject to the whims of popular taste.

Design is a mirror of popular culture. It shows who we are at a par-ticular moment in time. A room is more than a space filled with furniture, color and ornamentation. It tells the story of the designer who created it, the clients who commissioned it and the people who lived in it.

One basic concern is the fragility of a newly decorated room. What did it look like before it was decorated? What does it look like now? A camera can record the superficial aspects of the room, but these images need to be supplemented by detailed accounts of the design methods, sketches, letters, invoices, journals, and payments. Because of the lack of evidence, the decorators’ creative processes and total body of work are known to us primarily by hearsay. The few pieces that we do know about are beginning to appear on the market and command high prices.

Interior design as a profession has only been recognized in the 20th century. Prior to then, there was very little written about it. Most publica-tions back then were geared toward homemakers and dealt with how to make the home more comfortable. It wasn’t until the 1960s that key literature was published that described and explained the intellectual and social development of interior design. The subject of interior design was addressed, if it was addressed at all, by architects.

In America in the last half of the nineteenth century, fashionable interiors were created by architects such as Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White. White approached the problem like he did the design of a house or building. That special sensibility, the acute feel for the placement of tasteful, decorative objects in meaningful juxtaposition, was a talent that was slowly recognized and acquired.

Ogden Codman, Jr., an early pioneer, had only one year of architec-tural schooling at MIT, followed by apprenticeships with a few architectural firms in Boston. He then established his own firm, mainly redoing interiors for gilded-age elites such as the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts. Codman was not a draftsman, and it is said that he hired a talented group of students from the École des Beaux-Arts to draw up the sketches of how he thought the rooms should look. But he was hired by many.

Those who desired a fashionable interior could also enlist the services of an antique dealer or specialist tradesmen to assist in establishing the proper décor. The recreation of “period” rooms became very popular; they were easy to put together and added a sense of style to the house.
Elite furnishing firms -- such as Herter Brothers, Tiffany Studios -- initially supplied furniture (especially the Herters) and glassworks (Tiffany's), but soon began to supply everything to create a complete interior.

The advent of the Industrial Revolution in America generated a massive outpouring of machine-made consumer goods. Americans of every stripe and background began to think of themselves in a different way. They may have debarked from the boat that brought them to the new world as immigrants from a cloddy, backward country, but they didn’t have to stay that way. They could morph themselves into a new kind of person; and the way that could happen was to build a home unlike anything they had ever known before. They learned how to personalize their homes. The wealthy would hire a decorator to select furnishings and a look from various past styles. People were free to choose a style from a particular period in history.
As urbanization grew, so did the suburbs. Houses began to crop up that looked like little clones of the mega-mansions of the fabulously rich. They bore the same grandiose features and communicated the same personal message of new wealth and prestige.

By the end of the nineteenth century, interior designers were being retained in droves by the nouveau riche. They wanted fancy houses that other people would envy and desire. With factories tooling up with ma-chines that could create just about anything in the way of decoration, household styling became a big business. All that was required was someone with sufficient taste and imagination to put it all together.

Men, not women, dominated the realm of interior design in the early twentieth century. Women were recognized as having a natural instinct for the placement of color and objects; the activity was also deemed suitable for them. And so it began, slowly at first, but steadily thereafter -- women as the arbiters of taste in the fine new houses that sprang up everywhere in America.