flapper
Decor
As with architecture, interior design in the flapper era tended to the
extravagant, the exotic, the romantic. What appears dowdy and old-fashioned today was cutting edge in the
twenties. Electricity and indoor plumbing had been common for years, but became more
mainline in the twenties as these amenities became both acceptable and affordable for the
common man. Electric refrigerators replaced ice boxes, gas ranges replaced woodburning
stoves, electric toasters became popular.
All things were becoming modern, technology was gaining in
popularity, but at the same time, decor was falling back on the rustic, the
medieval, the 17th and 18th century European and colonial. This was not so much nostalgia or
harking back to antiquities as it was as search for the exotic, the idyllic, the romantic. So
we find a riot of styles in furniture: cottage, federal, empire, Elizabethan, Gothic; furniture
“influenced” by Duncan Phyfe, Chippendale, Hepplewhite and the Old Masters. Those who could
afford it (and who started buying early on) bought authentic pieces. The supply ran out long
before the passion for such articles faded, and very good manufacturers, such as Stickley,
Kittinger, Grand Rapids Furniture, Wm. A. French, and Berkey & Gay, armed with modern
technology, turned out some fine replicas as well as a lot of hybridized
“antiques”. Alongside this preference for the ancient castle - rustic cottage style was the new,
modern, functional furniture made of leather, glass and steel. The modern functionalism of the
Bauhaus School and the drive for integration of house and surroundings led by Frank Lloyd Wright,
while less popular than the flamboyant flapper taste, held sway among some people.
Ironically, flapper decor, while flamboyant, generally rejected the rich colors of the previous
Victorian age. Wood was very popular in furniture as well as in floors, doors
and window frames. Oriental rugs (or the cheaper factory-produced oriental-style carpets) were the norm for
living room and dining room. But the colors tended to be muted blues, greens, taupe. Walls were
usually painted or, if one could afford it, paneled. (This is not the same as the wood paneling
often used in today’s family rooms; paneling in the twenties was of the classic variety, a
sort of framing of the walls, with the space inside the frame either painted or covered with a
textured wall-covering.)
Floors could be almost anything but carpeted. Wood was preferred: maple, beech
and birch; and new to the scene, oak. For the Mediterranean home, tile laid in cement
provided a serviceable alternative. Even linoleum could be used in the living room.
But it was the rug manufacturers who breathed life into the living room.
Orientals took over as the decade matured, and the advertising copy they inspired was
almost as much to behold as the rug itself. Of its Karnak Imperial Wilton No. 6015A, Mohawk
cried, “The lure of perfect things! How far a cry it seems from the heaped bazaars of
Samarkand to the familiar outlines of your own living room. Far indeed in miles! Yet seeing
and feeling a Mohawk rug, how magically the distance melts away! Owning one, Romance itself
comes home to live with you.” (Connie Morningstar in
Flapper Furniture)
Music was an important part of the flapper era. The player piano gained
popularity as a make-your-own-music device. They were available in a range from the simple
foot-powered players mounted in mediocre pianos to the motorized reproducing mechanisms of
Ampico or Duo-Art mounted in Steinway, Mason & Hamlin and other fine pianos.
But the truly new and unique piece of furniture in the home of the twenties was
the talking machine. Although the various versions of the phonograph had been around for
two decades, the
cabinetry that appeared in the late teens and early twenties raised this
contraption above the level of mere novelty. It became an integral component of the flapper lifestyle.
Whether playing highbrow opera and classical recordings or the latest dance tune, the
phonograph brought music into the living room
without
the need to acquire instruments and the ability to play them. Victor held the greatest share of the market and generally signed the
best artists, both classical and popular. As furniture, the Victrola ran into a bit of trouble in
the early twenties because other manufacturers were beginning to turn out cabinets that could also
serve as tables, with flat tops and in some cases a lid that extended only part way across the
top. Eldridge Johnson, head of Victor, adamantly opposed turning Victor machines into flat
tops; they were
musical instruments,
after all, and should not be used as furniture. As sales fell, he finally gave in to the
pressure from dealers and agreed to follow the flat-top trend -- sort of.
In 1922, Victor’s first flat top hit the market . . . with the familiar humped
lid in the middle of the cabinet top. Derisively dubbed the humpback, the machines languished unsold in showrooms. Finally, in 1924 a
true flat top Victrola was introduced as an attempt to combat the growing
competition from phonograph-radio combinations that had begun to flourish.
With the advent of the radio in the latter part of the decade, there were
predictions that the phonograph would become obsolete. Johnson sold the Victor Talking Machine
Company in 1926, and in 1929 the company merged with Radio Corporation of America. RCA had already been making
the Radiola, a combination radio and phonograph in partnership with Brunswick. With the
acquisition of Victor, RCA had a virtual lock on top-quality electronic music broadcast and reproduction. However, it seems RCA
was not much interested in the phonograph and record production aspects of Victor; what they really wanted was the organizational structure and the
network of dealers, ready-made to handle the RCA line of radios.
It was about this time that the roaring twenties with its fabulous flappers
came to a screeching halt. The market which had in part fueled the
glorious excesses of the era crashed in October of 1929
and the flamboyant era faded into the land of nostalgia.
Follow the links below for a pictorial tour of flapper decor.