Whether your inspiration is the Guggenheim
Museum or Marcus Welby’s waiting room,
fifties design allows you to mix
sophistication with fun in whatever
proportions suit your fancy. From Eames
chairs to tiki-room kitsch, the fifties can
be high, low, or anywhere in between.
If you live in a Victorian cottage with
gingerbread trim, carved mantels, and chair
rails, you may want to consider another
style. But if you are decorating a circa
1961 split-level ranch, why not revel in
your home’s mid-century pedigree and furnish
it with chrome and leather sofas, atom wall
clocks, and amoeba-shaped coffee tables?
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In the fifties, radios
were cool and chic. As television grew
in popularity, radios emphasized style,
design and 50's funkiness. |
Fifties style works best in an open floor
plan with simple, clean lines, a minimum of
woodwork, and an abundance of natural light.
Blond wood floors or low-pile wall-to-wall
carpet and a neutral, pale paint palette
(except in the kitchen, where vivid color
reigns supreme), provide a fine backdrop for
fifties furniture and accessories.
The kitchen is one of the most fun -- and
cheapest -- fifties rooms to reproduce. All
you need is black and white checkerboard
flooring in tile or linoleum, a chrome and
formica table with a sparkly-swirly pattern,
and simple fitted cabinets. Bright period
colors -- red, lemon yellow, chartreuse --
can (and should) appear on the table and
countertops, cabinets, or appliances.
In the living room, look for sleek leather,
plastic, and chrome furniture by Charles and
Ray Eames; Heywood Wakefield pieces in
streamlined blond wood; or anything by the
influential Finnish architect Alvar Aalto,
who pioneered the process of molding wood
into curvilinear shapes.
For a high-modernist look, invest in Arne
Jacobsen egg, swan, or ant chairs. The
sculptor Isamu Noguchi’s beautifully simple
glass coffee table is another haute-fifties
design icon.
If you’re more interested in Ozzie and
Harriet than Eero Saarinen, pair a boxy
sofa, upholstered in chartreuse and balanced
on slender legs, with low-slung bent-wood
armchairs and a glass or molded plywood
coffee table. Add accents like space-age
clocks, coat racks that resemble molecular
models, spun resin table or floor lamps,
wire sculptures, and fabulous fifties
ceramic ashtrays in burnt orange or avocado
green.
Then shake yourself up a pitcher of
martinis!
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