The Women Who Professionalized Interior Design

Peter Dedek

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000552126
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

The Women Who Professionalized Interior Design explores the history of interior decorating and design from the late nineteenth century to the present, highlighting the careers and contributions of significant American female interior designers who were instrumental in the creation of the field of residential and commercial interior design in the United States.

This book explores how interior design emerged as a distinct, paying occupation in the nineteenth century thanks to a growing middle class and an increase in available cheap household goods following the Industrial Revolution. Focusing primarily on the period from 1905 to 1960, it addresses the complex relationships among professionals in the design fields, the social dynamics of designer-client relationships, and how class, culture, and family influenced their lives and careers. The book emphasizes significant female interior decorators and writers on design including Candace Wheeler, Elsie de Wolfe, Edith Wharton, Nancy McClelland, Ruby Ross Wood, Dorothy Draper, Eleanor McMillen Brown, and Sister Parish, all of whom are underrepresented in the historical record, relating their stories within the context of the history of design and architecture.

This book is an ideal and concise resource for students and faculty of interior design and women's history.

1 ARCHITECTS, FURNITURE SALESMEN, AND UPHOLSTERERS The Origins of Interior Design: 1700s–1860s

DOI: 10.4324/9781003041504-2

Origins of the Architect and the Decorator

Architecture has been considered a profession for far longer than interior design. Some people doing what we would call interior design today called themselves “decorators” or “house decorators” in the 1800s. Most people who performed interior design services for money before 1900 called themselves architects, builders, house decorators, cabinet makers, furniture salesmen, antique dealers, or furniture upholsters.¹ Some would use “interior decorator” along with their primary title. An early example seen in a New York magazine called the The Knickerbocker referred to a well-known New York decorator as “Mr. George Platt, the eminent Interior-Decorator and Architect” in 1851.² The professional title “interior decorator” did not come into wide use until around 1900, and the title “interior designer” did not receive wide acceptance until the 1960s.

The activity of designing interiors is nearly as old as humanity itself, starting, perhaps, with the first diagram or figure drawn on a cave wall with charcoal. Since then, almost everyone throughout history has done some kind of interior design in the course of their lives, whether it be hanging pictures, arranging furniture, choosing a paint color, or designing and space planning an entire floorplan. The fact that working with interiors is such a common activity may be part of the reason it took so long for interior design to be recognized as a profession. People have often assumed that “anyone can do it” and have also had difficulty distinguishing where the line between simple tasks such as pillow arranging and complicated activities such as space planning rooms and designing interior architecture lies. With architecture, the boundaries of the profession seem much easier to define: “architects design buildings.”

Architecture has been considered a professional pursuit since the dawn of civilization. Imhotep, the earliest architect still known by name, was an Ancient Egyptian official. He designed the Step Pyramid, believed to be the first pyramid ever built in Egypt, for the Old Kingdom pharaoh Djoser around 2670 BCE. Imhotep would not have called himself an architect: his primary occupation was being Djoser’s vizier, the king’s primary minister, second in command of the kingdom. Ancient Egypt had a few other architects still known by name today. One of these, a later government administrator named Senenmut, lived during the New Kingdom over a thousand years after Imhotep. Senenmut designed a massive funerary temple complex for Queen Hatshepsut (Egypt’s most famous female pharaoh), considered today to be one of ancient Egypt’s most impressive and architecturally innovative monuments. Ancient Egyptian architects held high status positions in society as the overseers of vast building projects who had access to secret, divine documents the Egyptians believed gave them almost god-like power.³ A number of subsequent architects have behaved as though they possessed a similarly divine status.⁴

Later ancient architects, such as the Greek Ictinus and Callicrates who designed the Parthenon in Athens around 440 BC, and ancient Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (c. 80–15 BCE) known as Vitruvius who wrote the Ten Books on Architecture, the earliest surviving book about architecture, are also identified in the historical record by name.⁵ Unlike their Egyptian forbears, ancient Greek and Roman architects functioned less as government officials or priests and more as professional designers and project managers who had reputations and notoriety based on their design and project management accomplishments.

After the fall of the Roman Empire in the 500s CE, architects, artists, craftspeople, and designers of all types fell into obscurity. The identities of medieval architects, artists, and builders, even those who engineered and decorated the great medieval cathedrals of Europe, remain unknown to this day. In the Middle Ages, individuals who were not kings or popes or other high noblemen were supposed to be dedicated to seeking eternal salvation through the Catholic Church, not pursuing notoriety in this life, which people typically viewed as worldly and sinful. The anonymity of architects and artists would not last.

Professional identities and personal fame among individual European architects, designers, and artists reemerged first in Italy in the 1400s with the dawning of the Renaissance. One of the first of these, Florentine architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446), was a pioneer in Renaissance architecture who designed the massive Dome of Florence, Italy (part of the Republic of Florence at the time), considered to be the first major Renaissance architectural project. The winning entry in a design competition, Brunelleschi’s dome solved the technical problem of building a colossal capping structure atop a mammoth church that many at the time thought impossible to accomplish. In successfully completing the project, Brunelleschi became the first European architect to achieve wide personal fame since the fall of the Roman Empire. Since then, a slew of architects have gained great notoriety and name recognition.

While an architect’s primary job is to plan the overall form and structure of a building, many architects did, and still do, design interiors. Some merely determine the shapes and layouts of interior rooms while others design interior spaces down to the minutest detail. British architect Robert Adam (1728–1792) was one of the first architects to become particularly well known for his interiors. Most design historians consider Adam’s interior work to be at least as significant as his architecture. Adam practiced during the latter half of the 1700s as the most well-known member in the Adam family of architects, which included his father and his two brothers, James and William. As a young man, Robert Adam visited Italy in the 1750s and returned to Britain to start designing in the new Neoclassical style. Adam developed his own delicate and refined style within the Neoclassical idiom, later referred to as “Adamesque.”

Along with designing or remodeling posh English manor houses for the British aristocracy, such as Harewood House (1759), Kedleston Hall (1762), and Osterley Park (1770), inside and out, Adam also worked on the interiors of a few existing great houses, such as Syon House (remodeled 1762), located just outside of London. As he remodeled interiors to reflect the latest style, Adam designed and installed interior elements such as original Neoclassical fireplace mantels; interior columns inspired by Greece and Rome; and arches, vaults, domes, and niches for displaying classical sculptures and other decorative artifacts.

Figure 1.1 Entry hall, Osterley Park by Robert Adam, circa 1770. Photo by author.

Adam embellished interior walls and ceilings with intricate and dainty decorative plasterwork using classical motifs, such as rams’ heads, honeysuckle patterns, garlands, and rosettes, all inspired by ornament found on the ruins of ancient Roman buildings and monuments and modified for use in his refined interiors.⁶ To liven up his rooms even further, Adam used a cheerful color palate of pastels, especially yellows, pinks, warm grays, and a distinctive blue-green. Although his interiors were ornate, his decorative schemes were more delicate and orderly than those of the earlier Baroque and Rococo styles. Unlike most architects before him, Adam designed his buildings down to the smallest interior detail, including doorknobs, custom rugs, and original furniture.

Figure 1.2 Drawing room, Osterley Park by Robert Adam, circa 1770. Photo by author.

Adam’s work would have a profound influence on the development of architecture and interior design styles in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He not only inspired other British architects, but also generations of American architects including Charles Bulfinch (1763–1844), Benjamin Latrobe (1764–1820), and Stanford White (1853–1906), and interior decorators, including Elsie de Wolfe (1867–1950), Ruby Ross Wood (1880–1950), and Eleanor McMillen Brown (1891–1991).

Tradesmen Designing Interiors

In addition to architects, people engaged in other occupations, such as builders, cabinet makers, furniture salesmen, antique dealers, or furniture upholsters, provided interior decorating services in the 1800s and early 1900s. Architects usually served the richest clients while those practicing the trades were more likely to design for middle-class clients. The roles of tradespeople as designers followed on their primary activities when their customers requested decorating assistance.

Antique dealers and furniture salesmen often provided interior decorating services and gave design advice in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and some continue to do so today. A natural connection has always existed between the practice of interior design and the design, selection, and sale of furniture, both new and antique, especially in residential settings. When furniture dealers assisted their customers in picking out suitable furniture and interior décor, they often used their experience (and sometimes also their desire to sell expensive pieces and matching sets) to assist in the arrangement of the furniture in rooms in order to create fashionable and cohesive spaces for their clients. This might include not only furnishing rooms but choosing and installing accessories such as lighting, wall art, and draperies, and selecting surface materials, such as floor coverings, wallpaper, and trim. The interior work that some antique dealers and furniture salesmen performed required interior design skills such as space planning, color matching, and working with interior elements to support the function of rooms while creating a certain “look” or “taste.”

One significant nineteenth-century antique dealer who offered extensive interior decorating services was Obadiah Sypher, who founded Sypher & Co. in 1866 in New York City, a large company that sold fine antiques. The firm’s customers included many of the richest inhabitants of the city, such as members of the Rockefeller and the Vanderbilt families. In addition to dealing in antiques, Sypher & Co. offered art and furniture reproductions for sale, which its in-house decorators would incorporate into their clients’ interiors. Sypher & Co.’s extensive showroom exhibited model rooms featuring complete decorative schemes, and in 1885 the company published a thirty-two-page guide to interior decoration. The firm actively promoted an elaborate, historicized, eclectic style typical of the Victorian period replete with exotic items sourced from around the world.⁷

Furniture upholsterers also provided interior design services to their residential clients, not only in arranging the furniture they upholstered but in designing entire rooms by selecting furniture and accessor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgement
• Introduction: The Women Who Professionalized Interior Design: Introduction and Thesis
• 1 Architects, Furniture Salesmen, and Upholsterers: The Origins of Interior Design: 1700s–1860s
• 2 The Feminization of Interior Decoration: 1840s–1910s
• 3 Reforming Victorian Chaos: 1860s–1910s
• 4 The High Society “Lady” Decorators: 1900s–1950s
• 5 Turf, Taste, and Gender: Fraught Relationships Among Interior Decorators, Designers, and Architects: 1840s–1980s
• 6 “Decorators May be Compared to Doctors”: The Professionalization of Interior Design and the Female Interior Designer: 1870s–2000s
• Index