Colonial Interior Design

Russel Wright is an American industrial designer and architect that lived during the early to mid twentieth century. Many of Wright’s ideas and designs were considered to modern at time, drawing influences from not only ingenious designers like Frank Lloyd Wright but nature as well. Wright’s influences would lead him to create a design style unlike any at the time; a style that would eventually become almost standard in many homes in the United States. The designer Russel Wright and his wife, Mary Wright together published a guidebook known as Guide to Easier Living. In it contains numerous suggestions and thoughts on home architecture, interior design, as well as product design. Many of the thoughts and suggestions conveyed in the book can be seen in present-day design and architecture. Wright’s book also laid the groundwork for his home, Dragon Rock, which of itself possesses elements of design that are seen in today’s homes. Russel Wright’s Guide to Easier Living is clearly a response to interior design at the time; containing numerous design ideas, Wrights guide influences Wright’s own future works.

The bungalow design was influenced by a variety of social and economic trends that expanded the middle class and became a powerful means of transformation in American society. Arts and Crafts promoters associated the bungalow design with creative manual work, independence, and a way to return to manhood of common work practices. The bungalow

Maurer, David. "PRESIDENTIAL STYLE." Colonial Homes, Dec. 1999, p. 60. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=avlr&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA57590377&it=r&asid=d7570f44e25469728187a2363d95e162. Accessed 15 Nov. 2017.

such as art and design, which drive historical change. This is evident through the structure’s various changes, which include Colonial, Georgian, and Victorian styled architecture and interior decorative designs.

In the early 1800’s, women were second class citizens with little to no political rights, and limited access to education and professional careers. Women were not granted the same privileges as men, for educating women outside the home or women obtaining professional jobs went against traditional views. The ideology behind it was that men and women ideally inhabited different societal spheres. Men dominated the public sphere which had opportunities for education, paid labor, fighting in wars, and political rights. However, as industrialization and the population grew in the North, working class women began entering the public sphere for job opportunities.

The Philadelphia Centennial of 1876 is the origin starting point for a rebirth of the colonial architectural heritage of America and the early English and Dutch houses of the Atlantic seaboard. The increasing popularity of colonial influences on contemporary architecture motivated a highly publicized tour of a group of architects in 1877 who observed and recorded Georgian and Federal houses of New England. The simplicity of colonial designs and honest use of materials with more economical plans than the recently popular picturesque homes also contributed to the growing popularity of the style. Even a century after “modern” architecture was introduced, Colonial Revival motifs continue to be popular in new construction. These homes got their

All three of these women worked during the time when crowded and stuffy Victorian interiors were popular. They all paved the way for interior decoration as a profession, each adding something to the profession. During their lifetimes, the task of interior decoration went from a job only an architect could do to an established profession, and styles such as Arts and Crafts, Prairie style, Art Nouveau, Beaux-Arts, Classical Revival styles, and Art Deco were emerging. For all three of these women, the architecture of the time influenced their work in different ways. Elsie de Wolfe started designing interiors around the time the Arts and Crafts style was becoming popular. The Arts and Crafts style was cleaner and more refined than the Victorian style, which is similar to the way Elsie de Wolfe designed her interiors. They both stripped away the Victorian elements of design, leaving cleaner and more refined interiors. Eleanor McMillen Brown took inspiration from some classical revival styles and the art deco style of the time when designing her interiors, but they were also still more refined than the Victorian style. Dorothy Draper was influenced mostly by the Art Deco style, as she designed commercial spaces that would reflect the art deco architecture of the time.

It is said that pictures are worth more than a thousand words and usually entail deeper implications, more than just what first meets the eye. This picture in the “Through the Country Door” catalog is no exception as it tells a narrative of adding sophistication to one’s life in order to raise his quality of living. Although the picture just seems to be presenting a quilt, the signs imply that the picture is trying to market itself to a middle class, “average” family, while narrating the pursuit of said family to become sophisticated. The middle class family feels insecure about where they are and want to portray themselves as better so they have to get things to improve their lifestyle.

According to Baldwin, Wood 's professional credo was: "The final judgment in decorating is not the logic of the mind, but the logic of the eye." (Wikipedia contributors). Mrs. Wood embraced many different cultural designs, and preferred to design with old world intent rather than embrace modern design.

The cult of true womanhood or cult of domesticity was a way of life and thinking about women and womanhood that hit its peak around 1820 to 1860. This ideology was perpetuated by both men and women of the time period. It was a harsh separation of men and women’s roles and their spheres of influence, women’s domain was the home, and men’s was the outside world. Women in the cult of domesticity were focused primarily on four ideals, purity, piety, domesticity, and submissiveness. The first ideal, purity came from the idea that women were passionless creatures.

The common sight of home owners looking for the artistic quality of past workmanship of all eras, and the “story” it has to tell is everlasting

We can notice clearly in this house how Sullivan’s teaching and Japanese prints influenced Wright’s design. In general for the Prairie houses, Frank Lloyd Wright used all of those influences to had a radically different idea of the function and appearance of residences. The use of horizontal lines is crucial in this design because they define how the volumes and other elements of the house are displayed, making it look longer and lower than other type of dwellings. Sullivan’s idea about the importance of a building’s interior can be seen in this house design because Wright actually took that and extended the interior outside the house. Moreover, Wright started experimenting with materials that allowed him to materialize his

The term “Mid-Century Modern” is used to broadly describe a style of architecture and furniture design that was prominent during the post-World War II years.

In architecture and interior design, Post modernism can be defined as the re-emergence of surface ornamentation that relied heavily on historical decorative forms and made use of curvilinear lines and angles throughout the design. Post modernism was concerned with the ornamentation, symbolism, technology and the combination of present and past architectural style to create a brand new style in its entirety (Jarzombek, 1999: 489).

Colonial architecture is a combination architectural style of a country that has been adapted from the other countries characteristics, methods and influences. The colonists built settlements and create hybrid designs that include their countries of origin with the design styles. Europeans came to Southeast Asia during 16th century. The colonial vision was effectively imposed on Southeast Asia. At the beginning of the 20th century, most of the Southeast Asia countries were controlled by the British, Dutch, French and the Americans. Under this colonial rule, the late 19th and early 20th centuries was a period of fast development of such as new architectural styles, modern construction methods and techniques, railways, roads, etc. They changed the configurations, construction and methods to make the buildings more sustainable and maintained.