Mid-Century Modern Interiors: The Ideas the Shaped Interior Design in America

Ronn M Daniel, Mid-Century Modern Interiors: The Ideas the Shaped Interior Design in America, Journal of Design History, Volume 33, Issue 1, February 2020, Pages 95–97, https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epz049

Extract

Lucinda Kaukas Havenhand has written a smart, approachable, delightful, and important new book that documents the conceptual richness of prominent interior design practices in the USA in the mid-twentieth century.

The book focuses on five influential practices of the period: Russel and Mary Wright, Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, and Florence Knoll. Extending from a framework first articulated by Edgar Kaufmann Jr., who distinguished interior design from interior decoration by noting the former’s commitment to ‘principles, not effects’, Havenhand’s book focuses on the rich tapestry of philosophical questions and ideas investigated by these designers—their ‘principles’. For the Wrights, the principle was a wartime commitment to the modern expression of an ‘authentic American character’. For Richard Neutra, who maintained a lifelong friendship with the Freud family, interior design was a tool for cultivating physical health and psychological wellness. Havenhand analyses the work of Charles and Ray Eames as an investigation into the language of vision, a project which she argues extended the work of Ray’s mentor Hans Hofmann, and of their mutual friend György Kepes. In the case of George Nelson, Havenhand reads his interior design practice as an expression of a learned philosophical humanism, whereas she frames the interiors of Florence Knoll as a translation of the might and prosperity of the American corporation, a capitalist kunstwollen, into contemporary modern forms.