Dress up the parlor before the Empress Eugenie comes to tea. Plates of the very latest 1860 Parisian furniture styles. D. Guilmard, artist and publisher. Published in Paris. One lot found on the website of rare book dealer Justin Croft.
Category: Aspirational decor from folios and magazines.
Designs decorated with clouds and ducks and all sorts of wonderful things. French and by Jules-Edmond-Charles Lachaise who would be called an interior decorator nowadays. Born ca. 1830, he died in 1897.
Go on holiday with the Prince Regent. Hand-colored aquatint plates from Humphry Repton’s and J. C. Stadler’s folio “Designs for the Pavilion at Brighton.” Humbly inscribed to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, these are watermarked 1822.
Humphry Repton was what we would call a landscape architect though he called himself “an improver of landscapes” and that he certainly was. He obtained many commissions from the Prince Regent (George IV). Several other blog posts here have more wonderful aquatints after his designs.
Live like a film star during the Golden Age of Hollywood at least in your dreams. Photographs from 15 leather-bound presentation albums by Maynard Parker showcasing the Regency-style interiors of Paul Granard, designer for Golden Age Hollywood stars. 1940s.
The albums these are taken from present Granard’s designs for the Beverly Hills homes of some of the 1940s brightest personalities, including actress and pin-up model Betty Grable (“I became a star for two reasons, and I’m standing on them”), Henry Fonda (holdout juror of “12 Angry Men,” father of Jane and Peter), and Bert Lahr (the Wizard of Oz’s Cowardly Lion). For Lahr’s house, Granard collaborated with Paul Revere Williams, a once-overlooked Black architect who has recently been championed as a pioneer in his field. Also included is the residence of Mike Lyman—whose “Mike Lyman’s Grill” was a favorite haunt of Hollywood elite and (perhaps for that reason) F. Scott Fitzgerald—as well as the houses of several lesser-known figures.
The images are all Maynard Parker’s, the influential architectural photographer whose glam-home shots capture the domestic aspirations of the post-War era. Parker is a Hollywood counterpart to Ezra Stoller and Julius Shulman, evoking the easy luxury of home life to their high-minded vision of the American civic realm. He got his start in the pages of the Home Beautiful under the editorship of Elizabeth Gordon, an arbiter of homemaking taste who railed against the International Style—practiced by the likes of Mies, Richard Neutra, and Phillip Johnson—as cold and even totalitarian.
The covers of the albums are imprinted with the name of the homeowners, save for one which reads “Paul Granard Interiors”. Maynard Parker is a well-collected photographer, but complete albums of his are rare. These albums were created to showcase Paul Granard’s work, presumably so they could be shown to potential clients.
These pictures are all taken from the website of Daniel Oliver Gallery. These are all the images that are scanned and on the website. I learned of the Daniel Oliver Gallery when I visited the antiquarian book fair in my city last fall. When I was leaving I picked up a booklet that lists the various exhibitors which I have been working my way through ever since. It has many wonderful things and I hope to finish going through it by next fall when the Boston Book Fair returns.
Hotel décor from the old days in Paris. Doesn’t look that way anymore but you can always dream of Sarah Bernhardt stopping by for tea. Collections of the Indianapolis Museum of Art (Newfields).
Romantic up your front hall with pictures from the 1910 work “Modern Decorative Art”. Edited and printed in Milan, Italy it appears to have been imported and then published in the United States in New York City by Paul Wenzel who was a publisher and importer of architectural and art industrial books.
Dress up the house like you are the Empress Josephine with window treatments from George Smith’s 1808 work “A Collection of Designs for Household Furniture and Interior Decoration.” Published in London by J. Taylor.
George Smith was Upholder Extraordinary to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.
Live in the 18th century at least until you turn the television on. Plates of ornamental designs from 1728 taken from James Gibbs’ work “A book of architecture: containing designs of buildings and ornaments.”
Gardens to dream your way into whenever you want. Color plates from “Fragments on the theory and practice of landscape gardening: including some remarks on Grecian and Gothic architecture.” Published in London in 1816, it was written by H. Repton with the help of his son J. Adey Repton. Collections of the University of Wisconsin.
© Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Artwork itself in the public domain due to age. via https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/ARNROAEXKQQ7R38Y/pages/ARTXV3M5KE2V7R8F
© Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Artwork itself in the public domain due to age. via https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/ARNROAEXKQQ7R38Y/pages/ARTXV3M5KE2V7R8F
© Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Artwork itself in the public domain due to age. via https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/ARNROAEXKQQ7R38Y/pages/ARTXV3M5KE2V7R8F
© Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Artwork itself in the public domain due to age. via https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/ARNROAEXKQQ7R38Y/pages/ARTXV3M5KE2V7R8F
© Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Artwork itself in the public domain due to age. via https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/ARNROAEXKQQ7R38Y/pages/ARTXV3M5KE2V7R8F
What it must have looked like in the royal palace in Copenhagen in 1830. Interiors by German/Danish watercolorist Charles Frederick de Brocktorff. Born between 1775 and 1785, he died in 1850. He fought in the Napoleonic wars before becoming an artist.
Several of these show the furniture with what we would call slipcovers making me think that they are either of rooms in a summer house or rooms with the upholstered furniture in slipcovers for the summer.