MORE INTERESTING INTERIORS

Another Arts & Crafts living room (above)...but what's all that detail on the left? Is that a bed I see near the middle?

It's probably just a bench of some sort but it looks wide enough to double as a guest bed. If it is some kind of built-in bench bed then that's amazing! I know people used to build like that hundreds of years ago but I never saw the idea incorporated into homes as modern (1900) as this. Modern living rooms don't need guest beds because we have sofas. Even so...

I like the way the fireplace, the cabinets and the bed are tucked away in a kind of built-in theatrical stage. Maybe people like to be reminded of theater when they're home. Cars used to be designed like jets and rockets for no other reason than it made the owners feel good. Maybe theatrical shapes make homeowners feel good.

Living rooms frequently looked barren and uncomfortable in 1900. Maybe that's because they had a different function then than they do today. In those days living rooms were meant to show off the owner's wealth. So were dining rooms. A lot of the real living took place in spacious kitchens. Nowadays kitchens have shrunk and people actually use their living and dining rooms.

Here's (above) a couple of Russian-style rooms. Very interesting spaces! Nowadays only restaurants have interiors like this, which brings up an interesting point. If you want to know how to make your home cozy and social just copy what your favorite restaurant does. After all, they're in the business of pleasing people.

Architects should study successful restaurants. Even designers of business offices could learn something from watching the way people chose a place to eat. In the picture above everybody looks tickled to death to be sitting at outdoor tables under a canvas parasol. Maybe office buildings should be designed so that half the employees could work outside on weather and crime-protected terraces for part of the year.

Maybe indoor offices should be lit like reastaurants, just a bit dimly. Each desk or cubicle could be an oasis of light, just like restaurant tables are.

I like the small tapestries that you used to see in some Arts & Crafts houses. I think the Norwegians were the trend setters in this area.

ARTS & CRAFTS INTERIORS CIRCA 1900

I call a house like this (above) "Victorian" but it was in a book on the Arts and Crafts Movement so I'll include it here. Maybe the white trim qualifies it as an A & C house. I love houses like this but the interiors didn't always match the brilliance of the exteriors.

People of that era favored awkward high ceilings and furniture (above) that seemed oddly uncomfortable and out of place.

Low ceilings (above) worked a lot better. The low ceiling above offers shelter and helps to emphasize the luxurious width of the room. I love beamed ceilings, especially the ones that have occasional extra-thick beams for carving. I'll bet the orangey varnished wood looked great by candle light, and the reader at the raised desk in the foreground must have felt like a king when he surveyed the room.

I hate to say it, but even a terrific room like this has some defects. Arts & Crafts people didn't believe in comfortable chairs. They favored the medieval straight-backed chair and the bench. They also didn't believe in large social spaces. They'd design a big space like the one above then break it into tiny alcoves.

Even the alcoves weren't really social. Look at the big alcove on the right, above. Two uncomfortable and unmovable bench-sofas face each other across an awkward space dominated by the fireplace. It looks great but there must be times when the owners yearned for something more comfortable and friendly.

Here's (above) an odd and uncomfortable barn of a room which still succeeds in being imaginative and stimulating. The plain, maybe too plain, white cabinet dominates. The recessed bench area looks like a theater proscenium. I like the Nordic chevron pattern on the cabinet.

It's funky, and probably impractical, but I like it. The room above looks like The Globe Theater.

The color in watercolor above is so appealing that it distracts us from the defects of the room. The long, narrow shape of the dining room is uncongenial to pleasant eating and the china cabinet sits there like a big T-Rex, threatening to eat the guests.

I don't understand the appeal of monstrous cabinets, especially when the precious dishes they're supposed to contain are locked away, out of sight.

This picture (above) is off-topic but I couldn't resist including it. It's the Hungarian Pavilion at an international exhibition held in 1901. I love the stark, expressionist roof tops. I also like the way they're set off nicely by the girders in the ceiling above.