January 15, 2010

Vampires Have Style

Here’s the entry I didn’t think I would ever do.  And then once I saw the movie and spotted famous designs, I spent as much time as possible avoiding writing this entry.  But, I can’t deny that the Cullen’s house in Twilight is rather magnificent.  And Edward’s room, in particular, caught my eye.

The Cullen's house, Forks, Washington

The house used as the Cullen’s home was designed by architect Jeff Kovel and is actually the Hoke Residence (2007) in Portland, Oregon.  But I think Christopher Brown (who has also worked on Mad Men) and Ian Phillips, the movie’s art directors and  Gene Serdena, the movie’s set decorator, are to be credited with designing Edward Cullen’s cultured bedroom.  Remember, Edward Cullen is 109 years old, so if anyone would know good design …I’m just saying he’s had time to work out the kinks in his personal style.

Edward Cullen's bedroom

As everyone knows, vampires don’t sleep.  But who am I to question their necessity of a daybed, especially when it is the iconic daybed designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Barcelona couch designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1930

This classic piece of furniture has an interesting background.  In 1929, Mies van der Rohe designed the German Pavilion for the International Exposition of that same year in Barcelona, Spain.  It was for this pavilion that he designed chairs and stools, creating the Barcelona collection.

The Barcelona Pavilion and the aptly named Barcelona chairs and stools

The accompaning daybed/couch was designed in 1930 for use in Philip Johnson’s apartment at 424 East 52nd Street, New York overlooking the Museum of Modern Art’s garden.  And it was not until 1931, at the Berlin Bau-Austellung, or the German Building Exhibition, in Berlin, Germany that this piece of furniture was seen by the public.  Featured in an exhibit called “The Dwelling of Our Time,” the couch was featured in Mies van der Rohe’s Apartment for a Bachelor.

The daybed has also been photographed in The Farnsworth House (1945-1951) in Plano, Illinois and Philip Johnson’s Glass House (1949) in New Canaan, Connecticut.  Mies van der Rohe sold the design to Knoll in 1953 and it is still made by that company today.

Living room in Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House, 1951, with the Barcelona chairs and couch displayed

Living room in Philip Johnson's Glass House, 1949, with the Barcelona chairs, stool and couch displayed

Besides liking a piece of furniture that had been displayed in a bachelor pad exhibit, I think that I could see the 109-year-old unattached Edward Cullen adhering to Mies van der Rohe’s maxim of “less is more.”  (I can’t believe I just said that.)

Another view of Edward Cullen's bedroom reveals more design objects

Other famous furniture in Edward Cullen’s room includes his desk chair.  It is an Eames Molded Plywood Dining Chair, or in his case, a desk chair.

Eames Molded Plywood Dining Table and Chairs set

Charles and Ray Eames designed this ergonomical chair in 1946, making it a fairly ironic chair for a vampire to use.  It’s not like he’s going to have a stiff back or sore shoulders, is it? It has been sold since 1946, as it is sold now, by Herman Miller.  This influential design couple met when they were both adult students at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan in 1940.  By 1942 they had moved to Los Angeles California and went on to design furniture, architecture and create films together.  They were both proponents of modern design and major influences on Modern Architecture.

According to the Herman Miller website, in 1999, the Eames Molded Plywood Chair was named by Time Magazine to be The Best Design of the 20th Century.  They playfully mention that the locomotive came in second.

It is interesting to note that in the early 1940s, Charles Eames was a set architect for MGM Studios. And he is noted, by the Design Museum, as having worked on Mrs. Miniver.

Edward Cullen’s room, while, I would venture to say, is nothing like a regular teenage boy’s room, it may be our first glimpse of an average vampire posing-as-a-teenager-but-who-in-reality-is-over-a-century-old’s room.  Minimalist in decoration, a little messy and filled with icons of design he’s collected over the years.

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January 11, 2010

Wimbledon

It’s no coincidence that when I saw this movie I was instantly taken by Peter Colt’s parents’ house.  I had just moved back to the US from the UK where I spent a year travelling around with my graduate school class studying residential architecture and interiors.

Peter Colt's parents house in the movie Wimbledon is actually Norney, Shackleford, Surrey, 1897 by Charles Francis Annesley Voysey

We had even made a trip to see Broadleys (1898)  on Lake Windermere in Cumbria.  And except that Broadleys in on the water, the two houses – Broadleys and the Colt’s home in the movie – are quite similar.

Broadleys, Bowness-on-Windermere, Cumbria, 1898

It was a house called Norney, by C.F.A. Voysey, that was used in the movie Wimbledon as the main character, Peter Colt’s, parents’ home.  I think that’s what I love about Voysey’s houses; they always feel like a parents’ home to me.  The warmth of the wood, the organic feel of the interior design and the way they appear to have grown over time, as the family has, makes them welcoming and comfortable.  Yet, at the same time, their use of vernacular architectural details and their sheer size give them a regal quality that their often used title of ‘cottage’ usually doesn’t cover.

Norney's facade as seen in Wimbledon

According to the English Heritage website, Norney was built for Reverend Leighton Crane.  The round window, seen in the picture above, was often seen in Voysey’s architecture.

Exterior of Norney near the rear garden as seen in the movie

At Broadleys, large bands of glazing jut out from the house in bay windows, a design feature also seen at Norney

C.F.A. Voysey was an English architect, textile designer and furniture designer during the Arts and Crafts period.  And though his designs followed the simple country look of the Movement, using the English vernacular style of the 17th century, he is still considered a pioneer of Modern Architecture.  Though, that distinction comes from those whom he influenced and was not his intention.

Broadleys lock detail

Voysey paid very close attention to detail – he designed the furniture for his houses – and even the lock designs as seen in the example above from Broadleys.  Other similarities I noticed between Broadleys and Norsey, while watching Wimbledon, included the upstairs hallway and the staircase.

Upstairs hallway at Broadleys

Upstairs hallway of Norney as seen in Wimbledon

Both hallways feature a balcony where one can look over the room below.  They also both have rounded doorways and slanted ceilings or walls that make sure you know you’re upstairs and just below the line of the roof.  I associate upstairs ceilings that slant with small cottages and it is with details like this that Voysey is able to give these substantial homes the feel of a small cottage.

The staircase at Broadleys

The staircase at Norney with Carl and Peter Colt (James McAvoy and Paul Bettany) in the movie Wimbledon

While you can see that the layout of Broadleys and Norney are mirror images of each other, their similarities are striking.  They are after all both created with the architectural language of Voysey.  Both staircases feature flat and closely spaced rails.  They also both have wood panelled walls and a highly placed windows in the stairwell that lives in an area between the two floors, not really belonging to either one.  Unfortunately, during my trip to Broadleys, I did not find James McAvoy on the staircase.  But it wasn’t a total loss because I loved my time spent there and it helped me to instantly recognize the house of Peter Colt’s family as a piece of Voysey architecture.

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November 18, 2009

Men Who Stare at Goats

Believe me, I’m as surprised as you that I find myself once again writing about Scandinavian furniture. Even more shocking is that it was from a movie about the American Army in the late 1970s. But, none-the-less, there I was last weekend, in the cinema, watching Men Who Stare at Goats and I found that I was staring at the furniture.

Kevin Spacey's character hides under a teak bench.

The movie takes place, partially, in the late 1970s on Fort Bragg Army base in North Carolina.  I’m not sure how successful I’m going to be at researching standard issue Army furniture – so far – I’m not turning up much!  But I do know that Scandinavian furniture was very popular for office furniture in the 1960s and 70s – just think Mad Men.

Don Draper's Office

The furniture was mass-produced, sleek, functional and masculine.  So, extrapolate that into the Army not putting quite the same amount of importance on aesthetics as advertisement executives on Madison Avenue and there you have Kevin Spacey’s character, Larry Hooper, hiding under a teak bench with Danish corded seats next to a coordinating teak side table, about a decade after they were first popularized.

Danish Corded Chair

(Sidenote:  if we think too much about Mad Men I’m going to have to develop an entirely new blog devoted to how I adore the set design of that show.)

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August 15, 2009

The Julie/Julia Project

This past week I went to see Julie & Julia – which, if you’re interested, I thoroughly enjoyed.  Julie Powell moves into a new apartment with her husband in Long Island City, Queens at the beginning of the film.  It’s right above a pizzeria and she and her husband have the whole top floor to themselves – though it’s still a studio.  Their front door is on the ground floor, but as soon as one enters the door there is a flight of stairs leading up to the apartment.  They do a lovely job of decorating their apartment with a mix of modern, comfortable furniture and a sort of unfortunate dorm-like sense of style.  I like the mix’n'match where nothing really matches, but everything goes, like the different sets of drapes.  But, the baker’s rack as a room divider and clothing storage is a little too revealing for me.  The thing that really got my attention in their apartment was the dinging room table and chairs.  (What also got my attention was how movies are able to make apartments in New York City seem to be the most quaint  and cozy places you’ve ever been rather than the most minuscule and cramped.)  The dining room table is an old farm style pedestal table, like the one every member of my family from the mid-west has; it just seems so quintessentially homey to me.  The chairs around Julie Powell’s table are what really caught my eye.

Julie Powell's Thonet chairs in her Queens apartment.

Julie Powell's Thonet chairs in her Queens apartment.

They have a set of four Thonet bentwood dining side chairs.  This is interesting because we see Thonet chairs in Julia Child’s part of the story too.

Julia Child at Le Cordon Bleu with Thonet chairs

Julia Child at Le Cordon Bleu with Thonet chairs

Pictured above at Le Cordon Bleu are several Thonet Vienna Cafe No. 18 chairs.  The houses Julia and Paul Child lived in in Paris, Marseilles, Oslo and Cambridge were fantastic! I really enjoyed getting to move around with the Childs.  In Paris, we mostly spent time in the kitchen – oh, wait, we spent the whole movie in kitchens and dining rooms!  My favorite was the cool colors of the Norwegian kitchen; in that scene we follow the Childs from the kitchen into a sitting room.

The Childs' kitchen in Norway

The interior reminds me of a mid-20th century take on one of my favorite artist/illustrators, a Swede, Carl Larsson.

Old Anna by Carl Larsson, 1896

While he was from the early 20th century, his Scandinavian sensibility was obviously still influential on material culture 40 years later.  And it was in the 1950s when Scandinavian design became popular with its simple, clean lines of design.  This is around the time that Julia Child would have lived there.  So, we can see in her kitchen what appears to be a cane back chair by mid-century Danish designer Jens Risom.

Jens Risom cane back arm chair

Jens Risom cane back arm chair

Wow, I really didn’t expect this post to turn into such a Scandinavian love fest! But starting with Thonet’s invention of bentwood was bound to lead us straight to those indebted to him – the Scandinavian modern movement.  So, since we’re already on that path, I’ll finish up by noting that Julie Powell’s desk chair, in her apartment, also appears to be Scandinavian – maybe even Danish.  I rather like the symmetry of Julie’s interiors reflecting those of Julia.  It also shows how powerful and timeless great design can be!

Julie's Scandinavian desk chair

Julie's Scandinavian desk chair

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August 10, 2009

Let’s begin at the very beginning …a very good place to start.

Of course they grew up singing ...they had a stage built into their house.

Of course they grew up singing ...they had a stage built into their house.

When you think back to the first time you watched The Sound of Music – I’m assuming you’ve seen it more than once – what is it you remember about it?  The music?  The love story?  The dancing?  I remember the von Trapps’ house and how I wished I could make a dramatic exit each night as a child ascending the grand staircase as I bid my parents good night.  I remember that Maria goes to an armoire to get Liesl a clean and dry night gown after she has gotten caught in the rain – and I had never had an armoire.
Maria and the children ...but check out that armoire!

Maria and the children ...but check out that armoire!

I was looking around the dining room while the children were playing tricks on Maria and trying to absorb every detail of it.  And, I remember wishing I could somehow fit a marionette stage in my house.
The dark wood, crystal and smooth wallpaper drew me in.

The dark wood, crystal and smooth wallpaper drew me in.

All my life I’ve been watching the backgrounds in movies.  OK, I’ve been watching the stories too, but maybe my brain was doing double time or something because I would always look over at my mom after a movie and ask something along the lines of, “Did you see the dress that girl was wearing?” or, “I would love to have a room like those girls, with an en suite bathroom!”  (I didn’t actually know words like ‘en suite’ when I was 8), but I knew what I liked in movies and it was the interior decoration, the furniture, the clothes and the design.  So, I’ve since gotten two degrees in historical architecture and design and thought I’d share what I noticed in movies with others.

The marionette stage

The marionette stage.

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