Americans Slow to Enter Deco Race…
The U.S., or, more correctly, Herbert Hoover acting as Secretary of Commerce, declined to participate in the 1925 Paris Exposition that defined Art Deco. Why? American advertisers were not modern! In fact, they were still relying on text to sell their wares, when most of Europe had moved to images a long time prior to 1925. As the deco historian Steven Heller put it in 1989, “American mass-market manufacturers and their advertisers had not yet really focused on the visual style of their objects or advertisements as part of their bid for the consumer’s dollar.”
I take comfort in this. It reminds me that American ingenuity is all about taking something, getting to the bottom of it, then adding a little know-how and hard work to blow it up larger-than-life. There’s something innocent and charming in this, something child-like in our love for playing with something to create infinite variations on a theme. The energy that surrounds mass media is all about this child-like wonder.
If you wondered, as I did, who the first innovator was to break the American deco barrier, it was none other than General Motors! In 1925 the great design head Harley Earl–one of those larger-than-life characters–flamboyantly bet the farm on style over product and the rest, as they say, is history. By 1927, Ford’s Model T lost 35% of the market, which was a direct result of style changes, according to University of South Alabama sociologist David Gartman.
In honor of the transitory nature of style and the ever-changing need to have something au courant, I went with a modern asymmetric repeat in this design. In a few years, we may think it is sadly outdated and need a new sofa cushion, but, for right now, this pattern on a bolster pillow will add some tang to the cream-colored sofa in the living room.
