I promised I’d post some pictures from the 1955 American Home magazines that I received a few weeks ago. What fun it has been leafing through them! If you missed my recent post on bad soup ideas from Campbell’s, you must go back and see it. There are some things that are better left in history, and that’s one of them.
There are some other things that history buried, and we should be forever thankful. Certain decorating ideas, for example. Sometimes I stare at rooms bedecked in vivid colors and myriad patterns and wonder what it would have been like to actually live in a room like that. Did the occupants suffer from dizziness or chronic gastric complaints? Did those ailments suddenly stop after moving? Once you see these pictures, I believe you’ll feel the same.
Yes, the picture is flippin’ huge. They all will be, as I want you to admire all the loveliness of this particular decorator’s inspiration. See the green? Not so bad here, really. It matches the dress of the woman in the portrait, and provides a nice (albeit Christmasy) contrast to the fireplace. It almost looks like a nice place to curl up and read a book on a cold winter’s night, no?
Well, would you feel the same way if you just walked in from this room?
(No, that’s not a gigantic column in the middle of the room. It’s a double page spread.)
The green. It’s in this room too. With curtains to match!
So, my original question: would the green start to become a bit much if you walked into one vividly green room into another? Yes? Well, then you can imagine how your eyes might become a bit crossed if you also had to walk through this room on your way to the other green rooms:
Ha ha! It’s another — ha ha! — green room. A green bedroom this time. And just to mix things up a little bit, they didn’t paint the walls green this time, they found the greenest carpet in all the land. If they had a dog, I bet this was his favorite room.
Oh, but we’re not done. No, siree. The decorator just couldn’t let you by with just THREE green rooms in your house from the underworld. He/she just had to slip in one more:
Now, when I originally took this pictures and uploaded them to my computer, I was so busy being horrified by the greenness that I didn’t notice that this last picture is simply a different view of Room #2. (See the white table?) This is the other end of that room, but that doesn’t excuse the bad taste.
Obviously, this end of the room is reserved for the chairs so they can congregate and visit with one another.
Too funny! While house hunting this weekend we found a condo with that exact green carpet in EVERY room. My first thought was it was a putting green.
The place was 2-stories, and that carpet covered all the rooms on both floors (except the kitchen, thank goodness), plus the stairs. Then you went to the garage and the trussing beams that showed below the drop-ceiling were painted that same green. And the previous home owner left a green street sign with his name on it (Paul) over the door.
Our instinct about putting green was right. Paul apparently liked golfing because there was a mural in the garage that was an aerial view of a golf course next to the sea.
The kind of sad thing was the owner obviously thought he knew what he was doing. The kitchen had beautiful travertine floors, the fireplace was upgraded with a floor to ceiling marble that was neutral, and that horrid green carpet was a really good quality – plush and relatively new with no stains or high-traffic marks. Even the stairs showed little wear. But if we bought the condo I would have had to rip. out. every. last. piece.
Oh my! We had the same experience with our house 9 years ago, except every room and every carpet was PINK! Carnation pink! It took us about 4 months before we couldn’t stand the pink anymore and we ripped all the carpet out. That was GREAT fun, let me tell you!