Decorative Art 50s revives the rare Studio Yearbook series to map the materials, aesthetics, and consumerist energy that defined American design across an entire postwar decade — from suburban furniture to urban metalware.
About This Book
The 1950s remade the material world. Latex upholstery, injection-moulded plastics, and an unprecedented surge in consumer culture produced a design language that still resonates in contemporary interiors and product design. This volume draws on the archival Decorative Art, The Studio Yearbook — a publication long difficult to access — to reconstruct the ideological and aesthetic forces behind the midcentury boom. Spanning furniture, metalware, and suburban architecture, it tracks how postwar optimism translated into form, colour, and mass production. An essential reference for anyone studying the origins of modern design culture and the decade that industrialised the domestic interior.
Key Features
- 575 pages of archival design documentation spanning furniture, metalware, and material culture across the American 1950s
- Published by Taschen
What You'll Discover
- How latex, plastics, and synthetic materials reshaped the vocabulary of postwar American domestic design
- The ideological connection between postwar optimism and the design choices applied across suburbs and inner cities alike
- The breadth of midcentury design production, from furniture and soft furnishings through to metalware and decorative objects
- The editorial perspective of the original Studio Yearbook, a rare primary source now made accessible through this revival edition
About the Author
[Details available upon request]
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 575
- Dimensions: 196 x 255 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783836584449
- Publisher: Taschen
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Design historians, interior designers with an interest in midcentury modernism, collectors of Taschen archival editions, and students of postwar material culture.