The Time Warp
Hello my fancy friends and thank you so much for tuning in today. I love watching interior design trends come, go, and return again; and one of the ways we can observe this is through the passage of time via classic TV shows. I am a huge fan of the show “I Love Lucy,” maybe it's because I'm a fellow redhead, or maybe it’s the way the show encourages us to laugh at our crazy mistakes in life. If you haven’t experienced this slice of iconic entertainment, the show centers around comedic actress Lucille Ball, and her real-life and on-screen husband Desi Arnez; who play Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. Together with their best friends and landlords Fred and Ethel Mertz, the show features the ins and outs of married life, money troubles, and the glorious world of the New York’s Upper East Side in the 1950’s.
A reoccurring theme on the show, is Lucy's obsession with wealth and keeping up with society’s standards and trends. Lucy and Ricky appear to live a slightly lower middle class life style, at least in the beginning of the show. As Ricky’s career as a band leader grows, they are able to expand and redecorate their home on multiple occasions, allowing us viewers to see the styles of 1950’s change right before our eyes. And if you’ve been listening to Soft Landing’s historic designer series, like last week’s episode “Go With The Flo,” you know the 1950’s was a major turning point for the interior design and architecture aesthetic. The modern styles developed earlier in the century were becoming main stream, and the era known as Mid-Century Modern was at its prime. In this episode, we are going to explore every change and upgrade to Lucy and Ricky’s home, how it reflects the style of the time, and how it supports the story arc of the shows characters. You’ll get an understanding of the basic interior style ideologies, and decide which one is right for your home.
But first, let’s talk about the Color Of The Week. It just so happens that Shark Week is upon us. The annual Discovery Channel marathon about all things related to these great creatures, that are essential to our planet’s ecosystem, began July 24th, and coincided with an interesting study out of South Africa, that found sharks can change the color of their skin to help them better blend in with their surroundings as they hunt. The study used a floating buoy that was cover in a graduation of ten colors, from white to black, to study individual sharks and their hues. This chameleon-like ability is an amazing discovery, but most of us will always think of sharks as that light gray color depicted in drawings and photographs. That’s why the Color of The Week is Pittsburgh Paints PPG1006-2 Shark. This light, warm gray is the perfect neutral to paint your entire home, working well with most wood tones, whites, and brights. It looks particularly nice with a contrasting white trim, to keep it looking sharp.
There are four distinct episodes of the show that focus on Lucy’s hunger for new furniture and decor styles. What I love about seeing their home transform over the seasons is because this show was filmed in black and white, we see the shapes and textures change, but the colors can’t be relied upon to convey transformation. In today’s media, if a makeover of a room occurs, you can bet there will be a dramatic shift in color, whether it’s an all-white room getting plastered in neon or a gray and brown space blown out to all white. It’s the contrast of the before and after that matters, but with I Love Lucy, this contrast has to be communicated in the shapes and profiles, because there could be an all red room changing to green, but we won’t be able to see it.
We begin in the Ricardo’s humble one bedroom apartment - focused in the living room. The furniture is very traditional. There is a sofa with a rounded arm detail and a gathered fabric skirt base. The upholstery fabric is a medium scale, fairly active pattern with a mix of geometric and botanical shapes. Next to the sofa is a wingback chair with matching upholstery fabric, and a carved, dark, wooden frame that extends to the legs. We also see a coffee table, again dark wood, with cabriole legs - this is when there is a convex curve at the top of the leg and a concave curve at the bottom. This double curvy style of leg is associated mostly with Queen Anne and Louis XV style furniture.
There is a brick wall with a highly ornate, curvy fire place mantle, in that similar Queen Anne style, and there’s a piano in the background with a set of matching table lamps on either side, all below a wall of small framed pictures. This room is cozy, modest, warm, and in many ways disappears into the background to give way to the drama and comedy of the show. Now as we move through the next few episodes, we’ll see how much this room changes. The one item that does not seem to change at all during the set’s three makeovers is the desk and chair to the right side of the screen. This area isn’t every scene, but remains the dark colored wood, old-fashioned cabriole legged, Queen Anne desk and chair that matches the coffee table. For some reason, even by the last season of the show, the desk and chair are pretty much the same from day one.
Of course, this is 1950 we are living in, and much of the furniture we see in this first set of furniture is based on designs that were developed in the 1700 and 1800’s. In Season 2, episode 8 “Redecorating,” Lucy and Ethel go to a home show and get all kinds of great ideas for making over their apartments, including all new furniture and wallpaper. I mentioned a scene from this in my episode “Pretty Paper” all about wallpaper, because Lucy and Ethel attempt to put wallpaper up in the bedroom and really struggle with it. It’s almost hard to watch if you’ve ever tried to do something like this yourself. They have a vertical strip wallpaper that they cannot get straight to save their lives, and it’s just a mess.
But eventually Lucy does get her new furniture, and what’s important is the update in style. The sofa goes from being a pattern with a skirt base to a solid fabric with a single row of tufting on the back and chunky wood leg. Tufting is, of course, the fabric wrapped buttons often used on upholstered pieces to help secure the foam or batting in place, but, as we will see, they are also used for purely decorative purposes sometimes.
So, the sofa goes from being fairly ornate to being quite simple and clean, with more of an angular profile than the previous rounded shape. This is very much in line with the styles that were being presented at the time. The idea of fussy florals and soft shapes was very passé, and everyone was obsessed with simplicity, rectangular and angled geometries, and the appearance of lightness, which we get with the sofa now having a wood leg, visually lifting it from the floor, rather than a frilly skirt at the bottom, making it appear heavier.
The armchair has changed as well, looking very similar to the sofa only without any tufting, just a simple, solid, upholstery, again with a wooden leg, but the previous chair had an ornate, carved wooden frame that ran all around the top and arms, which is now replaced by a fully upholstered chair. So we are seeing a major simplification of materials and shapes. This continues with the art on the wall - what had once been a collection of eight smaller framed images, is replaced with three larger ones. It’s worth noting that the coffee table and its Cabriole leg remain, as does the old piano, which actually offer a nice balance to the new pieces. It makes it all feel a little more eclectic and real.
By the time we get to the 28th episode of season 2, called “Lucy Wants New Furniture,” the Ricardo family has expanded to include their new baby, and the whole family has moved into another apartment in the same building. This apartment is not only larger, but it’s also a very different style architecturally. The exposed brick is no where to be found, and the walls are now decked out in chair rails, wainscoting, and a fireplace with an elegantly trimmed mantle to match the room. They also now have a window over looking the city. It’s an elevated aesthetic for sure, and Lucy wants new pieces to complement the room. Understandable! Lucy gets what Lucy wants. She spends $299 1950’s USD and gets another new sofa, lounge chair, and coffee table. These new pieces are a huge departure in shape and form from the previous two outfits. Sofa number three has low, barely there arms, with the trim of the seat actually extending out slighting past the arm itself by just a few inches, for a wide, beefy look. The silhouette is exceptionally boxy, with very little definition to it, and while there are single rows of tufting on the back and the base, the sofa is so tailored and stiff, they hardly leave a dent. This boxiness is further emphasized by the welt or piping, around the edges.
Chair number three, again, matches the sofa, only this time it is completely armless, which couldn’t be more different from the more formal armchairs we’ve seen so far. The legs of the chair and sofa are now a dainty, tapered wood profile, giving both pieces an even greater illusion of floating in space. This set somehow looks both more casual and more rigid at the same time. The coffee table has finally been replaced, and although we can’t see the color, the new one is clearly a significantly lighter tone of wood than our previous Cabriole legged table. And this table’s leg profile is a gestural, sweeping, single, concave arch, still interesting, but much simpler than the original coffee table. Plus, there are flexible wings to make for a larger surface when company arrives.
What we have just seen unfold before our very eyes, is a cycle through three benchmark approaches to furniture. The beginning set with the ornate details is what’s referred to as “traditional,” the second set with the cleaner lines and chunky legs is “transitional,” and the third, super boxy set is “modern” or “contemporary”. Seeing these different phases of the characters home helps emphasize the plot that they are coming up in the world, but it also quickly cycles through the three distinct houses of interior design. Within these three buckets, lie many sub-styles, but each one is representative of an ethos and attitude when it comes to aesthetics. Traditional design, what we see represented in the first set of furniture, relies on historical concepts for its shapes, scale, and details. This style can be popular for those of us who like to dwell in our nostalgia, want to convey a sense of longstanding establishment, or who just plain long for a bygone era.
The ultimate middle ground, Transitional design, that we see in the second set of furniture, is by far and away what I see the most in my work. This is a metamorphosis from traditional, a baby step towards modernity. Shapes and forms are referential of historical designs, but not an out right duplication of them. Current technology is welcome in this house, but anything super fussy or overly ornate can be left behind. But there’s still a sense of tradition in the final look.
Modern or contemporary designs, like we see in the third set, are focused on pushing the limits of what is considered normal. Unfamiliar shapes and forms feed an insatiable hunger for new and exploration is rewarded. In the world of I love Lucy, this appears in the form of boxy sofas, but it can be so much more than that, and most designers find themselves in this realm, as this is where creation and iteration thrive. That’s not to be said that reference to past is ignored in all modern designs. Sometimes the most brazen idea is one that comes from the pages of history.
And, as we find ourselves now squarely in the modern realm with the Ricardos, the next iteration of furniture is a specific sub-set of modern design that furthers the story of their success.
Season 3, episode 8, “Redecorating the Mertzes’ Apartment,” Lucy ends up giving her furniture to the her good friends and neighbors, Fred and Ethel Mertz, which, lucky for her, leaves a blank slate of an apartment to yet again redecorate. This time, Lucy’s new sofa embraces glamour, and this makes it the most suited to her new apartment, which feels opulent in all its trims. The sofa is asymmetrical, with only one side having an arm. The other side extends out, backless, for just a foot or so, giving the impression of a chaise lounge or a fainting sofa. And although those pieces are associated with the Victorian era of furniture, this sofa has clean, modern detailing. There is tufting on the seat and back, an even higher taper on the wood legs, and a slight curvature to the profile that makes it feel the tiniest bit Art Nouveau. The lounge chair matches, but it has two symmetrically placed arms, and the winged coffee table remains. We can see in later recreations of the set that both the chair and the sofa were a navy blue.
This set of furniture is the most iconic for the show, and the one that gets the most use. It isn’t until Season 6, episode 18, almost the end of the series, that the Ricardos move to Westport, Connecticut and their suave city furniture just doesn’t feel right, now that they are living in a spacious cottage-core heaven. So Lucy cozies up to a neighbor and they go furniture shopping. They spend a whopping $3,000 1950’s USD and arrive home with furniture kind of similar to what the Ricardo’s had at the beginning of the series. There’s a solid, round arm sofa with a gathered skirt base, and a matching chair with a plaid upholstery accent, a more ornate winged coffee table, in a dark wood, and a delicate wooden rocking chair. While this aesthetic is certainly more cabin in the woods than their original Queen Anne vibe, the turn in shapes and silhouettes is back where we started in the traditional wheelhouse. I have a feeling this was completely intentional for the show’s producers because ultimately the Ricardo’s adventure in life takes a turn back to the homestead and family oriented values. They’re raising chickens in the country, so it makes sense that their furniture is going to have traditional elements.
Watching Lucy and Ricky’s journey from a scrappy music loving couple to a successful suburban family and all their misadventures in-between, is subtly supported by the furniture that comprises their home. Which furniture set is your favorite? I love the classic glam sofa, that’s sofa number three, but each piece plays an important role in their story. I hope you are taking awesome care of yourself, and I will talk to you in the next episode.
