blue
stocking
Eerdmans’ selections illustrate how the
Regency style is based on contradictions: it is
both “modern traditionalist” and “neoclassicist,”
reveling in oppositional forces. The style
demands interiors with clean, classic lines but
also demands embellishment. With prints from
early illustrators of architecture and interiors,
such as a James “Athenian” Stuart, Eerdmans’
carefully curated visuals transport readers into
every incarnation of the Regency style—be
it a Bakst painting, a Vogue spread featuring
socialite Clare Booth Luce or lavish overleafs of
Carole Lombard and Joan Crawford amid the
sumptuous drapes and tasseled settees of their
Los Angeles mansions.
However, readers won’t be seduced solely by
the alluring imagery. Eerdmans’ charming text
borrows selections from sources as varied as
1930s editions of
Country Life
magazine and
design historian Martin Battersby’s observations
in his 1971 retrospective
The Decorative Thirties
to explain why the so-called “Lady Decorators,”
such as Syrie Maugham, succeeded in the
“Vogue Regency” period. “In a period of financial
stress it was necessary that interior decorators…
stand out as possessing adventurous taste and to
own an apartment which would be talked about
and possibly even photographed…” Eerdmans
also explores Cecil B. DeMille and the famed
set directors of 1940s Hollywood who created
show-stopping interiors on wartime budgets.
If the Regency style “provided luxury and
beauty in times of upheaval and change,” as
Eerdmans suggests, then perhaps in these
tenuous times this trend is right on target. A
full-blown Regency revival could be right
around the corner n
Elizabeth Williamson~
Regency Redux, High Style Interiors: Napoleonic,
Classical Moderne, and Hollywood Regency,
Emily Evans Eerdmans and Kelly Wearstler, 298
pages, $75/ hardcover, Rizzoli, rizzoliusa.com
Cover
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