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T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings: Crafting a Modern Home for Postwar America

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T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings: Crafting a Modern Home for Postwar America T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings: Crafting a Modern Home for Postwar America Daniella Ohad Smith , Ph.D. 1 ABSTRACT Terence Harold Robsjohn-Gibbings (1905– 1976) was an architect, decorator, furniture designer, tastemaker, and thinker whose innovative ideas on interior design during the postwar era had a formative impact on American domestic culture. Through books, arti- cles, lectures, interior décor, and industrial design, he advanced a singular outlook on the modern home, rooted in Greco-Roman sensibilities, classical principles, and early American domestic culture. By considering his contribution to the emergence of middle- class American style during the formative years of modernism, I propose that although hardly discussed in the literature, Robsjohn-Gibbings had occupied a signifi cant role in steering popular taste away from Art Moderne and from the popular fashion of collect- ing European antiques and reproductions toward a genuine American modernism. A progressive thinker, he challenged international modernism and the postwar organic language through a scholarly understanding of ancient Greco-Roman furniture and a thorough study of American material culture. Introduction ing. Claiming that “American interiors should be visualized in terms of warmth, friendliness, and In 1965, at the age of sixty, the British-born designer comfort,” 2 he advised middle-class Americans on Terence Harold Robsjohn-Gibbings (1905 – 1976) how to develop a personal taste and “how to judge moved to Athens and settled in an apartment over- the modern.” 3 He was recognized as an important looking the Parthenon. This was a fi tting fi nal desti- advocate for simplicity and integrity in contemporary nation for his lifelong journey into the aesthetic design and was compared to such infl uential trendset- essence of classical Greece. In the last phase of a suc- ters as Hattie Carnegie, who dressed the Duchess of cessful career as one of the twentieth century’s most innovative tastemakers, Robsjohn-Gibbings repro- Windsor, and John Frederics, milliner to such Holly- duced ancient Greek furniture in a line of furnishings wood stars as Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, and 4 that appealed to postmodernist taste. He described Vivien Leigh. ancient Greek furniture, the subject of his informed fascination, as “young, untouched by time,” and sim- Robsjohn-Gibbings was one of the promoters of the ilarly sought to create a style characterized, in his “Good Design” movement, which was at the height words, by “freshness of youth and restfulness of utter of its popularity during the postwar years. “Good de- simplicity.” 1 These qualities placed “Gibby,” as he sign” has been defi ned by scholars as a reform initia- was called, in the forefront of design in postwar tive premised on the progressive modernism prevalent America. in the postwar age. As design historian Judy Attfi eld notes, it refers to “an ideal, rational, and self-conscious Robsjohn-Gibbings was a trained architect, reform- process of design derived from fi rst principles ing decorator, talented furniture designer, progres- that accompanied the introduction of design as a sive thinker, and an inspired writer who infl uenced profession.” 5 Robsjohn-Gibbings’s version of “good the way middle-class postwar American homes were design” was rooted in his mission to formulate an furnished. His most important contribution to mod- authentic American modernism. Fully attuned to the ern design was to challenge conventional notions of spirit of his age, he redefi ned American national, fa- the modern home and its furnishings by offering what milial, and individual identities through a distinctive he regarded as an authentic American modernism vision of the modern dwelling and its attendant life- both in his work as a designer and in his advice writ- style. Eager to bequeath a legacy of discernment and © Copyright 2008, Interior Design Educators Council, Journal of Interior Design 39 Journal of Interior Design 34(1) CRAFTING A MODERN HOME FOR POSTWAR AMERICA OHAD SMITH Notwithstanding the elitist elegance of his personal image, Robsjohn-Gibbings was a true visionary of the democratization of taste that took place in the postwar years as the concept of design became linked with modernity. to promote elegance for a mass market, Robsjohn- Robsjohn-Gibbings took a personal path, devising an Gibbings established himself as both a tastemaker aesthetic profoundly inspired by antiquity, yet rooted and an industrial designer, articulating his message in in American domestic and visual culture. His designs books, articles, lectures, and appearances. An active were restrained, simple, unpretentious, and familiar, and infl uential designer, writer, and thinker, he has evincing a neoclassical sensibility and passionate atten- not received commensurate consideration in studies tion to proportions and detailing. His interiors were of mid-twentieth-century American design. In fact, characterized by plain spaces, a sense of spaciousness, decades of scholarly interest in that fi eld, including and luxurious materials, and his furniture displayed a several milestone exhibitions and monographs, preference for defi ned forms, fl owing silhouettes, have left Robsjohn-Gibbings’s legacy virtually un- and a disdain for applied decoration. Smooth touched. 6 surfaces of bleached birch or plain and grained veneers were coated in shellac polishes, enhancing Such neglect is particularly ironic in light of his own the natural color of the woods and serving as the mastery of public relations: Robsjohn-Gibbings not chief form of embellishment. Robsjohn-Gibbings of- only believed in the power of the media to affect so- ten used pilasters and columns extracted from classical ciety but also knew how to manipulate the press to vocabulary; yet, rather than merely imitating histori- advance his ideas and promote his career. Just as his cal models, his designs drew on an informed and in- contemporary, the industrial designer Raymond spired dialogue with a particular past: ancient Greece Loewy, turned his name into a brand, Robsjohn- on the one hand and selected periods in American Gibbings circulated his portrait as a trademark logo. domestic design history on the other. Producing what His promotions, advertisements, interviews, and mag- he termed a “modernized recasting of Greek forms,” azine articles featured his svelte six-foot-tall fi gure, he called on American designers to move away from dressed in stylish tailored double-breasted suits, with merely imitating historical periods such as Victorian, his hair smoothed back from his forehead and a ciga- Georgian, Baroque, and Rococo, or foreign sources rette perennially propped in his slender fi ngers. such as Chinese, and, instead, to “evolve functional designs for the future.” 8 Only the principles of classi- Notwithstanding the elitist elegance of his personal cal art paired with the local vernacular, he believed, image, Robsjohn-Gibbings was a true visionary of could form the basis of great American modern de- the democratization of taste that took place in the sign. In the fi nal, postmodernist chapter in his career, postwar years as the concept of design became linked in the 1960s, however, Robsjohn-Gibbings aban- with modernity. His vision represents a transitional doned this goal, moving directly to recreate ancient moment in the history of modern design when Amer- Greek furniture forms and designing textiles with icans began to challenge the tenets of the Modern neoclassical motifs derived from the fa ç ade of the movement, which had dominated American design Parthenon. He thus transformed his all-American since the groundbreaking “Modern Architecture: “good design,” with its nationalistic agenda, into a International Exhibition,” curated by Henry-Russell purely Grecian mode, anticipating postmodernism’s Hitchcock and Philip Johnson at the Museum of ascension in the international design arena. Modern Art in 1932. Designers who presented a chal- lenge to orthodox modernism included those devel- By considering his role in the evolution of middle- oping a postwar organic aesthetic, the founders of the class taste during the postwar years, I argue that as so-called Studio Movement, and such innovators as a decorator, furniture designer, and tastemaker, Edward Wormley, George Nakashima, Paul Frankl, Robsjohn-Gibbings proposed an authentic Ameri- and Tommi Parzinger who, like Robsjohn-Gibbings, can modernism. His personal defi nition of modern- devised industrially produced furniture with the look ism embraced a dialogue between the American of high-quality handicraft. 7 past, which he perceived as the purest expression of Journal of Interior Design 40 Volume 34 Number 1 2008 CRAFTING A MODERN HOME FOR POSTWAR AMERICA OHAD SMITH Robsjohn-Gibbings was among the fi rst to challenge the modernist agenda, fi nding it unsuited to the daily needs of Americans in the postwar age. national identity, and the present, enhanced and in- Robsjohn-Gibbings offered a personal chronicle of formed by principles of classical art as the epitome the history of design and art in the twentieth century of purity and integrity. He democratized luxury by and summarized his own taste in two books. Mona presenting elegant simplicity, rooted in informed Lisa’s Mustache: A Dissection of Modern Art (1947) tradition, as the new glamour. Although promoting illuminates his preference for particular art move- his individual version of modernism, Robsjohn- ments of the past, 14 and Homes of the Brave , his best- Gibbings avoided describing his designs
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