It Came From the '70s: The Story of Your Grandma's Weird Couch
August 31, 2018 12:06 PM Subscribe
My grandparents did, in fact, have this couch.
posted by aniola at 12:16 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by aniola at 12:16 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
Would buy that orange and brown plaid couch tbh
posted by Automocar at 12:17 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Automocar at 12:17 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
Ah, Herculon - my folks had a loveseat covered in it (albeit in a queasy navy/yellow plaid) that was the first thing they bought after getting married in '68. Being seemingly indestructible - liquids would just bead and roll right off it - they held onto it, and I eventually took it with me to college.
There, in my cruddy apartment, its namesake strength and resistance to filth really shone - until one day, c. 1995, when whatever petroleum byproducts were used to make it rapidly began to break down. Within a few months, the upholstery basically turned to dust.
posted by ryanshepard at 12:19 PM on August 31, 2018 [28 favorites]
There, in my cruddy apartment, its namesake strength and resistance to filth really shone - until one day, c. 1995, when whatever petroleum byproducts were used to make it rapidly began to break down. Within a few months, the upholstery basically turned to dust.
posted by ryanshepard at 12:19 PM on August 31, 2018 [28 favorites]
My parents had the brown tartan version with fabric covered arms. I honestly don't think the stuff would look as bad if the lighting in the photos was better. Everybody looking orange like Donald Trump is just terrible, then and now.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:22 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:22 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
“I’m sure that there are sofas being purchased today that are considered very au courant that will be memed viciously 10 or 20 years from now,” she continues. “So be careful: If you don’t want your sofa memed in short duration, choose something that’s not too specific, that’s not too ‘of the moment.’ Aim for a timeless look.”
I think about this every time I'm in the home decor section of Target. This is going to be someone's precise memory of their grandma's house.
Also yes my grandparents also had this couch!
posted by bleep at 12:25 PM on August 31, 2018 [6 favorites]
I think about this every time I'm in the home decor section of Target. This is going to be someone's precise memory of their grandma's house.
Also yes my grandparents also had this couch!
posted by bleep at 12:25 PM on August 31, 2018 [6 favorites]
not one of them is covered in plastic
The "velour" was already plastic.
posted by hwyengr at 12:26 PM on August 31, 2018 [2 favorites]
The "velour" was already plastic.
posted by hwyengr at 12:26 PM on August 31, 2018 [2 favorites]
Funny enough the author’s grandparents could’ve known my grandparents, both being broke in Jay Oklahoma during the depression and leaving for Tulsa. They passed away 10 years before I was born but am forwarding this to my mom, I’m sure she has memories of this couch.
Oh, really well written article btw, thanks for the post!
posted by midmarch snowman at 12:29 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
Oh, really well written article btw, thanks for the post!
posted by midmarch snowman at 12:29 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
Thank goodness my Georgia grandmother had actual antiques, albeit miserable ones like the Empire couch I had to sleep on, and my Baltimore grandmother had playful swinger's-pad bad taste, with gold shag, nylon frieze upholstery, and a paneled basement in which she'd joyously upholstered every fabric surface with faux leopard (including her teddy bear, who, as a result, looked exactly like Idi Amin), and I grew up in a log house with an unusual, but more eclectic than tragic, combination of restored antiques and Danish modern.
I used to visit friends in houses fussily overdecorated with all the atrocities of these colonial nightmares and it taught me the patience of a saint, managing to stay alert, conscious, and relatively lucid while all my senses were screaming "HOLY MOTHERFUCKING PLANET OF HELL—GET OUT OF THERE!"
posted by sonascope at 12:34 PM on August 31, 2018 [18 favorites]
I used to visit friends in houses fussily overdecorated with all the atrocities of these colonial nightmares and it taught me the patience of a saint, managing to stay alert, conscious, and relatively lucid while all my senses were screaming "HOLY MOTHERFUCKING PLANET OF HELL—GET OUT OF THERE!"
posted by sonascope at 12:34 PM on August 31, 2018 [18 favorites]
I was all prepared to say not MY grandma! because she worked in upholstery and had a good eye for fabrics...but then I realized the second couch in the article looks almost exactly like my grandpa's, right down to the heavy arms where you could dig your thumbnail pretty deep into the finish. I can practically still feel the itchiness against my legs!
posted by mittens at 12:36 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by mittens at 12:36 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
Oh yes, and my Baltimore grandmother's lurid gold carpeting was criss-crossed with clear plastic pathways intended to reduce wear, which held on with a million little clear plastic studs that, when you'd sneak in and turn them all over, would turn every pathway into a bed of nails for all the bare feet in the house.
"Joe-B!" my grandmother would shriek, "You dang nearly made me spill my Sanka all over the place!" after stepping onto the inverted carpet protectors and doing a wild dance with a mug.
posted by sonascope at 12:37 PM on August 31, 2018 [45 favorites]
"Joe-B!" my grandmother would shriek, "You dang nearly made me spill my Sanka all over the place!" after stepping onto the inverted carpet protectors and doing a wild dance with a mug.
posted by sonascope at 12:37 PM on August 31, 2018 [45 favorites]
That photo of the dad and baby with striped shirt -- it's not me and my dad, OK, not literally anyway... but yeah, that's us. We're in a hundred photographs wearing the same clothes, on the same couch, with the same facial hair even. Uncanny.
posted by dbx at 12:37 PM on August 31, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by dbx at 12:37 PM on August 31, 2018 [5 favorites]
But I think there are other elements of the era that we might see revived big-time, like plaids.
So I'm not the only one out there hunting for a plaid sofa??? It's going to be a long time before I get furniture, but I keep thinking plaid sofa... floral armchair... something other than carefully mismatched pinterest.
posted by betweenthebars at 12:39 PM on August 31, 2018 [2 favorites]
So I'm not the only one out there hunting for a plaid sofa??? It's going to be a long time before I get furniture, but I keep thinking plaid sofa... floral armchair... something other than carefully mismatched pinterest.
posted by betweenthebars at 12:39 PM on August 31, 2018 [2 favorites]
(including her teddy bear, who, as a result, looked exactly like Idi Amin)
*nosecoffee*
posted by MrBadExample at 12:41 PM on August 31, 2018 [8 favorites]
*nosecoffee*
posted by MrBadExample at 12:41 PM on August 31, 2018 [8 favorites]
Aww, crap, just out of curiosity, I looked it up and I've been associating my grandmother's teddy with the wrong dictator for all these years—it was Mobotu Sese Seko. Sheesh.
posted by sonascope at 12:46 PM on August 31, 2018 [15 favorites]
posted by sonascope at 12:46 PM on August 31, 2018 [15 favorites]
I have no idea what my grandma's sofa looked like. She had it covered with a huge white sheet. Not a formal store-bought cover, a literal sheet, tucked into the corners. ::meme of young man cocking his head and making a confused face::
Now, my guardian aunt, a woman 22 years younger than my grandma, she was the one who covered her loathsomely ugly velour, tomato red "Louis XIV" sofa, matching loveseat and chair in clear, shiny, crackly plastic. I never sat on any of those on general aesthetic principle, forget the plastic!
posted by droplet at 1:03 PM on August 31, 2018
Now, my guardian aunt, a woman 22 years younger than my grandma, she was the one who covered her loathsomely ugly velour, tomato red "Louis XIV" sofa, matching loveseat and chair in clear, shiny, crackly plastic. I never sat on any of those on general aesthetic principle, forget the plastic!
posted by droplet at 1:03 PM on August 31, 2018
I remember how sitting on a plastic-covered couch in the summer would often result in one's thighs getting stuck and having to peel them off when one stood up, sometimes even a bit painfully.
posted by hippybear at 1:24 PM on August 31, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 1:24 PM on August 31, 2018 [7 favorites]
My parents had a similar couch for years, but in a blue and green plaid. After that it was re-covered in rose flower and tan pattern. We inherited my parent's house and the couch, which finally bit the dust several years ago. We still have the love seat in the same rose pattern. None of our furniture has any class or style, but we do not care. We are old grandma and grandpa now ourselves. Nobody in my family ever had furniture covered in plastic. Here in NJ, "that's Italian".
posted by mermayd at 1:33 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by mermayd at 1:33 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
My grandparents on one side of the family have never had a sofa. They've never lived anywhere big enough to easily fit one in (in an unmodified two up, two down it's much easier to fit a couple of chairs either side of the fire), and wouldn't have been able to afford one if they had the space. However, even with that, eye-bleedingly terrible patterns were managed through the medium of home-made antimacassars. On everything. If the dog had been moving any more slowly before it died, it would have ended up with an antimacassar as well.
posted by Vortisaur at 1:35 PM on August 31, 2018 [9 favorites]
posted by Vortisaur at 1:35 PM on August 31, 2018 [9 favorites]
Those couches are way more modern than either of my grandmothers. Toby had a couch from the early 60s. It was olive green velour and lower than any couch I've seen before or since. She did have coffee table #8 though. I mean, that coffee table. The drawer went all the way through to the other side.
Other grandma was very into the 1960's Jewish Asian trend, so everything in her house was a mashup of Judaica, Korean, Japanese and Chinese art and decor. Never quite understood that one.
posted by Sophie1 at 1:36 PM on August 31, 2018 [3 favorites]
Other grandma was very into the 1960's Jewish Asian trend, so everything in her house was a mashup of Judaica, Korean, Japanese and Chinese art and decor. Never quite understood that one.
posted by Sophie1 at 1:36 PM on August 31, 2018 [3 favorites]
We had one of these at a house I helped rent back in the olden days. Through a series of events, the band EMF wound up coming over to party after a show, wherein someone sits on the arm and breaks it in the way that college furniture just kinda crumples into a garbage pile.
My buddy whose couch it originally was (and who was at work while famousish people were damaging his stuff) would get faux-grouchy for years about how EMF broke his furniture.
I think that was the last time one of these fashion icons was within my orbit.
posted by rhizome at 2:00 PM on August 31, 2018 [10 favorites]
My buddy whose couch it originally was (and who was at work while famousish people were damaging his stuff) would get faux-grouchy for years about how EMF broke his furniture.
I think that was the last time one of these fashion icons was within my orbit.
posted by rhizome at 2:00 PM on August 31, 2018 [10 favorites]
I remember how sitting on a plastic-covered couch in the summer would often result in one's thighs getting stuck and having to peel them off when one stood up, sometimes even a bit painfully.
"What's that pattern on the couch called?
"Thighback."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:00 PM on August 31, 2018 [6 favorites]
"What's that pattern on the couch called?
"Thighback."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:00 PM on August 31, 2018 [6 favorites]
My buddy whose couch it originally was (and who was at work while famousish people were damaging his stuff) would get faux-grouchy for years about how EMF broke his furniture.
To which the only response would be "they broke your stuff? that's unbelievable!"
posted by hippybear at 2:05 PM on August 31, 2018 [20 favorites]
To which the only response would be "they broke your stuff? that's unbelievable!"
posted by hippybear at 2:05 PM on August 31, 2018 [20 favorites]
To which the only response would be "they broke your stuff? that's unbelievable!"
Oh!! Oh oh uhhhhh!
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:11 PM on August 31, 2018 [8 favorites]
Oh!! Oh oh uhhhhh!
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:11 PM on August 31, 2018 [8 favorites]
The things, you say
Your broken couch just gives you away
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:12 PM on August 31, 2018 [26 favorites]
Your broken couch just gives you away
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:12 PM on August 31, 2018 [26 favorites]
“Bonzana” on the old TV
Ah, for the days of copy editors.
posted by Chrysostom at 2:26 PM on August 31, 2018 [12 favorites]
Ah, for the days of copy editors.
posted by Chrysostom at 2:26 PM on August 31, 2018 [12 favorites]
The Sears catalogue shown in the article has the price of a sofa from Sears at $399 on sale. That's 1977 dollars. I feel like you could go to IKEA and get a sofa today for $399 on sale too. Albeit one that probably won't last as long.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:32 PM on August 31, 2018
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:32 PM on August 31, 2018
What’s the term for buttons that are sunk deep into the stuffing and upholstery? Because that’s what was on my grandma’s most grandma couch. It was solid brown faux leather with rows of brass studs on the arms. I liked to punch the sunken buttons and brass studs as if they might be wired to something. No one else liked it, but it was huge and soft to me.
posted by Countess Elena at 2:34 PM on August 31, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Countess Elena at 2:34 PM on August 31, 2018 [2 favorites]
I just had a breakthrough. The purpose of the 70s colour palette was to make everything start out as the same colour it'd inevitably end up as after a decade or so of nicotine staining.
posted by tobascodagama at 2:34 PM on August 31, 2018 [34 favorites]
posted by tobascodagama at 2:34 PM on August 31, 2018 [34 favorites]
That article is the second time in TWO DAYS that Lustron houses have come up in my life.
posted by mikelieman at 2:35 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by mikelieman at 2:35 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
There, in my cruddy apartment, its namesake strength and resistance to filth really shone - until one day, c. 1995, when whatever petroleum byproducts were used to make it rapidly began to break down. Within a few months, the upholstery basically turned to dust.
You didn't happen to have it in direct sunlight, did you? Herculon is olefin, and base olefin does not love sun and heat.
posted by tavella at 2:39 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
You didn't happen to have it in direct sunlight, did you? Herculon is olefin, and base olefin does not love sun and heat.
posted by tavella at 2:39 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
My grandparents had very heavily Bicentennial wallpaper in the game room - all eagles and fifes and drums. Black and red shag carpeting.
posted by Chrysostom at 2:40 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Chrysostom at 2:40 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
The Sears catalogue shown in the article has the price of a sofa from Sears at $399 on sale. That's 1977 dollars.
Nice I find! I didn't notice that. So that $399 floral sofa would be $1700 in 2018 dollars. The sleeper version was $499 or $2100 and the most expensive item, the grandfather clock is $549 or $2300. So this was very nice furniture for the day.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:48 PM on August 31, 2018 [2 favorites]
Nice I find! I didn't notice that. So that $399 floral sofa would be $1700 in 2018 dollars. The sleeper version was $499 or $2100 and the most expensive item, the grandfather clock is $549 or $2300. So this was very nice furniture for the day.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:48 PM on August 31, 2018 [2 favorites]
My grandma had some fucking sense of style, and would never have had this couch anywhere near her place. Ditto for my parents (who are my kids’ grandparents). My inlaws, though...yeah...they’d definitely be all about that thing.
My own granddaughter will never see this couch, at least not in my house, anyway.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:01 PM on August 31, 2018
My own granddaughter will never see this couch, at least not in my house, anyway.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:01 PM on August 31, 2018
Yep, my grandparents had that couch, as well. They had their own chairs, Grandpa's for watching TV and being grouchy and Grandma's for sitting and turning out any number of copies of Raggedy Ann and Andy, for charity. I think. Maybe she was a secret Raggedy Ann tycoon. Anyway, my first thought on looking at all those prints, and noting how many of them had a strong brown pattern in them, I wondered if part of the attraction was hiding grandchildren's potty accidents, but I don't remember my grandparents' couch having a particularly funky smell. Maybe they went through several couches and I just didn't catch the difference, if they didn't just get the exact same couch every time. Or my sibs and cousins and I were more continent than I remember.
posted by Halloween Jack at 3:02 PM on August 31, 2018
posted by Halloween Jack at 3:02 PM on August 31, 2018
What’s the term for buttons that are sunk deep into the stuffing and upholstery?
That's apparently button tufting. The original purpose was to hold the padding material in place, but nowadays with foam cushions it's just decorative.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 3:32 PM on August 31, 2018 [4 favorites]
That's apparently button tufting. The original purpose was to hold the padding material in place, but nowadays with foam cushions it's just decorative.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 3:32 PM on August 31, 2018 [4 favorites]
In my family, that stuff was despised. No one in my family would let anything like that anywhere near their house, and they had low opinions regarding the taste of anyone who would. My family went Danish Modern all the way, and as a result I have recently inherited some very nice teak furniture, silverware, and fine china. This is pretty much the only way we won the genetic lottery, though, other than intelligence. We all have exquisite taste that we can’t really afford, and intelligence that causes us to be absolutely painfully unhappy when forced to live with unattractive design.
However, my grandparents did do the plastic slipcovers thing in the 60s-70’s, and I have the back-of-the-thigh-pain mental scars to prove it.
posted by MexicanYenta at 3:46 PM on August 31, 2018 [3 favorites]
However, my grandparents did do the plastic slipcovers thing in the 60s-70’s, and I have the back-of-the-thigh-pain mental scars to prove it.
posted by MexicanYenta at 3:46 PM on August 31, 2018 [3 favorites]
My college friends had this couch in their dorm room and its name was Fort Makeout and I can proudly say I helped it live up to its title.
posted by augustimagination at 3:47 PM on August 31, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by augustimagination at 3:47 PM on August 31, 2018 [7 favorites]
My grandma definitely had one of those endtables from that catalog page of Mediterranean furniture.
I think my parents had a couch like these (that game bird and wildflower one looks very familiar), though they went on a reupholstering spree when I was still pretty young so it's hard to say for sure. What I definitely remember was all of the harvest gold appliances and fixtures. And when harvest gold died it DIED. We had a rather mismatched kitchen as the original appliances were slowly replaced, until my parents went and just remodeled it. Similarly, the toilet seat in the bathroom mismatched the toilet for years until that was remodeled as well.
posted by ckape at 3:55 PM on August 31, 2018
I think my parents had a couch like these (that game bird and wildflower one looks very familiar), though they went on a reupholstering spree when I was still pretty young so it's hard to say for sure. What I definitely remember was all of the harvest gold appliances and fixtures. And when harvest gold died it DIED. We had a rather mismatched kitchen as the original appliances were slowly replaced, until my parents went and just remodeled it. Similarly, the toilet seat in the bathroom mismatched the toilet for years until that was remodeled as well.
posted by ckape at 3:55 PM on August 31, 2018
Jeeeeesus there is some class-shaming "intelligence" shaming in this thread.
posted by FritoKAL at 3:58 PM on August 31, 2018 [15 favorites]
posted by FritoKAL at 3:58 PM on August 31, 2018 [15 favorites]
I have end-table #4 in my living room right now, my late wife inherited it from her grandparents. I'll probably leave it here when I sell the house, because it's too heavy and unwieldy to move.
I honestly did a double-take on the last picture, because I was sure that was my mom holding my sister.
My great-grandmother had several of these couches in succession, all covered in plastic, all overseen by a picture of blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jesus in a gold frame. As kids we were expected to sit on the floor, sitting on the furniture was for guests.
I'm pretty sure we had a slightly more colorful version of the couch with the granddad and the kids on it. I read lots of books sitting on that couch.
posted by ralan at 4:19 PM on August 31, 2018
I honestly did a double-take on the last picture, because I was sure that was my mom holding my sister.
My great-grandmother had several of these couches in succession, all covered in plastic, all overseen by a picture of blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jesus in a gold frame. As kids we were expected to sit on the floor, sitting on the furniture was for guests.
I'm pretty sure we had a slightly more colorful version of the couch with the granddad and the kids on it. I read lots of books sitting on that couch.
posted by ralan at 4:19 PM on August 31, 2018
The original article is worth a read, ya'll. The history of the "colonial" style and how it intersected with the Bicentennial, plus the love of "country" styles in the 70s that made little girls like me run around in long frilly "prairie dress" and "prairie skirts" lasted well into the 80s. Holly Hobby, Little House on the Prairie, 8 million Westerns, and weird kitchen decor in the 70s: they're all related.
Seriously, though, I really wanted a floral patterned pioneer bonnet and was mad I never got one. Also petticoats. I used to steal my mom's slips and put them on under my prairie skirt so I could have petticoats. But they were never as floofy as I wanted.
I will readily admit that my family had no aspirations to any elite-pleasing level of "taste"; at that point we were one generation removed from dirt-farming Okies with outhouses so, if things matched and were in good repair, they were signs of wealth. A lot of what they had was 70s colors because that was when the first generation of them started to have any money at all and could buy things new. Though my grandma had the scratchy plaid couch. My best friend had the pheasants design, though, and those coffee tables with the storage doors and the spindles. We played many games in her living room around those pieces of furniture.
Everyone eventually moved on, to 80s blue and white with ducks, or green and purple grapes, or whatever came after that (Southwestern was big for a while, the howling coyotes with orange and turquoise). Couches tended to be solid colors or neutralish patterns after the 80s, though. You could always jazz them up with colorful pillows. Artwork and paint got cheaper, there were easier ways to decorate.
posted by emjaybee at 4:28 PM on August 31, 2018 [16 favorites]
Seriously, though, I really wanted a floral patterned pioneer bonnet and was mad I never got one. Also petticoats. I used to steal my mom's slips and put them on under my prairie skirt so I could have petticoats. But they were never as floofy as I wanted.
I will readily admit that my family had no aspirations to any elite-pleasing level of "taste"; at that point we were one generation removed from dirt-farming Okies with outhouses so, if things matched and were in good repair, they were signs of wealth. A lot of what they had was 70s colors because that was when the first generation of them started to have any money at all and could buy things new. Though my grandma had the scratchy plaid couch. My best friend had the pheasants design, though, and those coffee tables with the storage doors and the spindles. We played many games in her living room around those pieces of furniture.
Everyone eventually moved on, to 80s blue and white with ducks, or green and purple grapes, or whatever came after that (Southwestern was big for a while, the howling coyotes with orange and turquoise). Couches tended to be solid colors or neutralish patterns after the 80s, though. You could always jazz them up with colorful pillows. Artwork and paint got cheaper, there were easier ways to decorate.
posted by emjaybee at 4:28 PM on August 31, 2018 [16 favorites]
I'm an obsessive podcast listener, and a person with a small apartment furnished with a few family antiques and a fair amount of Ikeahacked midcenturyesque stuff (including the fantastic reissue, as EKENÄSET, of the Esbjerg sofa from the fifties), and I really had to scowl, and then laugh, at Laurence Llewelyn Bowen prattling on with great disdain on the excellent BBC Radio 4 "The Essay" about how terrible "Scandi" furniture is and how we should be surrounded by heavy, overworked brown furniture, pattern-upon-pattern awfulness, cloying Wiltons, and wallpaper on the ceiling...and oh boy, am I glad to have my nice simple home. Been here thirty years, decorating the same way for all this time, and there are very few design choices I made in 1988 that I lived to regret.
People may on the whole like decoration, but simplicity is pretty cool, too, and it's just as comfy.
posted by sonascope at 4:48 PM on August 31, 2018 [2 favorites]
People may on the whole like decoration, but simplicity is pretty cool, too, and it's just as comfy.
posted by sonascope at 4:48 PM on August 31, 2018 [2 favorites]
Holly Hobby, Little House on the Prairie, 8 million Westerns, and weird kitchen decor in the 70s: they're all related.
Other manifestations: Hee Haw, Mountain Dew, and the survival of Snuffy Smith in the comics.
There was an 1890s fad for a hot minute in the '70s, IIRC. I say if I recall correctly, because I was only briefly there and mostly asleep or crying, but I do remember remnants of stylized Gay Nineties decorative motifs. Wendy's had 1890s newspapers printed on their plastic tables.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:01 PM on August 31, 2018 [12 favorites]
Other manifestations: Hee Haw, Mountain Dew, and the survival of Snuffy Smith in the comics.
There was an 1890s fad for a hot minute in the '70s, IIRC. I say if I recall correctly, because I was only briefly there and mostly asleep or crying, but I do remember remnants of stylized Gay Nineties decorative motifs. Wendy's had 1890s newspapers printed on their plastic tables.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:01 PM on August 31, 2018 [12 favorites]
The Wendy’s decor lasted into the 1980s long enough for me to notice them. Also my mom had an 1890s-esque lamp with a fake chimney.
posted by PussKillian at 5:08 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by PussKillian at 5:08 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
It's also a question of generations and timing, as the article the OP linked points out: these are 70s couches, not 50s or 60s couches. And they're Sears or Eatons couches -- ordered from a catalogue and delivered by the store; every furniture store had them and thus most families did too. And up until the arrival of Ikea and the development of a global supply chain, most furniture was made close to the stores that sold it, and was built to last. This stuff will outlast most of the stuff that's being sold now.
I'm currently sitting on the chesterfield my parents bought back in the early 50s: enormous, almost 7 feet long, low slung and heavy, with foot-wide arms that can be perched on. It's built like a tank and weighs about as much, and has been recovered three times in its lifetime -- twice by my Mom and once by me. I've got all the other living room furniture too: heavy 1930s and 40s armchairs and my grandmother's 'brown furniture'. My own teak is upstairs in a sitting room, but it didn't seem right to just give or throw this furniture away -- and it's old enough to read as neutral or antique, in a weird sort of way.
posted by jrochest at 5:38 PM on August 31, 2018 [6 favorites]
I'm currently sitting on the chesterfield my parents bought back in the early 50s: enormous, almost 7 feet long, low slung and heavy, with foot-wide arms that can be perched on. It's built like a tank and weighs about as much, and has been recovered three times in its lifetime -- twice by my Mom and once by me. I've got all the other living room furniture too: heavy 1930s and 40s armchairs and my grandmother's 'brown furniture'. My own teak is upstairs in a sitting room, but it didn't seem right to just give or throw this furniture away -- and it's old enough to read as neutral or antique, in a weird sort of way.
posted by jrochest at 5:38 PM on August 31, 2018 [6 favorites]
The fuzzy, itchy texture of these things is my kryptonite. Good riddance.
posted by RolandOfEld at 5:39 PM on August 31, 2018
posted by RolandOfEld at 5:39 PM on August 31, 2018
My Minnesota granny didn't have a couch -- she had a davenport.
I'd always assumed it was so named for same reason an ottoman is called an ottoman. But just now I learned that the davenport doesn't have it's origins in the grand palaces of Davenport, Iowa, and is instead a genericized trademark of A. H. Davenport & Co.
posted by theory at 5:40 PM on August 31, 2018 [4 favorites]
I'd always assumed it was so named for same reason an ottoman is called an ottoman. But just now I learned that the davenport doesn't have it's origins in the grand palaces of Davenport, Iowa, and is instead a genericized trademark of A. H. Davenport & Co.
posted by theory at 5:40 PM on August 31, 2018 [4 favorites]
The original article is worth a read, ya'll. The history of the "colonial" style and how it intersected with the Bicentennial, plus the love of "country" styles in the 70s that made little girls like me run around in long frilly "prairie dress" and "prairie skirts" lasted well into the 80s. Holly Hobby, Little House on the Prairie, 8 million Westerns, and weird kitchen decor in the 70s: they're all related.
My bedroom was decorated in "Sea Cabin" style, the offshoot of 1890's chic.
But mixed with the 70's The carpet was shag "all the colors". One wall was primary color International Orange.
I blame staring at that for 8 years for a great deal of my anxiety disorder.
posted by mikelieman at 5:43 PM on August 31, 2018 [6 favorites]
My bedroom was decorated in "Sea Cabin" style, the offshoot of 1890's chic.
But mixed with the 70's The carpet was shag "all the colors". One wall was primary color International Orange.
I blame staring at that for 8 years for a great deal of my anxiety disorder.
posted by mikelieman at 5:43 PM on August 31, 2018 [6 favorites]
I was faaaaaaascinated by those Wendy's tabletops as a kid. I'd spend the whole meal reading the ads and trying to figure out what exactly "catarrh" was.
posted by Chrysostom at 5:54 PM on August 31, 2018 [13 favorites]
posted by Chrysostom at 5:54 PM on August 31, 2018 [13 favorites]
My Minnesota granny didn't have a couch -- she had a davenport.
that's right, we had davenports, too, not couches or sofas
no one ever says that anymore - not even my own family
posted by pyramid termite at 6:04 PM on August 31, 2018 [2 favorites]
that's right, we had davenports, too, not couches or sofas
no one ever says that anymore - not even my own family
posted by pyramid termite at 6:04 PM on August 31, 2018 [2 favorites]
Davenport? Davenport.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:07 PM on August 31, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by Countess Elena at 6:07 PM on August 31, 2018 [7 favorites]
My parents* had this couch! ...Does this mean I won’t die childless after all?!
*Mom, God rest her soul, still made fun of the powder-blue, duck-duck-goose-silhouette decorating scheme next door, which I secretly admired at the time. I guess we all have our limits.
posted by armeowda at 6:11 PM on August 31, 2018
*Mom, God rest her soul, still made fun of the powder-blue, duck-duck-goose-silhouette decorating scheme next door, which I secretly admired at the time. I guess we all have our limits.
posted by armeowda at 6:11 PM on August 31, 2018
Where else could you watch the boob tube except from the Davenport (obviously this takes place in the den)?
posted by hototogisu at 6:14 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by hototogisu at 6:14 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
the leader of my teen group had one as a handmedown from the family of clients at his ski house after the parents split.. One of the daughters told me that she didn't have fond memories.
Wrt protecting furniture my grandparents had a pool and wouldn't let us in their house until we were dry. My cousin was piqued about this until I made it clear that the issue was wet bathing suits and not her mom.
posted by brujita at 6:42 PM on August 31, 2018
Wrt protecting furniture my grandparents had a pool and wouldn't let us in their house until we were dry. My cousin was piqued about this until I made it clear that the issue was wet bathing suits and not her mom.
posted by brujita at 6:42 PM on August 31, 2018
The pressed glass link in the article leads to a hacked site that's infected the original.
posted by brujita at 6:44 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by brujita at 6:44 PM on August 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
My grandparents had very heavily Bicentennial wallpaper in the game room - all eagles and fifes and drums.
I remember this pattern! It totally goes with upholstered furniture with exposed wood, too. I have to wonder what the wallpaper..."scene" was like in the 70s. It was everywhere! Did people fight over rolls? Was there a release day? I doubt there's much that people talk about like that anymore. You could spend evenings with your friends sussing out designs and strategies.
Speaking of the pattern diaspora, I remember two specific patterns that were relatively everywhere (even TV), but have not reappeared on my Internet radar: they were whole-wall images of one of two things: the Earth from the Moon, and a forest scene. Actually there may have been a green forest scene and a fall-type brown one. Like 4x6' rock posters, lost to the sands of time (or just un-Googlable, "wallpaper" and "poster" having been redefined in the meantime).
posted by rhizome at 7:06 PM on August 31, 2018 [3 favorites]
I remember this pattern! It totally goes with upholstered furniture with exposed wood, too. I have to wonder what the wallpaper..."scene" was like in the 70s. It was everywhere! Did people fight over rolls? Was there a release day? I doubt there's much that people talk about like that anymore. You could spend evenings with your friends sussing out designs and strategies.
Speaking of the pattern diaspora, I remember two specific patterns that were relatively everywhere (even TV), but have not reappeared on my Internet radar: they were whole-wall images of one of two things: the Earth from the Moon, and a forest scene. Actually there may have been a green forest scene and a fall-type brown one. Like 4x6' rock posters, lost to the sands of time (or just un-Googlable, "wallpaper" and "poster" having been redefined in the meantime).
posted by rhizome at 7:06 PM on August 31, 2018 [3 favorites]
Jeeeeesus there is some class-shaming "intelligence" shaming in this thread.
posted by FritoKAL at 4:58 PM on August 31
If you’re speaking of class-shaming as it relates to money (and it seems that you are), my family has always clung stubbornly to the very bottom of middle class, with some of us dipping into flat out poverty. And if anything, we were the ones being class-shamed, for not having what everyone else did, for not thinking Hee Haw was funny, and because we were forced to eat healthy and weren’t allowed to have bologna and white bread sandwiches with mayo for lunch EVER. We were considered weird and “not as good” as everyone else.
But it’s funny how it’s ok to make fun of that ugly furniture now, but it’s not ok to have recognized it as ugly when it was popular.
posted by MexicanYenta at 7:08 PM on August 31, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by FritoKAL at 4:58 PM on August 31
If you’re speaking of class-shaming as it relates to money (and it seems that you are), my family has always clung stubbornly to the very bottom of middle class, with some of us dipping into flat out poverty. And if anything, we were the ones being class-shamed, for not having what everyone else did, for not thinking Hee Haw was funny, and because we were forced to eat healthy and weren’t allowed to have bologna and white bread sandwiches with mayo for lunch EVER. We were considered weird and “not as good” as everyone else.
But it’s funny how it’s ok to make fun of that ugly furniture now, but it’s not ok to have recognized it as ugly when it was popular.
posted by MexicanYenta at 7:08 PM on August 31, 2018 [4 favorites]
Furniture-making was relatively centralized in the 20th Century, with big centers in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and North Carolina.
I think the better durability came down to relatively higher prices, since there was no competition from low-wage countries and less automation than there is now, as well as cheaper materials, since hardwood was more abundant than it is now.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 7:22 PM on August 31, 2018
I think the better durability came down to relatively higher prices, since there was no competition from low-wage countries and less automation than there is now, as well as cheaper materials, since hardwood was more abundant than it is now.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 7:22 PM on August 31, 2018
My grandmother had a couch that looked almost exactly like that first photo. It lives in my basement now.
posted by EarBucket at 7:48 PM on August 31, 2018
posted by EarBucket at 7:48 PM on August 31, 2018
When I was ten my best friend’s family had this couch but it was built on rockers so it was one enormous, padded rocking chair. Great fun for those times when you needed to pretend that you were on a boat. Less fun for standing on.
posted by corey flood at 8:20 PM on August 31, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by corey flood at 8:20 PM on August 31, 2018 [5 favorites]
I wouldn't expect a couch like that to survive the first broken arm.
posted by rhizome at 1:42 AM on September 1, 2018
posted by rhizome at 1:42 AM on September 1, 2018
The delightful thing about the fad for colonialism is that, if you look at genuine articles of colonial furniture, they never seemed to be covered with images of the time in which they existed. I do sort of wish they had stuff like that now, though—genuine early 21st century furniture with upholstery covered in embroidered pictures of laptops, cell phones, and SUVs, just like they had in the good ol' days of 2018.
posted by sonascope at 4:33 AM on September 1, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by sonascope at 4:33 AM on September 1, 2018 [7 favorites]
Man, the people who send pictures of this stuff to us at the antique mall, thinking because it's 40-50 years old and was well cared for so it must be worth a lot of money, are very sadly mistaken. Brown is most definitely not the color people are shopping for furniture in today. Also, it leads to a lot of mistaken, "this chair came from the farm my great-grandpa homesteaded on in 1869" when it's quite clearly from the 1970s "cowboy-look" period based on construction and finish because grandma needed a new dining room set.
(On a less nostalgic note, both sets of my grandparents had pretty good taste in furniture, so these styles I associate with "divorced dad had to buy used furniture quick" because that's where friends like to do sleepovers due to lax rules, and "small-time college drug dealer" because the furniture clearly came with the place)
posted by AzraelBrown at 5:40 AM on September 1, 2018 [4 favorites]
(On a less nostalgic note, both sets of my grandparents had pretty good taste in furniture, so these styles I associate with "divorced dad had to buy used furniture quick" because that's where friends like to do sleepovers due to lax rules, and "small-time college drug dealer" because the furniture clearly came with the place)
posted by AzraelBrown at 5:40 AM on September 1, 2018 [4 favorites]
When the best friend from my youth died, and because of his idiosyncratic way he curated his personal history, I was appointed to the process of dispersing his collection, which included an attic room in which he'd assembled his childhood bedroom furniture into a tableau of his happiest years, down to the ship & anchor wallpaper that he'd carefully stripped from his old home and installed in a replica of that room in his own house. The furniture was all brown, on a nautical theme with big brass brackets meant to evoke old steamer trunks and packing crates, and it was all beautifully kept, well polished and oiled and repaired with great care where necessary...and I could not unload anywhere to anyone no matter how desperate I was to find it a home, because it was a kind of furniture tidally locked to a way of living that just doesn't exist anymore and likely won't exist again, so it sat for a time occupying the entirety of the meager storage space that supplements my modest two-room apartment, until I finally decided one day that I wanted to be able to park my motorcycle and bicycles indoors, so I hauled it out, left it to weather in the sun and rain and snow until it went from brown to gray, seams splitting and brass brackets burning in the elements from gold to brown.
One day, when it was time, I loaded every weatherbroken piece into my truck, piled well above the cab roof, drove it out to my little postage stamp of property in West Virginia, piled it up, doused it with gasoline, said goodbye to my friend, and set it alight.
We'd both been teenaged firebugs, always inclined to the best conversations around whatever fire pit we'd found or created, and I watched the flames dancing and felt its heat on my face and remembered all the days we sat in that room, reading and talking and playing games, as sunk carbon returned to the atmosphere from which all that wood had been fixed decades earlier. I had no one to talk to while the pile surged and crumpled, sizzled and sank from height to a simmering bed of gold and ash-grey, so I just watched, and listened, and enjoyed the sound of the passing freight trains and the cicadas singing in the trees, and those pine carcasses, as they dissipated, were unimportant in the same way that the old furniture of how we lived are like the bones of lost loved ones, and only speak to the moment of their brief use by the souls that set our worlds in motion, while the souls pervade us and who were are.
When the coals had gone cold, I raked out all the brackets and various screws and fasteners, threw them into my trash pile, and drove home.
Still, I let sentimentality rule me by measures, as I sit here writing on a laptop next to a ridiculous Victorian parlor organ that absurdly dominates a room that would be more usefully social with a little modern love seat instead of a punchline to an old joke in which I ask if new visitors to my modest home have ever seen my enormous organ, and in my storage space, next to a BMW motorcycle, a trio of bicycles, an Empire sofa stands on end into its second decade there while I summon the nerve to dispose of something that was in the world while Lincoln was president, in a pyre if necessary. No want wants these things, and perhaps it's okay for the ephemera of lifestyles long past to be let go.
With each passing day, I need fewer things, and treasure more intangibles, and I strip away ornamentation without sentiment and pare back to the basics that I'll keep as long as I'm here, like books and records and art and little things, small enough to tuck away into treasure boxes, that I can occasionally pick up and find as a focal point to a reflection. I revel in more bright colors, simple pleasures like the feeling of new socks or a fresh toothbrush right out of the package, or a great haul of cookbooks from a used book sale, and none of it has a lasting impact on the world, but that's okay.
I buried another friend just this week, a nun born in 1918, and as I accompanied her through her transition from a life of modest preoccupation with objects to her waning time in a room in the convent that's a final destination and more of a mildly disguised hospital room than a room of her own, I paid close attention to how my body horror of a hospital setting changed to an acceptance that it's all just stuff, all just junk to be left behind, and how little I need to be comfortable in the world these days, and after her death, when the Sisters asked me what should be done with the little mosaic I'd made for Sister that was the only religious object I'd ever produced in the little corner where I do my mosaic work, I said it should go to the Sister who needs it most, even as the order is in the process of shutting down the old convent and dispersing the last Sisters each to their own last rooms in the community around them.
In the material world, the incidental eventually supersedes the integral, and we carry on.
posted by sonascope at 6:20 AM on September 1, 2018 [30 favorites]
One day, when it was time, I loaded every weatherbroken piece into my truck, piled well above the cab roof, drove it out to my little postage stamp of property in West Virginia, piled it up, doused it with gasoline, said goodbye to my friend, and set it alight.
We'd both been teenaged firebugs, always inclined to the best conversations around whatever fire pit we'd found or created, and I watched the flames dancing and felt its heat on my face and remembered all the days we sat in that room, reading and talking and playing games, as sunk carbon returned to the atmosphere from which all that wood had been fixed decades earlier. I had no one to talk to while the pile surged and crumpled, sizzled and sank from height to a simmering bed of gold and ash-grey, so I just watched, and listened, and enjoyed the sound of the passing freight trains and the cicadas singing in the trees, and those pine carcasses, as they dissipated, were unimportant in the same way that the old furniture of how we lived are like the bones of lost loved ones, and only speak to the moment of their brief use by the souls that set our worlds in motion, while the souls pervade us and who were are.
When the coals had gone cold, I raked out all the brackets and various screws and fasteners, threw them into my trash pile, and drove home.
Still, I let sentimentality rule me by measures, as I sit here writing on a laptop next to a ridiculous Victorian parlor organ that absurdly dominates a room that would be more usefully social with a little modern love seat instead of a punchline to an old joke in which I ask if new visitors to my modest home have ever seen my enormous organ, and in my storage space, next to a BMW motorcycle, a trio of bicycles, an Empire sofa stands on end into its second decade there while I summon the nerve to dispose of something that was in the world while Lincoln was president, in a pyre if necessary. No want wants these things, and perhaps it's okay for the ephemera of lifestyles long past to be let go.
With each passing day, I need fewer things, and treasure more intangibles, and I strip away ornamentation without sentiment and pare back to the basics that I'll keep as long as I'm here, like books and records and art and little things, small enough to tuck away into treasure boxes, that I can occasionally pick up and find as a focal point to a reflection. I revel in more bright colors, simple pleasures like the feeling of new socks or a fresh toothbrush right out of the package, or a great haul of cookbooks from a used book sale, and none of it has a lasting impact on the world, but that's okay.
I buried another friend just this week, a nun born in 1918, and as I accompanied her through her transition from a life of modest preoccupation with objects to her waning time in a room in the convent that's a final destination and more of a mildly disguised hospital room than a room of her own, I paid close attention to how my body horror of a hospital setting changed to an acceptance that it's all just stuff, all just junk to be left behind, and how little I need to be comfortable in the world these days, and after her death, when the Sisters asked me what should be done with the little mosaic I'd made for Sister that was the only religious object I'd ever produced in the little corner where I do my mosaic work, I said it should go to the Sister who needs it most, even as the order is in the process of shutting down the old convent and dispersing the last Sisters each to their own last rooms in the community around them.
In the material world, the incidental eventually supersedes the integral, and we carry on.
posted by sonascope at 6:20 AM on September 1, 2018 [30 favorites]
I had one of these from a thrift store in my apartment when I moved out on my own. It was hideous but comfy.
If I slept on it one way, everything was fine. If I turned around in the other direction, I would have freaky-ass phantasmagoric dreams.
posted by Foosnark at 8:21 AM on September 1, 2018
If I slept on it one way, everything was fine. If I turned around in the other direction, I would have freaky-ass phantasmagoric dreams.
posted by Foosnark at 8:21 AM on September 1, 2018
im guessing one direction give you more of a snootful of whatever wonderful Chemicals of the Future™ were offgassing from the nigh-indestructible fabric
posted by entropicamericana at 8:40 AM on September 1, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by entropicamericana at 8:40 AM on September 1, 2018 [6 favorites]
I was wondering: to what extent did typical colonial homes actually have what we would consider couches? Wealthy American merchants, planters, and politicians certainly had imported settees, as you can see in house museums. But I have heard that in the early 19th century, there were also those of the opinion that the padded, upholstered sofa or divan was bad for the spirit because it encouraged lounging and leaning instead of sitting straight upright. Whether this was significantly true or an urban legend, like the idea that Victorians concealed piano stool legs, I can't determine.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:56 AM on September 1, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Countess Elena at 8:56 AM on September 1, 2018 [2 favorites]
I think you're right, Countess Elena, and thickly upholstered furniture would have been relatively rare in the US well after independence. It wasn't common even in England until long after it was high-fashion fashionable in France*. You don't need morality to explain it, even; it takes specialized skill and material to make and is hard to maintain in a damp, hard-to-heat world, and the US took a while to build up domestic infrastructure.
Those couches look basically Victorian to me, being incredibly padded and a freewheeling mishmash of aesthetic/cultural references and covered in big prints. Which is giving me a charming view of the 1970s rec room as being just as Victorian as the barely-used 1970s parlor or "best" room; a comfortable, slightly dishevelled room where the family amused itself together would be the best (secular) thing in a Charlotte M. Yonge novel.
I liked the linked article for being affectionate towards The Couch even if it can't bring itself to like the thing.
* Recent book on this called _The Invention of Comfort_? Something like. I thought it gave the French more credit than they deserve -- the Netherlands and maybe Germany get a look-in -- but lots of great paintings to compare English and French furniture.
posted by clew at 10:23 AM on September 1, 2018 [1 favorite]
Those couches look basically Victorian to me, being incredibly padded and a freewheeling mishmash of aesthetic/cultural references and covered in big prints. Which is giving me a charming view of the 1970s rec room as being just as Victorian as the barely-used 1970s parlor or "best" room; a comfortable, slightly dishevelled room where the family amused itself together would be the best (secular) thing in a Charlotte M. Yonge novel.
I liked the linked article for being affectionate towards The Couch even if it can't bring itself to like the thing.
* Recent book on this called _The Invention of Comfort_? Something like. I thought it gave the French more credit than they deserve -- the Netherlands and maybe Germany get a look-in -- but lots of great paintings to compare English and French furniture.
posted by clew at 10:23 AM on September 1, 2018 [1 favorite]
Hmph on me. The Invention of Comfort is about the early US, but not the book I was thinking of, and I haven't read it. Culture and Comfort: Parlor-Making and Middle-Class Identity sounds even more specific to USian davenport developments and is a fine colon title. Referring to the long 19th as "Victorian" in the US: so wrong, so right. Aha! The book I was thinking of was The Age of Comfort.
posted by clew at 10:31 AM on September 1, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by clew at 10:31 AM on September 1, 2018 [3 favorites]
OMG my parents had that plaid couch. They bought it in 1977, right when it came out. (So trendy!) That photo of the dad holding a baby on it could seriously be one of me and him. Yes, down to the facial hair. We had the couch, a matching rocking recliner, and the solid orange arm chair with a footstool from that set. My mom finally got it all recovered in blue and white plaid in the early 90s. It was. . .sort of better. (Well, it was different). She decorated my room with swiss dot and cute cow wallpaper borders until I was old enough to ask her to please stop.
We lived in Virginia -- Colonial or Farmhouse ducks were the only decorating options. Mid-century modern was Not a Thing We Did.
posted by ananci at 2:51 PM on September 1, 2018 [2 favorites]
We lived in Virginia -- Colonial or Farmhouse ducks were the only decorating options. Mid-century modern was Not a Thing We Did.
posted by ananci at 2:51 PM on September 1, 2018 [2 favorites]
Sonascope, that was lovely, thank you for sharing.
This orange and brown aesthetic was never a thing at for me, but perhaps that's because growing up in Florida, rattan and shells and bright, bright colors were the go to look. My Auntie Mame meets Morticiia Addams type Grandmother decorated the public room in inherited antiques, but the private rooms were all zebra flocked walls and leather mushroom chairs, and other rooms with regency embroidered wallpaper and a ginormous stuffed crocodile. she was a scream and I regret that she died before I was old enough to truly explore what a fascinating woman she was. Also, I wish I had the crocodile.
Boarding school had a Dickensian prison vibe, and by the time I returned to polite society, the neon had taken over, and not a wagon wheel in sight, not even in Texas.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 3:06 PM on September 1, 2018
This orange and brown aesthetic was never a thing at for me, but perhaps that's because growing up in Florida, rattan and shells and bright, bright colors were the go to look. My Auntie Mame meets Morticiia Addams type Grandmother decorated the public room in inherited antiques, but the private rooms were all zebra flocked walls and leather mushroom chairs, and other rooms with regency embroidered wallpaper and a ginormous stuffed crocodile. she was a scream and I regret that she died before I was old enough to truly explore what a fascinating woman she was. Also, I wish I had the crocodile.
Boarding school had a Dickensian prison vibe, and by the time I returned to polite society, the neon had taken over, and not a wagon wheel in sight, not even in Texas.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 3:06 PM on September 1, 2018
My grandparents chose exactly the same shapes and colors, but I don't remember ever seeing furniture or fabric with pictures of things. The brown, brownish-green, greenish-brown, and brownish-orange were all solid and plain or slightly textured. But, my grandfather was a professional upholsterer (of the "can you fix this cat-scratched sofa" variety.) Perhaps that colors one's enthusiasm for hard to patch fabrics. Or, perhaps they were just less adventurous than the families in the photos.
My friends' grandkids are going to have to look very closely at the screw heads on their inherited Poäng chairs to figure out which century they came from.
posted by eotvos at 5:58 PM on September 1, 2018 [2 favorites]
My friends' grandkids are going to have to look very closely at the screw heads on their inherited Poäng chairs to figure out which century they came from.
posted by eotvos at 5:58 PM on September 1, 2018 [2 favorites]
My grandma put plastic slip covers on her couch cushions. Why in hell did anyone ever do that?
posted by panama joe at 6:40 PM on September 1, 2018
posted by panama joe at 6:40 PM on September 1, 2018
My mother’s parents, despite furnishing their home for the last time in the 70s and 80s in small town central Kansas, managed to pick incredibly tasteful late modern decor for their home. I’ve always regretted that I never got to ask them how they got this aesthetic, but as an adult I realized they left this incredible modern gem sitting off of some bean fields in Abilene County. The family has maintained it as a kind of shrine to miraculous good taste since they passed away.
posted by q*ben at 7:06 PM on September 1, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by q*ben at 7:06 PM on September 1, 2018 [2 favorites]
My grandma put plastic slip covers on her couch cushions. Why in hell did anyone ever do that?
I think it was in case of company.
posted by thelonius at 7:08 PM on September 1, 2018 [3 favorites]
I think it was in case of company.
posted by thelonius at 7:08 PM on September 1, 2018 [3 favorites]
Many of these things were confusing to me then, like the plastic covers. We didn't do that, but then my family was kind of anti social and didn't have "company" much so, problem solved.
This is a particular fascination of mine, the piecing together of "what were they thinking?"
The popular version of history is always simplistic, but the reality of any given time is a mish-mash of nonsense, a lot of strong responses to current events that are hard to explain later.
And I have for years, and will continue to proclaim that the recent "ceramic tile with wood print" is the current version of this stuff and will fair no better.
posted by bongo_x at 10:42 PM on September 1, 2018 [2 favorites]
This is a particular fascination of mine, the piecing together of "what were they thinking?"
The popular version of history is always simplistic, but the reality of any given time is a mish-mash of nonsense, a lot of strong responses to current events that are hard to explain later.
And I have for years, and will continue to proclaim that the recent "ceramic tile with wood print" is the current version of this stuff and will fair no better.
posted by bongo_x at 10:42 PM on September 1, 2018 [2 favorites]
I'm puzzled by the description of Bonanza as a "mining Western." Am I just dumb?
I'm not puzzled by the couches, though. Lots of houses had them, lots didn't. But they certainly squoze out a lot of copy. God bless 'em.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 1:30 PM on September 2, 2018
I'm not puzzled by the couches, though. Lots of houses had them, lots didn't. But they certainly squoze out a lot of copy. God bless 'em.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 1:30 PM on September 2, 2018
Well, the word bonanza literally means a big mining deposit, and the show was set near Virginia City, Nevada, which is where the massive Comstock Lode silver deposit was discovered. I think the Cartwrights themselves just did ranching and logging, but it's probably fair to say they were part of the mining milieu.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:58 PM on September 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Chrysostom at 6:58 PM on September 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
There used to be a Ponderosa Ranch theme park on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe, and they definitely had a "pan for gold" activity booth.
posted by rhizome at 7:12 PM on September 2, 2018
posted by rhizome at 7:12 PM on September 2, 2018
My parents had the wooden set passed down from my Grandparents to them.
We owned the whole set, my husband and I, when we moved in together a friends' sister passed it on to us. We used it for years until the cushions just wore out, Then we put it on our covered porch, the couch and loveseat, to use as outdoor furniture with outdoor cushions.
The chair frame is in our house now but with white cushions on it. It is ugly as hell but solid enough for our giant of a nephew to use when he comes over and falls into the furniture.
posted by SuzySmith at 8:13 PM on September 2, 2018
We owned the whole set, my husband and I, when we moved in together a friends' sister passed it on to us. We used it for years until the cushions just wore out, Then we put it on our covered porch, the couch and loveseat, to use as outdoor furniture with outdoor cushions.
The chair frame is in our house now but with white cushions on it. It is ugly as hell but solid enough for our giant of a nephew to use when he comes over and falls into the furniture.
posted by SuzySmith at 8:13 PM on September 2, 2018
Of course cloth and cushions wear out. (Even if they're Herculon. Even if they're mohair and horsehair respectively.) Either you "value-engineer" the structural parts of the furniture almost as frail, leading to regular West-Elm-style failures, or you make the structural parts strong and reupholster every generation or so and put up with not always having a totally new thing, or you waste material and energy.
posted by clew at 1:25 PM on September 3, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by clew at 1:25 PM on September 3, 2018 [2 favorites]
My grandma put plastic slip covers on her couch cushions. Why in hell did anyone ever do that?
They expected this to be the one couch they were ever going to buy. And they planned for it to go to their kids or grandkids once they passed on. I'm not sure if the plastic was ever supposed to come off the couch, or if everyone would just keep the plastic on so that it could be enjoyed forever. (Swapping old plastic for new plastic, of course. That's way cheaper than buying a new couch.)
It's like one of the houses I saw when I was looking to buy. It was owned by an older couple who probably bought it new, 50 years ago. The beautiful hardwood floors were 99% covered by a series of throw rugs and area rugs. Sure the floors look great, but no one was enjoying them. What's the point?
I think that's the huge shift in American/Western mentality that is occurring: Older folks feel the need to protect what they have; younger generations wanting to enjoy what's been given to them. (At least in terms of personal property...I'd argue that collective resources like the environment are the opposite. Hmmm...)
posted by hydra77 at 8:20 AM on September 4, 2018 [1 favorite]
They expected this to be the one couch they were ever going to buy. And they planned for it to go to their kids or grandkids once they passed on. I'm not sure if the plastic was ever supposed to come off the couch, or if everyone would just keep the plastic on so that it could be enjoyed forever. (Swapping old plastic for new plastic, of course. That's way cheaper than buying a new couch.)
It's like one of the houses I saw when I was looking to buy. It was owned by an older couple who probably bought it new, 50 years ago. The beautiful hardwood floors were 99% covered by a series of throw rugs and area rugs. Sure the floors look great, but no one was enjoying them. What's the point?
I think that's the huge shift in American/Western mentality that is occurring: Older folks feel the need to protect what they have; younger generations wanting to enjoy what's been given to them. (At least in terms of personal property...I'd argue that collective resources like the environment are the opposite. Hmmm...)
posted by hydra77 at 8:20 AM on September 4, 2018 [1 favorite]
The US polity that was voting during the 1970s, age of this particular couch, was massively radical in shifting both laws and norms towards environmental protection. The current polity is not only falling behind EU standards but, in aggregate, trying to ease up on the environmental protections we inherited.
posted by clew at 11:54 AM on September 6, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by clew at 11:54 AM on September 6, 2018 [1 favorite]
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posted by JoeZydeco at 12:11 PM on August 31, 2018 [10 favorites]