Me handing over the keys to Larry at Paradise Coach back in November.
On Monday, I’m scheduled to have a meeting with Larry at Paradise Coach about our plans for the vintage bus. As part of that, I’ll be discussing what I’m looking for in the visual style of the interior. In general, I’d like a style where at first glance you might not be sure if the interior was a perfectly preserved 70 year old creation, or something that was created yesterday. There is one style that I think can pull off that ideal and it’s known as Streamline Moderne Design (sometimes also referred to as Machine Age design).
Streamline Moderne originated back in the mid 1920’s and was strong through around 1940. The style is still being implemented today in many of the designs from Apple and other companies. When looking back at history, most people seem to mentally merge the Streamline Moderne style into the general category of Art Deco, but it was really the later reaction to Art Deco and only had a little overlap in style. Streamline design is a very clean-looking style that incorporates a lot of horizontal lines, curves and circles whereas art deco was a bit more busy, vertical oriented and used triangles and other non-streamlined elements. If you’d like to see the difference, feel free to explore the Art Deco and Streamline Moderne Design sections of my boards at Pinterest.com/BenWillmore.
To prepare for my upcoming meeting, I reviewed all the art deco and streamline design related books that I’ve collected over the last few years (see pic above). Here are the books that I think are most useful when trying to communicate what streamline moderne design looks like (if I had to choose just one book, it would be the first one in the list):
The Machine Age in America 1918-1941
Twentieth Century Limited: Industrial Design in America, 1925-1939
Depression Modern: The Thirties Style in America
American Streamlined Design: The World of Tomorrow
Streamlined: A Metaphor for Progress
…and two more that are not exactly about Streamline Design, but can also help capture the look I’m attracted to:
Future Perfect: Vintage Futuristic Graphics
Airstreams: Custom Interiors by David Winick
I can’t wait to see how my vision melds with Larry’s ideas and how they’ll end up being implemented in the vintage bus.
