Category: Around the House

Is there a more faddish furniture style from the 1970s than the beanbag chair? Continue reading Furniture that’s Full of Beans

It might seem hard to get excited about plumbing fixtures, but just look at this awesome streamlined kitchen from 1950….There’s such a fabulous diner vibe to that round breakfast table that it’s almost hard to focus on the sink! Continue reading Everything and the Kitchen Sink

This famous bit of job advice from the 1967 movie The Graduate was meant to hint at how shallow — how plastic — our culture had become. But this Montgomery Ward catalog from five years later embraces plastics quite without irony… Continue reading “One Word — Plastics”

I've come to a realization that 1970s design happened because  product designers who lived through the 1960s then tried to figure out how to bring it to ordinary families. More explanation on the other side of the link… Continue reading When Muppets Attack

Ever wonder where the Coyote bought his ACME products? Possibly from Sears. An “Acme Ventiduct” certainly sounds like a product he would order to catch the Roadrunner… Continue reading High Style and High Heat

In 1925 the Charles Williams Stores could put everything that plugged into an electrical outlet onto a single page of their annual catalog – one page out of 538. That’s all they needed. Continue reading Live Better Electrically

In 1958, Ward’s introduced new washers and dryers in that most mid-century of colors – pink. Their new washers are “so truly automatic that you’ll spend only 5 minutes of your own time to wash and dry a full 8 lb family load”…
Continue reading Start The New Year In The Pink