Bloomingdales 1970s display rooms by Barbara D’Arcy
More photos from “The Bloomingdale’s Book of Home Decorating,” 1973, by Barbara D’Arcy. These displays – a Japanese room, a psychedelic red room and a room done in a sort of wild Tudor hunting lodge style – were built inside Bloomingdales in the late 60s or early 70s. See more of the amazing display rooms D’Arcy designed for Bloomingdales in our earlier post, The Saturday Generation.
Tags: 1960s, 1970s, 1973, 60s, 70s, Barbara D'Arcy, excess, experience, imaginative excess, lounge, mod, modern, New York, New York City, psychedelic, sensual, The Bloomingdale’s Book of Home Decorating, The Saturday Generation, why are things so boring now?
May 11th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
wow – you seem to have a really nice collection of reference magazines and books. i am liking the japanese room, but the zabuton are bit fat/out of proportion?! maybe everything was just bigger and better in the 70s.
(ps – i very much like the tag: ‘why are things so boring now?’
May 11th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
ii-ne-kore,
Thanks! And re: the zabuton… I know! I think Barbara D’Arcy was deliberately quite free-form in her approach and I am sure the “Japanese” room diverges from tradition in a million different ways. It’s sort of amazing she got things even close to right when you consider how little time she had between displays – sometimes these rooms lasted a month or less inside Bloomingdales! It’s absolutely worth trying to get a copy of this book secondhand (I think there are some on abebooks.com, not sure if that site includes or ships to Australia/Asia yet). Anyway, this book (which my design partner Sarah discovered) is so out there, so experimental, so imaginative, that every time I look at it I get irritated with recent design.
January 8th, 2010 at 1:30 am
My Uncle served as Canada’s Cultural Adviser to the U.S and lived in New York
during the latter part of the 60’s to mid 70’s. I was fortunate to have inherited the furnishings he purchased at that time from Bloomingdale’s model rooms. When he returned to Canada, he had the furnishings shipped back to his home in Toronto. Since he was a member of the Canadian Embassy staff, it was transported for free.
Some of the pieces I have can be found on page 108 of “bloomingdale’s book of home decorating.” I have a pair of the aluminum clad club chairs as well as the aluminum rectangular coffee table shown in the lower living area. It opens in the center to reveal magazine and alcohol storage. I also have the pair of Martinelli Luce mushroom table lamps shown just see to the right of the coffee table in the same view. From another model room I have the original Arco lamp, a 7′ white chenille low back sofa (with large matching ottomans) that all have the original Bloomingdale Brothers tags on them.
The best part of all these pieces is their design – they are absolutely timeless!
January 8th, 2010 at 9:40 am
LUCKY! A lot of those were things I’d have chosen too. Now I’m really curious about your uncle – where do you think he developed his tastes, and why was he so cool? I’m curious about where the adventurism of the 60s/70s came from and who hooked up with it. Was entertaining part of his job at the Embassy? Don’t mean to pry; can’t control my curiousity.