Was what we think of as North American “grandma decor” popular among young people in the 1950s?

by ThoseMeddlingCows

Like many, I’m a millennial visiting family for the holidays. I was discussing with my friends about my grandmother’s house, which, while very tastefully decorated and maintained, has a certain look and feel to it that young people (even ones who have tastefully decorated and maintained) houses do not.

Examples of things I’d consider “grandma decor”:
-Potpourri
-Fake flowers -Fake fruit -Decorative plates (not just in the fine China cabinet)
-Decorative towels and little placards that either say warm comments about home/family (“Home is where the heart is”), or are cheeky jokes about wine (“Age improves with wine”) -Statues of the Virgin Mary (maybe only for Catholic grandmas) -Cross stitch. So. Much. Cross stitch.

(By contrast, I would imagine “modern millennial decor” to have none of the above things, but instead have lots of pillows, paintings or photographs instead of cross stitch, books or nothing (minimalism) instead of fake fruit and flowers, etc.)

If I was a 20-30 something woman decorating my home in the 1950s, would it look like my grandmas house today? Or were there different styles back then?

mimicofmodes

As you may or may not be aware, in the 1920s and 1930s the predominant decorative arts style was Art Deco, which featured streamlined designs and very restrained ornamentation. While there was definitely a connection with earlier art movements, furniture designers, interior decorators, couturiers, etc. all made quite a big deal out of breaking with the past, using modern technology to create modern goods for modern people without reference to historical forms. This was a rejection not just of the idea of tradition, but more specifically of the highly ornate styles of the Victorian era and the constant recycling of historic furniture, architectural, and clothing elements. I've discussed the anti-Victorianism of the early twentieth century before:

Why are people today fascinated with the Victorian era?

I've read on this sub that people used to be nostalgic for the 1890's during the decades that followed. What about this time were they nostalgic about? and what was the asthetic like in terms of culture and politics and business?

The latter answer goes into more detail about the differences between the late Victorian and Art Deco aethetics, while the former starts to hit on the answer to your question:

At the same time, there was a nostalgia for the vanished past, and at the same time, I would argue, a continuation of the Othering that had appeared in the 1910s-1920s. It's probably easiest to point to that associated with the "Gay Nineties", which I wrote about previously here. It's also easy to see a similar longing for a supposed simpler time in the response to Gone with the Wind (published 1936, screened 1939) and in southern American portrayals of the antebellum, slaveholding period in general, including those still on view in plantation museums today.

After this modern aesthetic had passed through the avant-garde stage, where the philosophy really had meaning, and became done just because that now looked "normal", people began to look back at the nineteenth century wistfully. This started to some extent in the 1930s, with the Depression, which made people long to be financially able to have rooms with more belongings and decoration, and was supercharged with World War II, which made them nostalgic for a "simpler time" before either global conflict. This was evident in a number of areas of life - I discussed changing ages at first marriage here - but especially in interior design and fashion. This resulted in the fussiness we associate with "grandma's house".

For instance, see this silverware pattern, Yetive (1896), and Adolphus (1904) - ornate and detailed late Victorian/Edwardian styles. Then the plainer Colfax (1922) and Berkshire (1934), generally typical of the next few decades. Finally, Victorian-style ornamentation came back, as in Affection (1960) and English Garden (1948). (My mother and her siblings each had a child-sized set of English Garden silverware engraved with the first letter of their names!)

However, all of this stuff was also a through line. Similar to the way that what we think of as gross 1950s and 1960s food is actually based on philosophies and recipes from the turn of the century - jello salads, loaves made out of mayonnaise, using prepackaged everything - a number of the things you're pointing out as 1950s trends were simply seen as normal aspects of a middle-class household from long before the middle of the twentieth century. Magazines like Needlecraft gave patterns for sewing, tatting, embroidering, and knitting textile goods for the home even through the Art Deco period. The September 1928 issue includes instructions for table linens, crocheted doilies of all kinds, lace insertion for bathroom curtains, beaded flowers, a door panel, patchwork butterflies, and a stuffed animal, and discussed embroidery samplers, apron patterns, pajamas, and the latest patterns to order to make clothing with. Wives and daughters made these things to decorate their homes, showing that they were accomplished and "feminine" and had the time to spend on needlework. Fake fruit and decorative plates (also souvenir spoons and thimbles, which you didn't mention but a lot of people also associate with this style) were, by contrast, purchased to decorate the home in accordance with the housekeeper's taste, and could show purchasing power.

As far as other styles of home decoration go, Colonial Revival was popular in the early and mid-twentieth century as well, at least in the United States. (I'm not really aware of whether or not this played out in other countries.) Colonial Revival was quite the opposite of Art Deco: wood instead of chrome, heavy reliance on imitating the past rather than modernism, and not streamlined at all. To continue using silverware patterns, some examples would be Fiddle Antique (1930) and Mayflower (1910), which are basically copies of eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century patterns. By the 1950s, this intersects pretty heavily with the returning mainstream historicism, but you could definitely have overdosed on this and filled your home with Early American kitsch that focused heavily on wood and cast-iron "primitive" implements rather than new plastic fruit and so on.