Townhouse, New York City, 1930s
Artist/Designer:
Rose Cumming
Project Location:
New York, United States
Figure 1: "In the drawing room of Miss Cumming's brownstone house, a romantic aura of the eighteenth century is created. The early Ming hang-painted wallpaper panels and beautiful parquet floors provide a fitting frame for the Louis XV pieces, most of which are signed. The Chinese chandelier is a rare eighteenth-century one made of paper mache."--from page 50 of The Finest Rooms by America's Great Decorators.
(
Photographer: Harold Haliday Castain, photographer, page 50 of The Finest Rooms by America's Great Decorators (1964) )
Figure 2: "Her eccentric aesthetic was evident in her own Manhattan town house, decorated circa 1937."--from page 144, Architectural Digest, January 2000
(
Photographer: Harold Haliday Castain, photographer, from page 145, Architectural Digest, January 2000. )
Figure 3: "The library featured two Cumming trademarks: jewel tones in unusual combinations and lustrous fabrics. At left is a japanned Queen Anne bureau-secretary."--from page 146, Architectural Digest, January 2000.
(
Photographer: Harold Haliday Castain, photographer, from page 146, Architectural Digest, January 2000 )
Figure 4: "Mirrored panels were installed on the walls of this landing to give the illusion of space and depth. The impact of the early Chinese temple pagoda, eighteenth-century chandelier, and Chinese marble goddess is made even more dramatic by their repeated reflections."--from page 46 of The Finest Rooms by America's Great Decorators
(
Photographer: Harold Haliday Castain, photographer, from page 47, The Finest Rooms by America's Great Decorators )
Figure 5: "A bedroom belonging in time to the rich, improbable style of the twenties. The walls gleam with metallic blue-mauve paper, and silver and blue lame hangings echo these colors. On either side of the sixteenth-century Portuguese iron bed, and at the foot of it, are silver-plated Moorish tables and stools, believed to have been owned by Catherine the Great. The child's bed, serving as a low table, is eighteenth-century Persian, and the carpet from China provides a luxurious covering for the parquet floor."--page 50, The Finest Rooms by America's Great Decorators
"In Cumming's bedroom, silver-lame draperies, silver-blue-foil covered walls and an East Indian daybed reflected an exotic theatricality."--from page 147, Architectural Digest, January 2000
(
Photographer: Harold Haliday Castain, photographer, from page 50, The Finest Rooms by American's Great Decorators )
Figure 6: "The English chintz and Ramsay paintings in this guest room provide a solid and sobering background for the unorthodox but extremely effective combination of colors found in the blue satin chaise lounge, dark lilac bedspread, lilac taffeta drapery, and cosmos-pink chair in the foreground."--from page 54, The Finest Rooms by America's Great Decorators
"Her mother's lilac-and-purple bedroom had a 'lit a la polonaise' and bare, highly polished parquet floors."--from page 147, Architectural Digest, January 2000
(
Photographer: Harold Haliday Castain, photographer. From The Finest Rooms by America's Great Decorators, page 55. )
Style/Period(s):
Revival Styles
Primary Material(s):
Fabric
Function(s):
Residential Structure
Related Website(s):
Significant Date(s):
20th Century, 1930-1939
Additional Information:
Simpson, Jeffrey. Rose Cumming: Design Inspiration (New York: Rizzoli, 2012).
Lynes, Russell and Katharine Tweed. The Finest Rooms by American's Great Decorators (New York: The Viking Press, 1964), 42-57.
Lewis, Adam. The Great Lady Decorators: The Women Who Defined Interior Design, 1870-1955 (New York: Rizzoli, 2009), 130-151.
Tapert, Annette. "Rose Cumming: Eccentric Glamour Marks an Original Talent of Lasting Influence" in Architectural Digest, January 2000, 144-147.
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