Representing Women between the Wars: Domesticity and Dancing.

Part 1: Domesticity.

When ploughing through the Irish Builder and Engineer a few years ago, I was intent on researching new building typologies of the ‘20s and ‘30s, and the way they were experienced by the public. On the periphery of this, it seemed to me, there was a hazy potential for a ‘women’s history’ of the subject as well – although the source material for this would have been outside of that partcular journal. There was rarely a mention of women / women architects but one thing was predictably apparent: women were connected to the home and, in advertising, they were represented as having authority when it came to the interior design of their home. In the art deco era ‘woman’ was emblematic of the new visual styles. So not only were women represented in domestic settings (wielding a vaccum cleaner) but they were also illustrated dancing on sprung maple floors, or on polished rubboleum. They were leaning against glittering shop counters and gossiping with their friends as wealthy consumers. On the one hand they were attached to their labour saving devices and on the other they were glamorous sirens.

Women architects too were mentioned in relation to the design of the modern domestic kitchen. Margarete Schutte-Lihotzky was the most famous innovator in that regard, using time and motion studies to ensure optimum efficiency.  She led a design team working on Ernst May’s neue Frankfurt in the 1920s and the design (known as the Frankfurt Kitchen) was rolled out across the soviet union (10,000 of them). She was frustrated that all anyone remembered about her work was ‘that damned kitchen’, realising that it reinforced the bias of women being connected to the home, and the kitchen stove, and that a female architect would therefore know best (Bois & Reinhold, 2023, p. 12). In the Irish Builder I came across the same observation about a woman architect’s involvement in the design of an Irish house.  Lihotzky had been diagnosed with tuberculosis and was part of the new architectural movement to provide hygienic housing to prevent the spread of the disease. Her concept for the kitchen design was to treat it as a finely tuned hygienic component  which would slot into the floor plan and avoid wasted time and wasted money.

Apparently some have criticised the design as not being liberating for women, because the time and motion studies make the connection with factory work, where the user becomes a machine-like drudge. However, historian Paul Overy argues that the design was body-centred and proportioned to suit the body (in order that one doesn’t need to waste energy) and that it wasn’t designed to be manned or ‘womanned’ all day, but only for short bursts of activity (2007, P.96). It wasn’t designed to be the centre of the home (as we tend to think of it in a strangely romantic way today) but it needed to work for the user (a machine or tool for living, if you like). It wasn’t a space for lingering and feeling downtrodden!

Recently I saw an Instagram video of the TV personality Sarah Beeny, as she demonstrated her dishwasher cutlery tray-emptying method. She swiftly dumps the contents straight into a vast drawer, looking very liberated indeed. I admired her carefree use of the machine as a labour saving device. It was an interesting new representation of woman and domesticity.

The next part should look at dancing, when I get around to it.

Citations:

M. Bois & B. Reinhold (2023) Margarete Schutte-Lihotzky: Architecture. Politics. Gender is available on Google Books with a limited preview.

Overy, P. (2007) Light, Air & Openness: Architecture Between the Wars. Thames & Hudson.

Found in the Irish Builder and Engineer.

The Allure of Escapist Places; Spaces for Survival.

Keywords / key ideas: 1930s leisure architecture, design for women, modernism & glamour, democratic design, The New Leisure.

A New Leisure

Working is tiring. In the 1920s and 1930s there was a big push to provide a democratic leisure infrastructure that would reform people, body and mind. Previously, leisure had been the preserve of the wealthy but now the ‘new leisure’ was developed as a way to revitalise the worker. The working class was the base layer in society that kept the gears moving and made everything possible. If the worker was losing heart and hadn’t the energy to go on then the whole superstructure would collapse. This was the impetus of the new leisure, but there was another aspect to this too, which many people were enthusiastic about. It was an aspiration for class levelling and also a new understanding about the human body’s need for a connection to nature, the importance of light and air and the value of new ideas. This was where modern design could really shine and it was an exciting time for developing a new aesthetic and new way to use and appreciate architecture.

The new architecture symbolised a new beginning.

Out of this fresh perspective emerged a new typological approach to the design of leisure landscapes. Take, for example, the seaside resort which was composed of a multitude of designed elements. The new architecture was to be clean and classless, formed from a conscientious approach that had social ideals at heart, symbolising a new beginning with an aesthetic that encompassed all aspects of the necessary infrastructure: the seaside boulevard, the cinema, the kiosk, the shelter, the buffet, the railway station, the train carriage, the railing, the bin, the seat, the window, the floor, the light fixture, the stool, the super swimming stadium, the flat roof, the chrome, the vita glass, the floodlighting. Don’t forget – the bathing suit, the bathing hat, the bathing cloak, the tanned skin, the palm trees, the poster.

Women were emblematic in the rendering of a new aesthetic.

I’m starting to write a chapter for a book about women and leisure in that era. It was a time of an unfurling and awakening for women. While they were straining against imposed social expectations, I found that ‘woman’ became emblematic in rendering a new aesthetic. Leisure venues were designed in a way that acquiesced to society’s desire for glamour and luxury, while architects attempted to adhere to a ‘set of rules’ about what was acceptable and sensible in providing a new infrastructure for a new phenomenon. Normally the interiors were the backcloth for whimsical interventions that took place within a suitably mechanistic shell. Women’s expectations were for surroundings that were intriguing, enticing, beguiling. Popular periodicals reviewed new cinema venues with regard to what was current in the world of film set design. Here the ideals of socially democratic architecture met the whims and fantasies of the cinema. Here patrons could insert themselves into the film and dream themselves up as a version of a film star. Here they could debut their lookalike Greta Garbo dress or Constance Bennet hat. There they would read about stars lounging by pools while they did so themselves.

In the display and modelling of their modern style, women replicated the historical promenading of the wealthy in their luxurious attire.

It was fundamentally a social escape and, in the display and modelling of their modern style against those backdrops, women replicated the historical promenading of the wealthy in their luxurious attire, down Sackville Street or in the ballrooms of grand houses. Within the new leisure there was opportunity for an escape to a parallel world, perhaps in that silver screen; the liminal slice of time and space between reality and a fantasy world ‘out there’. They may have discovered hope and dreams, excitement and pleasure. Perhaps they gained ambitions and a grander sense of themselves in these new environments that they themselves inspired.

Light fixture design from a British sea side buffet, 1930s.

Joan Crawford in ‘Our Blushing Brides’, 1930.

Irish ESB advertisement from the 1930s.