Inspired: Mad Men

While the majority of my styling takes place on a small scale, I have made efforts over the past year or so to slowly transform rooms around our actual house, or even corners of rooms. I'm strongly adverse to paying retail, so I often hunt for good deals, tempered by an eye toward quality.

While it is sometimes easy to envision how you'd approach styling a real room, inspiration definitely helps. I love design magazines, blogs, and websites, and Instagram feeds with an artistic point of view. I wouldn't necessary single out TV as inspiration, but there is an exception. The show Mad Men, now in its final season, has drool-worthy midcentury interiors, and I admit to being distracted by the authentic composition of the rooms while watching.

Courtesy of the New York Times

Courtesy of Interior Design

I was contacted by the site Chairish to do a Mad Men-inspired style board in honor of the show's last season using actual pieces from their available collection of gorgeous Mid-Century furnishings. If you've never cruised around Chairish, do so! It's a site of well-curated furnishings and accessories, vintage and otherwise, and you can sort the listings by type, prince range, and even location of the seller.

So, here's what I came up with: a more "glam" riff on what you might see in the show. I even included some jewelry!

It was a fun diversion -- try it!

Mystery Furniture

I bought a decent sized lot of vintage wooden furniture off Ebay recently and the package arrived today. The furniture intrigued me online because of the mid century lines. The seller did state that most of the pieces needed some gluing of legs and that is indeed the case. Not a big deal, though, and the seller included all the broken pieces. Gorilla Glue is my friend.

I love pretty much everything in the lot, which seems to be sized closer to 1:16, but some pieces are smaller and I think could work well for 1:12. The felt covered chairs are fabulous:



As are the assorted tables:



Of course I'd like to find out more about these pieces. None are marked, with the exception of these little lights, which have just European looking numbers on the bottoms:



The lights are wired, as is the TV set and the fireplace. No transformer though. I have a trusty Dian Zillner book (Antiques & Collectibles), but could not find anything yet. Some of the pieces look Lundby-esque, but I don't collect Lundby nor have any pieces and I am not totally familiar with the catalogue of styles.

I'm all ears should anyone know more...!
I'm off to glue!

UPDATE, 3/25/09: Thanks to *annina*, I have a very big clue on the origins of this furniture. It is looking like the pieces are from Kathrin's House, a German wooden house that dates from the early 196os, pictured on the Puppenhaus Museum website, here. The coffee table, chairs, and side pieces look to be an exact match! Thanks, *annina*!!



This is the house -- very cool:



Kathrin's House photos courtesy of the Puppenhaus Museum website.