A Furniture Holiday

I have a confession to make: I devised this week's theme, "a look at various illustrations from Holiday magazine", just so I would have an excuse to show you these beautifully painted - but absolutely absurd - furniture ads.


What in the world was the Broyhill Furniture Company thinking when they ok'ed this bizarre concept?

"Honey, whattaya say we drag everything out of the livingroom and set it up on a windswept cliff in the dead of winter - and then sit out there!"

Now there's an idea that'll really appeal to the furniture buying public.


But surreal concept aside, these ads really are beautifully illustrated - and illustration is afterall our raison d’être, isn't it?

The same August 1960 issue from which I scanned these three ads also contains the spectacular Bernie Fuchs ad below (although my scan is from a July 1960 issue of the Post) and I couldn't help but marvel at how influential Fuchs had become on the look of illustration in the short time that he'd been on the scene.


I don't think Bernie Fuchs illustrated these oddball furniture ads... but compare his auto illustration to these furniture ads and you can see his influence in the anonymous illustrator's work.

In his epic retrospective of Bernie Fuchs' career for Illustration magazine #15, David Apatoff wrote about how "for years, Bernie set the style for American illustration and attracted many followers."


In this series you can see the work of one of those artists David called "the Bernie Fuchs imitators".

How to categorize today's images... "Bizarre ad concepts"? "The virtues of indooor outdoor carpeting"? With a wink and a nudge, I am placing these pieces in my Architecture and Home Decor Flickr set.