Fifties Kitsch & Beyond

What single object personified KITSCH in a mid-century living room in the 1950s? Of course! Table lamps that made us roll our eyes – non-politically correct figural lamps that made us cringe. This article discusses those cringeworthy mid-century table lamps that skate on the edge of tastelessness out to the borderland of the unimaginable.

Some of the great designers of the late 1940s and early 1950s dabbled in lighting but left the field to lesser geniuses, those market savvy creators that could sell lamps to middle class homeowners, a bunch of “sitting ducks” because they had not bought much during the clench of the War years. Lamp creators were free to be non-serious middle-to-lowbrow designers, and they ran with themes, materials, and design elements that were NOVEL. In fact, novelty was the point. Here are a few types of “innovative” (a nice way to put it) mid-20^th century lamps that you have seen if you are over 50: the hanging chandelier that has clear plastic thread from which tiny rivulets of oil drip, mimicking rain, or the gaudy painted ceramic mallard duck on the wing which has a lightbulb inside his body (wall mounted, of course), or the Revolutionary War Minuteman whose rifle supports a shade which is shaped like a regimental drum, or the girl’s bedroom lamp with the automated spinning ballerina in a bottle for the base. All eye rollers.

I have laid eyes on un-PC pairs of lamps (a pair was de rigueur as proportion was required) with figural themes such as a pair of Chinese male and female laborers; a matador proudly displaying a fantastic male physique and an anatomically correct bull; a pair of angularly exaggerated Balinese dancers, elbows akimbo, male and female; and sadly, a cowboy and a Native American, as well as a pair of exotic brown snake charmers, male and female, cross-legged, their baskets containing a snake.

A client sent me photos of a pair of lamps that skate close to the edge of being head shakers. Due to the fact that they avoid the aesthetic misstep of running the threaded electrical tube though the figure and up into the neck of a nude female torso, I give these lamps a green light and call them semi-artistic. Many such Grecian-style nude figural lamps have the pole exiting the neck which negates any pleasing sculptural beauty. You would expect such a lamp to be an anomaly. As I said, novelty was the marketing tool. Classical Greece and Rome were in fact popular as design motifs in the 1940s and early 1950s. 

The pair of lamps pictured are highly glazed white ceramic on black mock-columnar bases. The color scheme is emblematic of the change in the late 1940s American middle-class design from the Deco (black and white) to the Modern pastel colors. The shape is undulant, slightly biomorphic, and surreal. The shape and the nod to implied highbrow Grecian art – a nude Classical torso – leads me to suspect the designer to be Yasha Heifetz. When I first saw his name I thought – boy, and he played a mean violin as well, but this is Yasha and the violinist is Jascha. 

Particular lamps designed by the non-musical Yasha Heifetz are coveted today, as Yasha created figural shapes in wood for lamp bases from his woodworking studio in Connecticut. His showroom was in Manhattan. The doors opened in 1938 for approximately 25 years, during which time he created 4,000 unique designs, including lamps, furniture, and small decorative art. His career got off to a legitimately highbrow designer’s start because he won the Museum of Modern Art’s Award for lighting design (1950-1951) with ten of his table lamps, created in wood, bronze, ceramic, and hammered brass. Then he had to make money and sell, so novelty became the guiding light.

His plastic ceiling lamps are also coveted and pricey. He used spun acetate for hanging fixtures in spaceship and flying saucer forms, two toned – a style he called  Rotoflex. This design aesthetic was similar (if not wholly a snatch-and-grab) to those of the highly respected British design team of Sylvia and John Reid – architects, furniture designers, and design consultants whose spun acetate hanging fixtures are called Rotaflex, and are in the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Heifetz’ vintage spaceship style chandeliers can sell for upwards of $8,000 as they are sleek, geometric, and NOT kitschy. Pairs of his borderline kitsch table lamps don’t sell for much, but his biomorphic or cubist nudes sell for $1,500 or under.