North American Interiors at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: Beyond Historicism and the Arts and Crafts

In a series of articles from the early 1900s, American Architect and Buildings News, Architectural Record, and The Artist introduced their readers to a recent development in Europe: the emergence of a “so-called ‘new art’” – Art Nouveau – in design, its products ranging from buildings to decorative objects. Though the origins, formal characteristics, and future direction of the "new art" were ambiguous, it represented a deliberate effort to break with historicist conventions in design. The periodicals described developments overseas which did not generally affect North American practice. Historicism, whether in the form of the Beaux-Arts, the Colonial Revival or other revivals, and the Arts and Crafts remained dominant in upper-class interiors. The purpose of this session is to examine exceptions to these general trends – commissions, clients, decorators, artists, architects, networks and exchanges with the contemporary European developments or traditions outside Europe, with areas of influence outside the prevalent sources of design