"A man's castle is a woman's factory": streamlining and electric kitchen appliances
Date
1989
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Most Americans today choose to incorporate their microwaves and trash compactors into a fanciful Victorian country kitchen scheme rather than anything too contemporary. But in the early 1930s, consumers chose kitchen appliances designed to evoke factory machinery. The streamlining craze of the 1930s and 1940s took a firm hold in the average American home, but only in one of the home's many rooms--the kitchen. This paper explains how streamlined machine forms became the accepted design idioms for a wide range of kitchen appliances in the 1930s. ☐ Streamlined appliances were part of a factory-laboratory design metaphor for kitchens that emerged between the two world wars. Streamlining represents far more than merely a design trend in a series of changing styles: it demonstrates the public's optimistic view of new technologies and is a decisive break with the historical styles it replaces. Streamlining also represents continuity and tradition insofar as kitchen appliances are concerned. It fit into domestic reform trends underway since before the turn of the century. Streamlining's popularity stemmed from its ability to mediate between conflicting ideals during the late 1920s and early 1930s. In the kitchen, it bridged the gap between the home and the workplace at a time when the nature of housekeeping, the conception of the home, and the role of women was changing. The streamlined style became an accepted style that unified two distinct appliance design traditions: utilitarian tool and decorative furniture. Through the promise of a better tomorrow, streamlining helped ease the tension caused by increasing mechanization and made the new machine world seem less forbidding.