Colorful Kitchens Bring Joy

As yes, yet another ad detailing how a simple act can bring untold joy to wives and homemakers everywhere.  In this case it's through the use of a few cans of Valspar Paint and you can turn your drab kitchen into the envy of the neighborhood.  Because you know Mrs Joy is perfect image of 1928 houswives and spends untold hours toiling in the kitchen cooking meals for her family.  Before she ran into her school chum she had to spend those hours of drudgery in a perfectly white kitchen which she thought was still height of kitchen design, but sadly she was mistaken.  Her friend was quick to point out that white kitchens were so yesterday and colorful ones are the in thing now dearie.  Honestly, doesn't Mrs Joy subscribe to Good Housekeeping or Ladies Home Journal?  Perhaps Mr. Joy is too much of a skinflint, alas the world will never know.


The fast is home designs changed drastically during the 1920's.  In the beginning of the decade houses were more likely to still be of the Arts & Crafts Bungalow type or Mission Style.  Kitchens in those homes followed the "Sanitary" design that started around 1918.  Everything in a sanitary was white giving one the overall impression of a Doctor's Office rather than a kitchen.  All this changed somewhere around 1926 when the earlier building styles gave way to the Colonial Revival style.  Spanish Colonial design had been an offshoot of the Arts & Crafts movement but with Colonial Revival, builders and interior decorators focused on the earlier Federal and Cape Cod types of homes.  Such homes were more colorful in the interior design than the subdued earth tones found in Arts & Crafts bungalows and naturally kitchens soon followed suit.  Gone were the glaring white kitchens of yesteryear and in were the gaudy colors of the late Jazz Era albeit with an eye towards palettes used in colonial style houses.

Why, you may ask, am I concerned with all this? Well mostly because I am intending on buying a house later this year... An old house.  Old houses here in Jacksonville means built in the mid to late 1920's mostly and I've been doing alot of research on how such homes were decorated inside.  Old paint ads like this one give a great glimpse of what advertisers were trying to evoke when selling their products although you need to take it with a grain of salt as I doubt most people went as crazy with the painting as Mrs. Joy... if you notice in the ad nothing escaped her paintbrush, not even the clock.

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