As a child of the '70s and '80s I could write a book on this topic. However, I’ll confine myself to this:
From ca. 1974 - 1985 my grandparents had a living room suite in the “good room” (a space used for special occasions only). The couch fabric was kind of fake crushed velvet/velour with scenes of olden days: tiny women churning butter, men riding horses, and so on. The arm rests were plasti-wood stagecoach wheels. Ditto on the armchairs.
The lamp bases were also stagecoach wheels, and the lamps were integrated into the smoked glass table (i.e., they were one unit).
And the “Dogs Playing Poker” painting over the couch was framed in a heavy, fleur de lis frame more suitable for a Rembrandt.
And, of course, couch, chairs, and lampshades were all covered in plastic.
Please share your best of the worst furniture encounter!
My great aunt had a patio with one of those old glider type, hard metal couches where the seating area was suspended on the 4 corners by chains from an elevated base. It was, I guess, a geriatric swing set.
My friend’s boyfriend’s dad (yea, I know) was a big game hunter. They had mounted and stuffed trophies all over the house including one room that was just a huge jungle scene. The first time my friend visited the house, he sent me a picture from the bathroom. There was an erect standing monkey with its hands outstretched and index fingers pointed at each other. In between the hands was a roll of toilet paper.
It was so grotesque to think about, especially the idea of something furry near a toilet like that, but part of me still kind of wants it.
I’m guessing the monkey was erect so that they could store another roll of TP down there?
My aunt and uncle in North Carolina had side tables and a coffee table that were all carved scenes of mountains and streams (in plastic, I’m guessing) with glass covering it. Like a diorama, but with no animals or people to make it a little interesting.
A friend’s parents, when I was a kid in the '70s, had a house filled with decorative animal products - heads on the wall, Zebra-skins on the floor.
Problem was, they were badly preserved or something - the whole house stank from them, like a tannery. I guess they were used to it and didn’t notice, but I found the stench eye-wateringly bad.
1970s *and *'80s we had one of these space age washing machine looking motheh fuckers. It was actually the envy of the whole neighborhood when we first got it. Picture it in a den with a couch not dissimilar to this. A whole hanging wall cabinet desk combo thingy made out of lucscious dark wood veneer and a groovy swivel chair like this. All nestled in a wall to wall sea of this. On the wall was fine art (my Dad affectionately referred to her as “Mrs. Ming”).
Jennsharkplease tell me you have pictures of this room. Although you described it so perfectly that I already do see it in my mind, I’d like to see it for real, and that level of hideous should be preserved for the ages.
CGav8r I have to admit I would be tempted to buy those at a thrift store. Now you’ve got me looking at my “treasures” in a whole new light; maybe they’re not as delightful to everybody else as they are to me.
WOOKINPANUB your parents were very avant garde! No wonder you were the envy of the neighborhood. Bet your parents were also open-minded and fun and interesting to grow up with.
The only thing I can contribute isn’t nearly as good as everybody else’s in the thread. But a lamp in the living room of my former in-laws had a base made of four real deer’s feet.
Back in the 70s my dad was doing a lot of business in Haiti and started importing art and furniture on the side. One of the things he imported (to my horror) were those wooden hand chairs, roughly akin to this. I can’t imagine that being desirable to anyone but a proctologist.
Our living room carpet when I was growing up was some variety of that, except in a really awful maroon/purple swirly sort of colour. It did have the advantage, though, that it would easily hide any number of stains, spills and messes (important in a house with kids, I guess).
To ‘match’ that, we had a sofa and armchair set that looked similar to this, along with tapestry wallpaper (ugh) on three walls and wood veneer cladding on the fourth wall.
In our bathroom, we had an avocado bathroom suite with pine wall cladding, a green carpet and white marble effect formica countertops.
Right classy, we were.
I would say my parents had no taste, but then it was the seventies - the decade that taste forgot.
That sounds awesome (maybe not the sofa) and I would love that in a rec room. We have gone Victorian with most of our furnishings, as well as houses, but I secretly would like a midcentury to 70s ranch and would do something like thisin it.
Just in case some of you haven’t seen it, Lilek’s website has a nice galleryof amazing, I mean hideous, furniture. If you’ve got half an hour to kill, check out this place. I would totally live in this.
Something like this , Becky2844? That is a sufficiently tacky contribution, to be sure And my mother is smiling in the ether somewhere, thinking that someone called her, uh, “unique” taste avant garde!
A furniture store was going out of business a few years ago. It sold mostly upscale, yuppie-pretender stuff and of course no one was stopping in for $5k designer love seats in the Recession.
Every day, out front, was a chair. It was a squarish seat with four legs, upholstered plainly about halfway to the floor. The back was at least seven feet tall and upholstered to match. It was magenta.
I can’t begin to imagine… any of the rationale. It looked like a cheap piece for a junior high play about King Arthur.
Not all the horrific stuff is of recent vintage. Houston’s Bayou Bend Collection is a house museum with rooms decorated in different periods from 1620 through 1870. A High Victorian parlor was added, although the contents nauseated a curator. Miss Ima Hogg, who started the collection & remained hands-on throughout her long life, explained that it was part of history. These highlights from the collection include nothing from that room.
On my last visit, we stopped for some ice water in the Texas Room, decorated to the tastes of Miss Ida’s brothers. (Their Remingtons are on view at the big museum.) One young fellow expressed admiration at the furniture made from cow/steer horns; his wife expressed disgust. She was not happy when I announced that stuff is still being made.
My parents had a house full of Danish modern, as it was termed, when I was growing up. Most damned uncomfortable stuff ever. I don’t have pictures, unfortunately, but everything was what I’d call minimalist (chairs had no arms, neither did sofas), and nothing that was upholstered had any padding to it. Not to mention that what fabric there was on the pieces was nubby and rough. We didn’t have a couch in the traditional sense, we had upholstered ‘benches’ with hard wooden backs.
When tastes changed, my mom lovingly preserved this hideous stuff in the basement, ostensibly for me to have for my first place away from home. As kindly as I could, I told her that hell would freeze over before I’d take that miserable furniture with me! Just writing about it now, I can still feel the ghost of contact dermatits from that nubby, rough fabric.
Per the OP: Lampshades with the manufacturer’s plastic still on them. I still don’t understand why people didn’t remove it. The described plastic-covered furniture is what my wife always refers to as “New Jersey chic”.
We had a kitchen table very similar to this one. One wall in the living room had cheesy dark paneling as an ‘accent’, with this print hanging on it. It’s a Sydney Laurence repro that was given out when you opened an account at the local bank. My father’s chair was a Niagra Cyclo-Massage recliner that had vibration in the head, torso, seat and footrest. There was a pop-out panel on the side with intensity controls and a timer (no remotes in those days). Oh, and a giant radio/record player console; the record player was in a drawer on the left, and the radio compartment tipped out to expose the dials and tuner.
