You’re over 30. You were there. You may have worked hard not to remember that you remember, but you do remember. Visiting people’s homes while collecting on your paper route, stepping into the foyer only to be mesmerized by pointless wall hangings –tools from the shed and driftwood embedded in macrame, lamps fashioned from garden tools, dust embedded in the cheap paint, space-age acrylic tables and chairs through which you could more clearly see the hideously clashing colors of the hand-woven shag rug… And you remember sitting in the dentist’s office reading how-to manuals distributed by Sunset magazine…
I’m as much a fan of great 70s design as the next guy, but let us not forget how much craptastic home-spun junk littered people’s homes in the decade, and how it all finally piled up in garages (and ultimately at garage sales) in the 80s.
James Lileks, of The Gallery of Regrettable Food fame, has published a second volume, Interior Desecrations, chronicling the joyous garbage of DIY suburban 70s decor. Scrumptious.
Of course, it’s an old-timey meat-grinder painted avocado green, stuffed with fake vegetables, and mounted on a plaque you bought at Escutcheons ‘N’ Things. But, you may ask . . . how do I make it?