Joseph Urban: Unlocking An Art Deco Bedroom is a special exhibit at the Cincinnati Art Museum, July 8 - October 2, 2022. This lavish bedroom was designed by Austrian-born architect Joseph Urban for 17-year-old Elaine Wormser. The museum has reconstructed this Roaring Twenties bedroom from as much of the room’s original material as possible, black and white photos, recorded recollections from Elaine and design sketches from the Joseph Urban Archive.
The original bedroom was constructed in the Wormser family’s 27th floor apartment in Chicago’s Drake Tower in 1929. When Elaine Wormser Reis moved to Cincinnati in 1936, she brought nearly all of her bedroom with her including the custom wall-to-wall carpet. In 1973, Elaine donated the room’s elements to the Cincinnati Art Museum, making it the largest collection of Urban-designed furnishings held by a public institution.
The rest of the Wormser expansive penthouse apartment was decorated in styles referencing the past, featuring eighteenth century English furniture. Leo, Elaine’s father, approached Joseph Urban in the spring of 1929 to design Elaine’s bedroom.
Joseph Urban was an illustrator, architect, and scenic designer for film, opera and theater. When he became the art director of the Boston Opera in 1911, he quickly became one of the most revered set designers of the early twentieth century. Urban developed a style throughout his career which highlighted his talent as a colorist, his flair for the dramatic, and a skillful blend of Viennese artistic influences with the modern style of Art Deco. With this background, Urban developed Elaine's bedroom as if he was depicting a scene. The bedroom is youthful yet sophisticated. The deep black of the walls and furnishings make the bright colors of the furnishings pop.
Elaine’s bedroom features a bold combination of colors and patterns, black glass walls and a reflective silvered ceiling. The bed stands on a platform covered by a flowered carpet design by Urban. The wall curtains and bedcover are green silk taffeta hand-painted with delicate flowering vines. The corners of the bedcover are corseted with black velvet ribbon. The colors and shape of the lamps are absolutely beautiful. The black bookcases display Elaine’s ceramic dog figurine collection. The armchair is upholstered in the same vibrant, striped fabric used for the desk and dressing table chairs. Elaine often had tea with her girlfriends in her room using the Russian tea service that sits on the occasional table.
To fully understand the scale and proportions of the original bedroom, the Cincinnati Art Museum team used the consistent pattern in a remnant of the room’s carpet as a graphing tool as well as the pattern of inlaid bands in the dressing and occasional tables. To recreate Elaine's armchair and ottomans, the project team used photographs, Elaine’s recorded recollections and drawings of similar chairs.
In addition to the bedroom, the exhibition features drawings, paintings, costumes, and related furnishings from Joseph Urban and other artists of the time.
An interactive website provides further information and experiences of the caretakers and craftspeople during the investigations and processes necessary to recreate the Wormser bedroom.
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