Rococo Revival

On the topic of Modern/Not Modern we have the rococo revival in the first half of the 20th century.

Rococo revival bark cloth

 Rococo furniture

Not Modern

Rococo (pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable) is a style of  high-fashion 18th century European decoration. It's characterized by layers of decoration, in particular shell-like shapes. The word Rococo, applied in the 19th century when the revivals began, is thought be a combination of French and Italian from the French rocaille for stones and coquilles for shell, a play on the word Baroque.

Read a post I did a few years ago on rococo in early American quilts.
http://quilt1812warandpiecing.blogspot.com/2012/02/imported-prints-rococo.html

Cornucopia, footed vases and S-shaped curves are

a style characteristic

These rococo-style florals are bark cloth, the heavy

furnishing fabrics popular in the 1940s and '50s.

They offered more traditional decorating in contrast to the "modern" bark cloth

designs.

Some had no trouble mixing abstractions and rococo floral.

These rococo style bark cloth designs of the mid-20th

century are just a continuation of earlier furnishing fabrics

like the cretonnes above and below, which

featured similar designs in different colors from about 1880-1920.

In the 1890s the fabric was called cretonne, in the 1940s

bark cloth was a more modern word.