"The Hidden Forces Behind the Rise and Fall of Colorful Kitchens in Postwar America". Professor Regina Lee Blaszczyk featured in TIME
An excerpt of Professor Regina Lee Blaszczyk's book "The Color Revolution" has been featured in an article in TIME.
Regina Lee Blaszczyk is Professor of Business History and Leadership Chair in the History of Business and Society. Her areas of expertise include consumer society in the US and UK, and the history of design, innovation, fashion, colour, marketing, and retailing.
The bright postwar landscape, with its color-conditioned schools, its two-tone Chevys, and its orange-roofed Howard Johnson’s restaurants, whetted the appetite for more color in the home. Howard Ketcham’s work on the Bell Model 500, a direct response to this taste, was paralleled by the appliance industry’s move toward color.
In the 1920s, Macy’s Color in the Kitchen promotion had popularized pots and pans in bright hues, and Kohler Color Ware had made some headway in the bathroom. But the colorization of big-ticket durable goods for the home had been stymied by the Depression and by World War II. In 1949, the Chambers Company, a small Indiana stove factory, startled everyone by offering stoves in red, black, blue, gray, yellow, and green. Rumors circulated that the colorful models accounted for one-third of the Chambers Company’s sales. When a major trade association for the paint industry reported the rising popularity of kitchens in canary yellow and chartreuse, the household equipment industry took notice.
