Defining Lifestyles.

During the 1920s the interior design of homes, offices, and public buildings attracted greater general interest in America than it ever had in the past. Choice and arrangement of furnishings — whether chairs, lamps, floor coverings, or art objects — became subjects for professional training as well as measures of the homeowner's or apartment dweller's taste. The August 1924 Vanity Fair advertised eight schools of interior design, the majority centered in New York City; the others were in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in San Francisco, and two of the eight claimed European branches in Paris and Florence. The decade saw the profusion of how-to books, such as Ethel Davis Seal's Furnishing the Little House (1924) and The House Beautiful Furnishing Annual 1926 (1925) — the latter of which bore the subtitle A Comprehensive and Practical Manual for the Guidance of All Who Seek Comfortable and Attractive Homes. Interior...