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OBrien - American Modern

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American Modern
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OBrien / Thomas
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Abrams
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American Modern: summary, description and annotation

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From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the groundbreaking backstairs look at the White House, The Residence, comes an intimate, news-making look at the true modern power brokers at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: the First Ladies, from Jackie Kennedy to Michelle Obama.
One of the most underestimatedand challengingpositions in the world, the First Lady of the United States must be many things: an inspiring leader with a forward-thinking agenda of her own; a savvy politician, skilled at navigating the treacherous rapids of Washington; a wife and mother operating under constant scrutiny; and an able CEO responsible for the smooth operation of countless services and special events at the White House. Now, as she did in her smash #1 bestseller The Residence, former White House correspondent Kate Andersen Brower draws on a wide array of untapped, candid sourcesfrom residence staff and social secretaries to friends and political advisersto tell the stories of the ten remarkable women who have defined that role since 1960.
Brower offers new insights into this privileged group of remarkable women, including Jacqueline Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson, Patricia Nixon, Betty Ford, Rosalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, and Michelle Obama. The stories she shares range from the heartwarming to the shocking and tragic, exploring everything from the first ladies political crusades to their rivalries with Washington figures; from their friendships with other first ladies to their public and private relationships with their husbands. She also offers a detailed and insightful new portrait of one of the most-watched first ladies of all time, Hillary Clinton, asking what her tumultuous years in the White House may tell us about her own historic presidential run . . . and what life could be like with the nations first First Husband.
Candid and illuminating, this first group biography of the modern first ladies provides a revealing look at life upstairs and downstairs at the worlds most powerful address.

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Table of Contents

Guide

American Modern

Photography by Laura Resen

Written with Lisa Light

American Modern

Thomas OBrien

Abrams, New York

For Dellamae Betts Wickwire

CONTENTS

Design can be many things to many people, but to me,

it has always been about tradition in modern life.

I am guided by traditions, both inherited and studied,

which I will bend to the moment Im living in.

Im one to look back in order to move forward.

Introduction

A lthough Im often referred to as a modern designer my job is I think more - photo 13

lthough Im often referred to as a modern designer, my job is, I think, more about

editing what has come before and making it into something new. Ive always felt

you cant move ahead unless you know where youre coming from, in order to

really decide what you want to take with you and what to leave behind. In American design,

that entails a particular debt to English and Continental influence, filtered through colonial

assimilation, rural enormity, and the intensity of the city. Remixing those ingredients

making that mix your ownis what I like to practice. I do believe there is something in that

process which is quite American in spirit, and ultimately modern in implementation.

Practicality, industry, boldness, scale. Simplicity and sincerity. Innovation. These are the

ingredients of American modern style.

From the 1920s through World War II, there was a first American modern movement in

design. It was a homegrown, Machine Age claim on European modern ideals, intended

to impact the daily lives of ordinary people through mostly modest objects. Though this

is certainly a huge touchstone for me with regard to the forms I most like and return to,

in describing American modern today I mean to borrow something which is more a set of

tools than an aesthetic. And these tools show how to manage the whole mix of historical

things, traditional to modern.

When people ask me what I do, I start with this link between the traditional and the mod-

ern. Very often I find that people will be attracted to something other than what they live

with, but wont let themselves try it. The traditional client is drawn to modern things; the

person from a modern world craves antique things. For those who find their way to me, my

products, or my store, the major breakthrough is always seeing that these elements can

coexist, and actually look better together than apart.

Not so long ago this approach to design was viewed as a vague hybrid that worried advo-

cates from both modern and traditional camps. But now, I think it is the link for many

people from both sides, who have become comfortable with what is reconciled, and

always was, in designs terra firma of honest craft and clear form. Make an object work

well and look correct in proportion and line. Highlight good structure and authentic

details. Eliminate excess but prize gracefulness. Be sustainable and sparing in the use of

materials. Create for the enjoyment of allnot just some.

A view into my office, just inside the front door of the Academy. This is my grey flannel cap

from when I was four years old, hanging with a camping light on the pegrack in the upstairs hallway.

These foundations and tools carry over from classical to neoclassical Georgian - photo 14

These foundations and tools carry over from classical to neoclassical, Georgian to Federal,

early to midcentury modernismall the building blocks of my own sense of tradition. And

the common thread along these lines is the power of reduction: less ornament and less

material. The simplicity in modernism does progress directly out of this kind of thinking,

for all things become more modern when they are abbreviated. Yet, its all still historical,

and its all revisited, refined, reinterpreted, again and again, according to the latest audi-

ence. Every generation is a creator of its own modernism.

So, when people ask about what I do, I might say that I help find the classic elements from

past generations, and then edit them together for this one. An American idea of reinvention:

traditional things for modern living.

ver the years at Aero, my design studio and store in New York City, Ive been

privileged to work on a number of different kinds of homes for clientscountry

and city residences; some historical and some more modernist spaces. Ive been

able to experiment in and document certain ideas in my own homes. To put some of these

projects together into a book was to consider what tied them to each other and what story

they might have worth telling.

All the homes in this book are modern in their own way. They are all clarified, edited spaces;

they all blend traditional and modern elements. But the proportions in that blend are unique

to each project, determined by what the clients liked, where they started from, and what the

space had to say. In all these variations being possible, in the boldness of individual choices,

each home here is a true delegate of American modern style.

My job is to determine the set of ideas that will bring the right balance together for

each project. Making a homeor really, making any design decisionis ultimately about

that search for an inner reason which is honest: Why this piece, why this place? And in that

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