AA-2026-3E1AFB
On the image
A woman stands in a mid-1950s living room dressed as though company is expected, one hand resting on the cabinet of a console television set that is plainly the room's most important object. Console televisions in this era were sold as furniture first and appliances second — the wooden cabinet was designed to hold its own among the upholstered chairs and the tiered end tables, which is why the manufacturer gave it the proportions of a sideboard and finished it in walnut veneer. The woman's posture beside it is not accidental; she is presenting the room, and the television is the credential she most wants noticed. Families who could afford a console in the early 1950s made sure guests understood that, and the standard method was to leave it somewhere a visitor could not miss. The small ceramic poodle on the lower shelf of the end table, a decorative cliché of precisely this moment in American domestic taste, suggests she curated the rest of the room with equal deliberateness — which makes it quietly perfect that the television, the trophy, dominates everything she arranged around it.
Visually related — by likeness
Woman Posed Beside the New Television, 1950s Living Room. 1953–1958. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-3E1AFB. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/woman-posed-beside-the-new-television-1950s-living-room.
@misc{aaAA20263E1AFB,
title = {Woman Posed Beside the New Television, 1950s Living Room},
year = {1953–1958},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-3E1AFB},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/woman-posed-beside-the-new-television-1950s-living-room}
}TY - ART TI - Woman Posed Beside the New Television, 1950s Living Room PY - 1953–1958 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-3E1AFB UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/woman-posed-beside-the-new-television-1950s-living-room ER -
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