Brooklyn designers are feeling the 1940s in rooms and objects with curves, facets, fringe and velvet. Sculptural shapes invoke Jean Arp and Henry Moore.

Madcap black-and-white pops, jitterbugs and caffeinates. Natural materials such as wood and terrazzo ground and solidify. Jewel-tone colors like emerald and pink tourmaline soothe.

mirror
Photo via Trueing

Brooklyn-based design company Trueing fashions a mirror using one of most popular and iconic materials of the 1940s: terrazzo.

Photo by Katie Deedy/Grow House Grow

Dotty Hex cement tile by Brooklyn’s Grow House Grow draws inspiration from what people wore in 1940s Cuba.

interior
Photo by Susan De Vries

Ascher Davis Architects and Mahwish Syed Designs pull together a 1940s-inflected boudoir in the 2019 Brooklyn Heights Designer Showhouse with a curvy chair, fringed stool and velvet curtains.

light fixture
Photo via Rich Brilliant Willing

Faceted forms dominated architecture and furniture design of the World War II years. Brooklyn’s Rich Brilliant Willing‘s Faceted Brim sconce in green alludes to that shapely history.

table
Styling and photo by Pippa Drummond

Crafted out of wood, the Arch coffee table by Brett Miller of Leeds, N.Y.-based Jack Rabbit Studio recalls midcentury sculptural forms. It’s available at Clinton Hill home store and coffee shop Relationships.

Editor’s note: A version of this story appeared in the Fall/Holiday 2019/20 issue of Brownstoner magazine.

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