Shipboard Style by Ruth Artmonsky
The 1930s saw a sea change in the interior design of ocean liners. The great Edwardian boats on the Transatlantic routes, ornate with Jacobean, Georgian and Louis Quinze style furnishings, had resembled stately country mansions, aiming to cocoon their passengers from any notion that they were actually at sea. The Cunard liners of the 30s, the Queens Mary and Elizabeth, along with such Continental rivals as the Normandie, were to exchange the pomposity of the earlier boats for the glitzy, jazzy art deco of New York hotels. Two young men, Colin Anderson, a director of the Orient Line, and Brian O'Rorke, his architect, turned, for the new 30s Orient Line boats, on their Australasian routes, to the functionalism of the Bauhaus, 'fitness for purpose'. Starting with the Orion [1935], they saw boats as' vehicles at sea', so that their design emphasis was on durable materials, ergonomically designed furniture, simplicity of decoration and, on actually having their passengers aware of, and enjoying, what lay outside their portholes and viewing windows. Anderson went on to provide a steady hand both for the Tate Gallery [where he was Chairman of the Trustees during one of its most turbulent periods]; and for the Royal College of Art [of which he was its first Provost].
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