Ocean Liners: Glamour, Speed and Style

Front Cover, Ocean Liners: Glamour, Speed and Style, Edited by Daniel Finamore and Ghislaine Wood in Association with The Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, 2017. GGA Image ID # 202177ce01

From the Inside Flap

The great ace of ocean travel has long since passed, but ocean liners remain one of modernity's most powerful and admired symbols. No form of transport was as romantic, remarkable, or contested, and ocean liner design became a matter of national prestige and an arena in which the larger dynamics of global competition were played out.

This beautifully illustrated book considers over a century of liner design, from the striking graphics created to promote liners to the triumphs of engineering and from luxurious interiors to onboard fashion and activities.

Ocean Liners explores the design of Victorian and Art Deco 'floating palaces,' sleek post-war liners, and these ships' impact on avant-garde artists and architects such as Le Corbusier.

Contents

DIRECTORS' FOREWORD
Dan L. Monroe and Tim Reeve

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION
Daniel Finamore and Ghislaine Wood

1. PROMOTING LINERS

ADVERTISING THE OCEAN LINER
Catherine Flood

A CLOSE-UP PICTURE OF A MIGHTY PROJECT: PROMOTIONAL EXHIBITION MODELS
George Schwartz

THE ARCHITECTURE OF PROMOTION
Bruce Peter

COMPAGNIE GÉNÉRALE TRANSATLANTIQUE: IDENTITY THROUGH TIME
Dorian Dallongeville

2. SHIPBUILDING: SPEED, SAFETY AND COMFORT
John R. Hume

3. FLOATING PALACES: VICTORIAN AND EDWARDIAN SHIPS
Bernhard Rieger

4. INTER-WAR LINERS: THE POLITICS OF STYLE
Ghislaine Wood

LINERS AT WAR
Meredith More

5. POST-WAR LINERS: 1945-1975
Bruce Peter

CIO PONTI
Paolo Piccione

6. THE IDEALIZED SOCIETY OF THE OCEAN LINER
Daniel Finamore

SS UNITED STATES
Daniel Finamore and Sarah N. Chasse

7. FLOATING IN A DREAMLAND: FASHION AND SPECTACLE ON BOARD
Michelle Tolini Finamore

8. MODERNIST ARCHITECTURE AND THE LINER
Tim Benton

STREAMLINING
Ghislaine Wood

9. THE LINER AS MACHINE
Anna Ferrari

10. THE AFTERLIFE OF SHIPS
Daniel Finamore and Ghislaine Wood

NOTES

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Back Cover, Ocean Liners: Glamour, Speed and Style, Peabody Essex Museum, 2017. GGA Image ID # 2021786a48

Synopsis

The golden age of ocean liners is inextricably linked with the key decorative trends of the 20th century—Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and Modernism. This lavish visual feast explores the technical, aesthetic, cultural, and political factors that came together to define such an iconic mode of travel, considering all aspects of the ocean liner experience, from the striking marketing images, aspirational booking offices, and landmark headquarters of the major shipping companies to the ships' opulent interiors and triumphs of engineering.

The lavish fashions required for a crossing are also explored, along with the evolution of the ships' social and public spaces, as once-rigid class structures and attitudes relaxed.

Closing the book is an exploration of the impact of the ocean liner in the broader art and design world—an icon of modernity that influenced everyone from the Futurists to Le Corbusier.

Summary

Ocean Liners became floating cities for those lucky enough to travel in an era before the commercial flight was widely affordable. This book explores the technical, aesthetic, cultural, and political factors that came together to define such an iconic mode of travel, from grand Victorian barges to luxurious Art Deco floating palaces and sleek Modernist post-war liners.

The shift in the passengers from those driven to immigrate, often by necessity, to the wealthy leisure traveler led to rapid transformations in promotion, architecture, interior design, and even the engineering of the ships themselves, as companies and countries completed to provide the most luxurious, safest and fastest liners possible.

Review of Ocean Liners: Glamour, Speed and Style

This incredible collection of ephemera, artifacts, and stories of the steamships and ocean liners that traversed the oceans is at the top of the heap in extraordinary coffee table books.

The Peabody Essex Museum has captured the life of the 20th-century traveler, concentrating on the first class or saloon passengers. The most extreme luxury encased the accommodations onboard the luxury liners, such as the SS Normandie of the French Line and the SS Europa of the Norddeutscher Lloyd, which were floating palaces.

One only has to view the contents of this richly illustrated book to gain insight into the breadth of the ocean liner collection that explores the technical, aesthetic, cultural, political, and onboard lives of the passengers in color and black and white photographs and illustrations.

The design of the behemoth ships was a marvel of technology for that era. The Art Deco styling of the SS Ile de France, the SS Conte di Savoia, SS Bremen, and most notably, the SS Normandie and several other steamships capture this mostly pre-WW2 period.

The furnishings in this collection will help many visualize the ultra-luxurious accommodations, from the fine paneling, carvings, statues, stained glass windows, and other features that prove that these luxury liners were second to none.

The travel posters created by many of the great steamship lines of the twentieth century should excite the collectors of memorabilia and ephemera, who can only imagine having a fine collection as the Peabody Essex Museum.

-- The GG Archives

About the Editors

Daniel Finamore is The Russell W. Knight Curator of Maritime Art and History, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

Chislaine Wood is Fellow of the Research Department at the Victoria and Albert Museum and Deputy Director of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich, England.

Library of Congress Catalog Listing

• Main title: Ocean liners: glamour, speed and style / edited by Daniel Finamore and Ghislaine Wood.
• Published/Produced: London: V&A Publishing; Salem, Massachusetts: The Peabody Essex Museum, 2017.
• Description: 288 pages: illustrations (some color); 30 cm
• ISBN: 9781851779062 hardback; 185177906X hardback; 9781851779246 paperback; 1851779248 paperback.
• LC Classification: VM382 .O34 2017
• Related names: Finamore, Daniel, 1961- editor. Wood, Ghislaine, editor. Peabody Essex Museum, organizer. Victoria and Albert Museum, organizer.
• LC Subjects: Ocean liners--Exhibitions. Ocean liners--History. Ocean liners--Decoration--Exhibitions. Ocean liners--Decoration--History.
• Other Subjects: Ocean liners--Exhibitions. Ocean liners--History. Ocean liners--Decoration--Exhibitions. Ocean liners--Decoration. History. Exhibition catalogs. Transport. Ocean liners--Decoration. Ocean liners. Transport.
• Form/Genre: History. Exhibition catalogs.
• Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 278-282) and index.
• LCCN: 2016960603
• Geographic area code: e------ n-us---
• Other class no.: J114-28
• National bib no.: GBB7B1506
• National bib agency no.: 018379237
• Other system no.: (OCoLC)ocn988006181
• Type of material: Book
• Content type: text, still image
• Media type: unmediated
• Carrier type: volume