Pipsan Saarinen Swanson’s <i>Life</i> Model Home: Mediation and Mythmaking in Postwar America

Abstract In a 1955 photographic essay, Life magazine published model interiors designed by Pipsan Saarinen Swanson, telling its readers they represented an authentic regional style called “Nordic Modern of the Midwest.” In this paper, I conduct a close visual and textual reading of the magazine spread as well as other archival documents related to Swanson’s model home. This reading I contextualize within design and cultural histories to demonstrate that Life framed the model home to suit its own agendas to, on the one hand, celebrate American culture and, on the other hand, promote modern design. I argue that in so doing, the magazine presented Swanson’s work in a manner that bolstered and expounded on a myth that had recently been circulating the design world in the United States. Promulgated by historians, writers, and designers, this myth revised the established history of modern design to relocate its origins from early twentieth-century Europe to pre-1900 America.