A first-class voyage through the golden age of ocean liners

Wood also notes that in the early 1930s it was the German ships Bremen and Europa that ‘did much to promote Modernist streamlining in liner design and spurred competition between the European nations’. The Normandie, launched in 1935, was the clear winner in these stakes. She was the most elegant liner of all time, complete with swimming pool, winter garden and aviary. Her luxurious fittings are well preserved, as she was stripped prior to being requisitioned by the Americans for war service, and here we have one of Jean Dunand’s gilded lacquered panels depicting semi-naked athletes from the first-class smoking room, an  easy chair upholstered in Aubusson tapestry, and ceramics, glass and cutlery designed by Lalique, Puiforcat and Christofle.

Although in the 1930s it was the transatlantic route that inspired the most intense competition, in post-war Britain Sir Colin Anderson, chairman of the Orient Line, picked up the baton of style, commissioning Brian O’Rorke to design modernist interiors for the Orcades and Oronsay, with murals, textiles, and china by Edward Bawden, whose ‘Heartsease’-pattern Wedgwood muffin dish provides a homely contrast to the glitz of Christofle and Puiforcat. Edward Ardizzone painted a delightful nursery mural for P&O’s Canberra, here shown alongside the ‘horse’ child’s chair designed by Marc Simon and Jacqueline Duché for the Normandie’s first-class playroom.

Children’s chair from the Normandie (c. 1934), designed by Marc Simon and Jacqueline Duché © Miottel Museum, Berkeley, California

The emphasis of the exhibition is on above-decks glamour, but the visitor also gets a glimpse – particularly through Stanley Spencer’s vast canvas Shipbuilding on the Clyde: Riveters (1941) – of what John Hume describes in another catalogue essay as ‘the vast endeavour of shipbuilding and design’. However, what the great shipping tycoons wanted their clientele to see was craft not graft.

With the ingenuity of the original ocean-liner designers the curators have exploited the possibilities of illusionism and modern technology to recreate the shipboard experience with overtones of the theme tune to Desert Island Discs; gentle marine sounds waft through the galleries mingling with the cry of seagulls. At one point they have created the illusion of being on deck with limitless vistas of blue sea, animated only by the occasional sighting of the Olympic, Normandie or QE2 as they sail by on the horizon.

Fragment of a panel from the first-class lounge of Titanic (c. 1911). © Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

This is a prelude to the coup de théâtre as the visitor enters the largest space where, under a star-spangled dome, and to 1930s dance music, figures disport themselves in a swimming pool, while elegant ladies descend and ascend the central stairs. This is the setting for the display of ostentation and fashion set against a sparkling background crystal and aluminium panel created by Charles Tissot for the SS United States. Here we find riches from the Normandie, the Duke of Windsor’s travelling trunks, a Cartier platinum and diamond tiara saved from the Lusitania, a rich scarlet silk-crêpe dress by Lelong worn on the Normandie’s maiden voyage and, of course, knitted bathing suits for both men and women.

‘Ocean Liners: Speed and Style’ is at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, until 10 June.

From the March issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.