Vintage View: 50s and 60s kitsch

Kya deLongchamps considers the enduring appeal of 50s and 60s kitsch — now the must-have’s for every smart suburban lounge.        

Appropriated by The Urban Dictionary as ‘pleasingly distasteful’, kitsch is a tipsy state of aesthetic awkwardness. We recognise it immediately.

Incongruous, dated, deliberately cheap and cheerful, many pieces that raise an embarrassed titter today, were the height of mass manufactured hip in their day and there remains a collective nostalgia for many cringing, vulgar prints — and dire but well-made ornaments.