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Guess The Decade: Colorful Kitchen

colorkitchen030309.jpgFor Kitchen and Bath month, we're starting up a new round of Guess the Decade. This bright, cheeful eat-in kitchen is your latest design detective assignment.Take a good look at the room and then jump below to make your best guess:

 
 

Comments and conjecture are welcome in the comments, as always, but if you know the source of the photo - PLEASE don't tell. We promise to reveal it tomorrow, so please check back then for the answer.

Good luck!

More Guess The Decade:

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  • A Cook's Kitchen
  • A Cook's Kitchen - The Answer

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    Comments (35)

    This was a tough one, and I could make a case for almost any decade. The stacked baskets seem very 90s, but nothing else says "today" or even 10 years ago. Maybe the "head" vase.

    The size of the kitchen makes me think my guess--50s--is wrong, but I'm gonna stick with it anyway.

    posted by madsarah on March 3rd 2009 at 9:15pm
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    I need a bigger picture. But I guessed '40s anyway.

    posted by Joan A. on March 3rd 2009 at 9:23pm
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    I'm going with the '90s as well. The hanging lanterns and general cutesy clutter remind me of the kitchen from the apartment set of the TV show "Friends". It could easily be any of the listed decades, but the 90s just seems right to me.

    posted by Sydney on March 3rd 2009 at 9:26pm
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    Those baskets definitely scream 90's. But I might guess 60's.

    posted by cassielynn on March 3rd 2009 at 9:26pm
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    oh, tricky!

    posted by Jessa on March 3rd 2009 at 9:35pm
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    It's one of those people who is infatuated with an earlier era to the exclusion of everything current. How adorable it would be if we could go back to the 40s. Pretty well curated but it does look more like someone would strive to recreate with the 90s flair of not having lived in the period of time that attracts. Way too much.

    posted by K T G on March 3rd 2009 at 10:01pm
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    I'm pretty sure I remember seeing this kitchen in a magazine in the 1990s.

    posted by ilima on March 3rd 2009 at 10:07pm
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    The gigantic clock makes me think 90s.

    posted by graefix on March 3rd 2009 at 10:14pm
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    This is probably intended to look like a 1940's kitchen, but the refrigerator and plug-in clock are from the 1950's...
    ...however the bar/peninsula, stainless steel countertop, italian birch counterstools and painted floorcloth are the dead giveaways: 1990's

    posted by bepsf on March 3rd 2009 at 10:27pm
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    The bar with barstools makes it very modern to me. Isn't the open kitchen a recent phenomenon?

    Are those zinc countertops or stainless steel? Hard to tell but all the collectable stuff makes me think 90s rather than vintage. I feel like my grandma would've thought a classy kitchen in the 40s and 50s would be more formal.

    posted by caw261 on March 3rd 2009 at 10:28pm
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    I remember seeing this kitchen in Country Living or Country Home not so long ago...my vote is the 2000's.

    posted by fuzzypicklepie on March 3rd 2009 at 10:36pm
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    And my fuzzy memory says I clipped this just a few years ago from Met Home...

    posted by Ascoli on March 3rd 2009 at 10:44pm
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    The tablecloth made me think 70s, but the text 'if you know the source of the photo' makes me think it's more recent - otherwise people would be unfamilar with it. Did you give yourself away AT? :)

    posted by tomorrow on March 3rd 2009 at 11:59pm
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    I'm guessing '40's. "I spy" art deco pottery on the top of the cabinets that might be Abingdon Pottery, manufactured in Abingdon, Illinois, 1933-1950's. I wish the picture was clearer, too.

    posted by mcm60 on March 4th 2009 at 12:14am
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    There's an odd combination of old & formal (the china in the cabinets) and old & cutesy (the fridge) and more recent (the lanterns, baskets). There's a strong cost-plus/pier one vibe to those asian/basket element, which is what says 90's to me. This stuff is too cliche now to featured prominently in a fancy mag.

    posted by fib on March 4th 2009 at 12:24am
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    I'm going with 40's

    posted by nrKist on March 4th 2009 at 1:32am
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    I went with the eighties...but this one was tough...no matter what the answer actually turns out to be...I know I'm not very fond of it...it seems like it would feel too cluttered

    posted by greenfairytina on March 4th 2009 at 1:43am
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    I definately think the 40's...I'm so curious now!

    posted by Mz. F on March 4th 2009 at 2:14am
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    The trick here is that it's smack in the middle of a transitional period between the 80's and 90's. I'm going with 90's, but just barely. This looks exactly like something you guys scanned from an issue of Metropolitan Home or House & Garden (During it's Anna Wintour incarnation as "HG"), circa 1989-1992.

    Is this some Broadway choreographer's weekend house in upstate New York?

    I go with 90's because to me it feels like it has more of an edge of that 1990's attempt at gaiety and heedlessness--sort of "Monica's apartment from 'Friends'" or "Benny & Joon."

    That frenchy commode back by the staircase with the flower arrangement pulls everything back towards the late 80's, so there I am thinking 1991-1992-ish.

    Too bad there's no wooden bowl filled with Granny Smith apples or Michael Graves Alessi teakettle to more decisively date this kitchen by.

    posted by Bruised on March 4th 2009 at 2:29am
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    I'm with Bruised in that it looks like the home of someone associated with Broadway... In the late '70s and early '80s the homes of people like Zoe Caldwell with their impressive Majolica collections used to show up in the pages of House Beautiful, and this bears such a resemblance to such features, which have fallen out of favour.

    If it weren't for the damned stainless steel counters and the bar stools, I might say '80s...

    The McCoy Pottery on top of the cabinets is very Martha 1990s, the silly stacked picnic baskets are '80s, and the vintage fridge '70s (in the '90s and '00s using vintage fridges became a "bad thing" because of energy and environmental concerns). The colour of the floor and walls and cabinets is very '70s.

    This is a tough one!

    posted by mschatelaine on March 4th 2009 at 2:52am
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    I think 90's or now. the appliances may be vintage but the baskets, the lanterns and especially counter seems like the 90's or now.

    posted by TheoJ on March 4th 2009 at 5:25am
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    I guessed the 90's but it can also be now.

    posted by E.I.F. on March 4th 2009 at 8:06am
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    If it's a recent (last 20 years) picture, I want the source for that floor. I think it's great.

    posted by Joan A. on March 4th 2009 at 8:13am
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    Although probably more recent the room has a 50's feel to me.

    posted by Sylvia K on March 4th 2009 at 8:22am
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    I guessed 80s. It may have been in a magazine in the 90s, but I'll bet it was designed in the 80s.

    posted by Lisa (Montreal) on March 4th 2009 at 8:29am
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    is that a copper countertop?

    posted by ndvheller on March 4th 2009 at 9:47am
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    I agree with everyone who said it has a 'Friends' vibe and guessed 90s.

    And, hey, to the people who are saying where they saw it, doesn't that kind of take the fun out of it for everyone?

    posted by alisong on March 4th 2009 at 10:19am
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    Based on the fridge, stove, and linoleum floor, I'm saying 50s.

    posted by nazrd on March 4th 2009 at 11:11am
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    NOBODY in the 40s or 50s (or even 60s or 70s) would have had those glass cabinets with the chinese mullions in them. NO ONE! It doesn't even look like there's food in those cabinets or kitchen stuff, just fancy plate collection. It's just too studiously retro appearing.

    posted by dn on March 4th 2009 at 11:32am
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    PS and definitely not that light fixture AND the clock wouldn't have had a visible cord - there would have been a clock outlet there (like I have in my 50s/80s hybrid kitchen).

    posted by dn on March 4th 2009 at 11:34am
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    I have 22 years of magazine clips organized in binders (yes, I know I'm insane). This particular image is in my 'kitchen' binder! There are a lot of fun details that you can't discern from the photo here... I won't give any more away.

    posted by arroyo on March 4th 2009 at 11:41am
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    i feel like even though this WANTS to be 40s, i dont think anyone in the 40s would have something as impractical as a flower vase head on their counter top. the counter stools are pretty 80s to me, so i went with the 80s.

    posted by modkitten on March 4th 2009 at 12:14pm
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    I am guessing 19-cheesy-3

    posted by msjessiemeghan on March 4th 2009 at 1:38pm
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    the lanterns are very 1990's and the 1990's were, if you were not a wallpaper magazine devotee, about all the previous decades. notice the 20's chairs, 40's tablecloth, 50's counters and appliances.

    posted by patrickmc on March 4th 2009 at 6:02pm
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    It's trying hard to be the year 1956 in a house built in 1921...but this is now.

    The photography gives it away, but more than that the stainless steel and that mottled grey (granite?) counters are now. Plus, flea market chic is more of a newer trend. Nobody "collected" that many picnic baskets or tea kettles or vases of a single size back in the day. You had one. And party lanterns? In the kitchen? That would have been like putting up a Christmas tree in the bathtub. The kitchen was a workroom, where people invested a good 4-5 hours a day working, not a showroom for dishes. Several of the standard kitchen accoutrements of the era are missing.

    Those cabinets would have been exceedingly eccentric if original. Again, that kind of ornamentation wasn't put in a workroom.

    That is a photo taken in the past 4 years at the latest, is my guess.

    posted by fledgling on March 4th 2009 at 11:41pm
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