I was very surprised to learn that the author of the famed Oz books, L. Frank Baum, began his career in theatrical production and retail marketing. The same year that he published The Wonderful World of Oz, 1900, Baum wrote The Art of Decorating Dry Goods Windows and Interiors. According to Woody Register (see my last post on his Fred Thompson biopic) it was “the first book on the subject, and one widely valued among urban retailers.”
A successful window display is a stage on which objects tell some legible story.” — L. Frank Baum
At first, this seems trivial—a man leaves the worlds of entertainment and commerce to write children’s books. Yet stage production, retail decor and fantasy narratives all intersect at a versatile device in the thematic designer’s toolbox—something I’ve been calling prop vignettes. I’m choosing to use the term vignette in the literary sense, as in brief scene centered around one moment.
According to William R. Leach in his Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture, Baum seems to have been the first to write about the appeal of window displays and their usefulness in drawing consumers into retail spaces. He essentially invented something we take for granted today (especially at Christmas time)—the department store window diorama.
The fact that Baum was a natural-born storyteller says much about his ability to design and decorate consumer spaces. As Woody Register put it, “the integration of his imagination into the urban marketplace and the new art of displaying goods cannot be separated from his literary fairy tales.”
As I have come to define them, prop vignettes are like theatrical stage sets in miniature, and they are used to establish “soft” narrative (atmospheric storytelling). Usually consisting of a tightly arranged composition of static elements, prop vignettes literally ‘set the stage’ for thematic environments.
They establish mood and convey meaning at a level of detail that architecture alone cannot—in this regard they belong more to the tradition of interior design.
A classic example is the stack of barrels framed by a ladder or the mining equipment, ore cars and rusted gears and metalwork commonly found at venues in the wild west theme.
The examples pictured here are all from my recent trip to Disneyland Paris, and represent typical such displays.
The two most common settings for prop vignettes are in themed restaurants and in the cues of amusement park attractions, particularly those designed by Disney. This is actually quite interesting—both areas entail substantial waiting at times.
This leads me to believe that designers actively employ them to give guests and consumers something to look at while they are idle; the atmospheric qualities of prop vignettes are best admired at length. More on this later, but suffice to say that this design technique is instrumental in developing successful thematic environments.