with its ‘fusuma’ – sliding doors covered with opaque paper; its ‘shoji’ –
wooden lattice sliding doors covered with paper; its ‘tokonama’ – a small
alcove; and its tatami mats.
Texture, used in combination with transparency, became increas-
ingly important to the abstract interior as it developed through the 1930 s.
It eventually entered the world of the interior decorator, in particular
through the work of the French designer Jean-Michel Frank, who intro-
duced a wide variety of textures and materials – vellum, varnished straw
marquetry, terracotta and leather among others – into the highly mini-
mal, sensuous interiors he created for wealthy clients in the 1920 s and
1930 s.^18 The interior spaces he created for Templeton Crocker in San
Francisco were among the most dramatic of his creations. By that time 183
The living room of a San Francisco apartment designed for J. Templeton Crocker by
Jean-Michel Frank, 1927, illustrated in Katherine Kahle’s Modern French Decoration, 1930.