This dissertation is based on six leading families in the United States, their mansions and their yachts. They experienced status through consumption of luxury goods, especially in decorating their homes. The thesis of this study is that it appears that yacht owners borrowed interior design ideas of their homes to decorate the interiors of their yachts. Their purpose was to enhance and maintain a presentation of status while at sea. It is assumed that yacht interiors from 1870 to 1920 were an extension of house interiors, reflecting the owner’s status, specifically in the use of textiles.
The luxury yachts were extravagant symbols of the wealth, taste, and social power of their owners and were paraded as a statement of social status. The consumption of luxury products and an overt demonstration of leisure were part of the lifestyle that Gilded Age industrials and financiers strove to obtain. Luxury yachts were used as a tool, either through sport, cruising or extravagant entertaining, to promote the apparent well-being of the family.
The three eras of yachting during the Gilded Age were: schooner-yachts, auxiliary-yachts and steamer yachts. This study will examine the interiors and textiles of mansion drawing rooms and luxury yachts at each phase of development, and whether or not they were transferred to the yacht’s main saloon as a statement of social status.
Four specific topics will be addressed. These are: developments in the Gilded Age that gave rise to elite Americans’ desire for extravagance in luxurious home interiors, the rise of the American parlor as a status prototype, evaluation of the auxiliary activities that supported yachting as a social status statement and the technological advances that promoted luxury yacht, and home interiors.