The Persian Room Murals
Here, Lillian Gaertner Palmedo, the artist who painted the Persian Room murals, touches up her work just before the opening, in a photograph no doubt staged for publicity purposes. Given Palmedo’s costume and shoes, it seems unlikely that there is any paint on her brush at all.
A minor artist of the thirties, Palmedo is best remembered for the five murals she made for the nightclub, which depicted the pleasures of dancing, hunting, eating, and drinking, Persian-style. Featured conspicuously in advertisements, the murals were forever identified with the room, much in the way that zebra skin was associated with El Morocco; they also launched a brief vogue for all things Persian across the country, when turbans and a color known as Persian blue became fashionable for a time. In 1940, the murals were slightly repainted to harmonize with a new color scheme, then removed altogether when the room was redecorated by Henry Dreyfuss in 1950. Their current whereabouts are unknown.
Here, they are prominently featured on the cover of a 1937 menu.