Appliqué (pronounced ap-li-key)
(1) Ornamentation, as a decorative cut-out design, sewn
on, glued or otherwise applied to a piece of material.
(2) The practice of decorating in this way
(3) A work so formed or an object so decorated.
(4) A decorative feature, as a sconce, applied to a
surface.
(5) To apply, as appliqué to.
(6) In medicine, of a red blood cell infected by the
malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum, assuming a form in which the early
trophozoite of Plasmodium falciparum parasitises the marginal portion of the
red blood cell, appearing as if the parasite has been “applied”.
1841: From the from French appliqué (work applied or laid on to another material), noun use of the past participle of appliquer (to apply), from the twelfth century Old French apliquier), from the Latin applicare (attach to, join, connect) and the source of “apply” in Modern English. The alternative spelling is applique and in French, the feminine was appliquée, the masculine plural appliqués & the feminine plural appliquées. As a verb, appliqué refers to a method of construction but as a noun, depending on the item, the synonyms can include finery, ornament, plaque, ribbon, trinket, wreath, brocade, decoration, lace, needlepoint, quilting, tapestry, mesh, arabesque, bauble, braid, curlicue, dingbat & embellishment. Appliqué is a noun, verb & adjective appliquéd is a verb & adjective and appliquéing is a verb; the noun plural is appliqués.
Lindsay Lohan in translucent lace appliqué trousers and black swimsuit, Mykonos, Greece, August 2016.
The woodie wagon and the descent to DI-NOC appliqué
Horse drawn carriages of course began with timber
construction, metal components added as techniques in metallurgy improved. The methods of construction were carried
over to the horseless carriages, most early automobiles made with a steel
chassis and bodywork which could be of metal, wood or even leather, located by
a wooden frame. That endured for decades
before being abandoned by almost all manufacturers by the 1970s, Morgan remaining
one of the few traditionalists, their craftspeople (some of whom are now women)
still fashioning some of the internal structure (attached to the aluminum
chassis) from lovingly shaped and sanded English ash.
Early woodies which used real wood: 1934 Ford V8 Model 40 (left), 1941 Packard One-Ten (centre) and 1949 Mercury 9CM (right).
During the inter-war years, the timberwork again became prominent
in the early station wagons (estate cars). Because such vehicles were limited production
variations of the standard models, it wasn’t financially viable to build the tooling
required to press the body panels so a partially complete cars were used
(often by an external specialist), onto which was added the required coachwork,
all fashioned in timber in the same manner used for centuries. In the US, the
cars were known as woodie wagons (sometimes as "woody" in the UK where the same
techniques were used to create "shooting brakes") and the more expensive were truly fine examples of the
cabinet-maker’s art, the timbers sometimes carefully chosen to match the interior appointments. So much
did the highly-polished creations resemble the fine oak, walnut and mahogany
furniture with which the rich were accustomed to being around that they began
to request sedans and convertibles built in the same way and the industry
responded with top-of-the-range models with timber doors and panels replacing
the pressed metal used on the cheaper versions.
"Woodie" is a footnote also in political history. Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924; US president 1913-1921) was thought a remote, austere figure and not one much associated with the "common touch" politicians like to possess (or fake when it proves advantageous) so he was one day most pleased to hear someone in the crowd he was addressing call him "Woodie". Apparently, in his whole life he'd never heard any speak of him with an affectionate diminutive and he'd envied his popular predecessor (Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919; US president 1901-1909) who enjoyed many monikers including "Teddy" & "TR" although it's said he despised the former, thinking it effeminate and would rather have been remembered as "the colonel", a reference to his military exploits leading the charge up San Juan Heights during the Spanish-American War (1898). When a delighted Wilson got off the stage he said to an aide: "Did you hear that? He called me Woodie!".
1947 Nash Ambassador sedan (left), 1948 Chrysler Town & Country convertible (centre) and 1947 Cadillac Series 75 Limousine 1947 (right). Such was the appeal of the intricate woodwork that in the 1940s, manufacturers offered it on very expensive models although the timber offered no functional advantage over metal construction.
General Motors (GM) in 1935 actually introduced an all-steel model with station wagon coachwork but it was on a light-truck chassis (shades of the twenty-first century) and intended more for commercial operators; nobody in the pre-war years followed GM’s example. The woodies were of course less practical and in some climates prone to deterioration, especially when the recommended care and maintenance schedules were ignored but demand continued and some returned to the catalogue in 1946 when production of civilian automobiles resumed from the war-time hiatus but these lines were almost all just the 1942 cars with minor updates. By 1949, the manufacturers had introduced their genuinely new models, the construction of which was influenced by the lessons learned during the war years when factories had been adapted to make a wide range of military equipment. Although woodies remained briefly available in some of the new bodies, one innovation which emerged from this time was the new “all steel” station wagon which was not only cheaper to produce than the labor-intensive woodies but something ideally suited to the emerging suburban populations and it would for decades be one of the industry’s best-sellers, decline not setting in until the mid-1970s. For sociologists, the station wagon (as the second vehicle in the two-car households rising prosperity permitted) was one component in a phenomenon which included a shift to suburban living and the emergence vast of shopping malls.
1949 Ford Custom Convertible “single spinner” (left) and 1951 Ford Country Squire “twin spinner” (right).
US manufacturers for decades glued on the appliqué. Some were worse than others.
Although by the mid-1950s, the all-steel bodies had in the US replaced all but the handful of coach-built wagons made for those who valued exclusivity more than practicality, there was still a nostalgic longing for the look of timber. It was too expensive to use the real stuff but what was adapted was DI-NOC, (Diurno Nocturna, from the Spanish, literally “daytime-nighttime” and translated for marketing purposes as “beautiful day & night”), an embossed vinyl or polyolefin material with a pressure-sensitive adhesive backing produced since the 1930s and perfected by Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing (3M) (the corporation not to be confused with the "Three Ms" of the 1950s who were the actresses Mamie Van Doren (b 1931), Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) & Jayne Mansfield (1933–1967), the "blonde bombshells" of the era). Described as an “architectural finish”, it was used mostly for interior design purposes in hundreds of patterns and was able to be laid over a variety of substrates such as drywall, metal, and laminate. Remarkably effective at emulating (at a distance) more expensive materials such as wood, leather, marble, metal or granite, what the manufacturers did was not re-create the appearance of the original woodies but instead unleash the designers on the large side-surfaces of the modern Amerian car, the results mostly variations of a theme and polarizing, the DI-NOC appliqués something one either loved or hated.
It was the Americans who fell in love with the look and in the second half of the twentieth century a wide range of cars, large and small (most of them station wagons) were available, off the showroom floor, complete with a faux-woodgrain appliqué glued to the flanks and often the tailgate. 3M claimed it looked exactly like the real thing and at night, that really was true although, close-up, daylight exposed reality like the "ugly lights" a night-club turns on at closing time, something especially obvious in a DI-NOCed machine which had spent a couple of summers baking under an Arizona sun. Still, nobody actually claimed it was real wood and unlike something subtle like a badge, a dozen-odd square feet of DI NOC plastered on the sides was a way of telling the neighbors you bought the most expensive model. Detroit had established colonies in England, Australia and Germany and there they tried to export the DI-NOC idea; the Prussians weren’t tempted but Ford did offer an embellished Cortina in the UK and the Falcon Squire in Australia. The ventures proved brief and unsuccessful and Ford never bothered to trouble the Germans or French with the feature.
Extracts from Ford Australia's brochures for the 1964 XM Falcon Future (top) and 1964 XM Falcon Squire (bottom). The Futura's bling appealed to the market, the Squire's Di-NOC did not.
The Australian experiment has been blamed on the local operation being headed by an American, the implication being he presumed what had great appeal in the northern 50 states would be just as attractive in the southern 51st. The Squire was introduced with the XL range (1962-1964) which was both a cosmetic update (with the “Thunderbird” roofline) and a much needed strengthening of the underpinnings which in the original XK (1960-1962) had proved too fragile for the roads (or lack of them) in the outback. The success of the XL meant the Falcon survived in Australia, something genuinely in doubt when local conditions exposed the lack of robustness in the XK but the DI-NOCed Squire didn’t greatly contribute to the revival; of the 75,756 XL Falcons produced, just 728 were Squires. In 1962-1964, had Ferrari managed a run of 728 roadsters it would have been hailed an outstanding success but that number of Falcons was derisory and although the model was carried over when the XM (1964-1965) was released, that was the end and no more fake wood appeared down under between then and when Ford’s local production ceased in 2016. However, although Australians never warmed to the DI-NOC, they clearly liked bling because the up-market Falcon Futura introduced with the XL sold so well when the XP range (1965-1966) was released it included and even more luxurious Fairmont which was available both as a sedan and station wagon; both sold well.
One-off 1967 Ford Country Squire with Q-Code 428 V8 and four-speed manual transmission.
In the US, Ford for decades churned out the Country Squires by the thousand but there was the odd oddity. Like most big station wagons, almost all Country Squires were built for function and although the engines might sometimes be large (in the 1970s they were available with 429 & 460 cubic inch (7.0 & 7.5 litre) V8s), they were configured to carry or tow heavy loads and were thus sold almost always with heavy-duty automatic transmissions. In 1967 however, there was a one-off Country Squire built with the combination of a 428 cubic inch (7.0 litre) V8 in Q-Code configuration (the “Q” a marker of the engine's specification which included "Cobra Jet" style cylinder heads with larger valves, a four barrel carburetor (typically a 735 CFM (cubic foot per minute) Holley, a higher compression ration and exhaust manifolds with reduced impedance). The Q-Code 428 was the most powerful offered that year in full-sized Fords (except for 12 Ford XLs with the 427 V8 derived from a unit built for competition). Such vehicles are usually unicorns, often discussed and sometimes even created as latter-day “tributes” and are thus rarely "real" but the 1967 Country Squire is a genuine one-off and as a type may be unique not only among Fords but also the entire full-size ecosystem of the era. The tale is sometimes still repeated that Plymouth built a special order Belvedere station wagon at the request of Bill Harrah (1911–1978) of Harrah's Hotel and Casinos in Nevada (now part of Caesars Entertainment) with the 426 cubic inch (7.0 litre) HEMI V8 for the rapid transport of cash across the desert but that is a myth and the coda (that Harrah decided instead to build his own) is just as unverified. So the 1967 Country Squire is a curious period piece and a collectors’ item; despite its dilapidated appearance, its "one-of-one" status (much-prized in collector circles) meant that in 2020 it sold at auction in the US for almost US$50,000. When exhibited at the South Carolina’s Hilton Head Island Concours d’Elegance in November 2024, an entry on the car’s placard claimed production of the special order required the personal approval of Lee Iacocca (1924–2019), then vice-president of Ford’s car and truck group. The one-off wagon received a Palmetto Award in the “Barn Finds” class in which patina is a virtue.
1968 Mercury Park Lane convertible with “Yacht Deck Paneling”. It was to the 1968 Mercury Ford Australia turned when they needed some distinctive styling for their 1976 ZH Fairlane & Marquis, the previous model having suffered because there was insufficient product differentiation from the lower-price Falcon from which they were so obviously derived. Eight years old the look might have been but it created product differentiation and the consensus was it was a good choice, 1968 Fords & Mercurys judged better looking than what the corporation in the US offering in 1976. By then, the Australians didn’t consider adding Yacht Deck Paneling to the option list.
Away from station wagons where the woodie-look remained popular, public taste in the US clearly shifted in the late 1960s. Impressed by the industry’s solid sales numbers for “woodie” station wagons, Mercury decided those buying two-door hardtops and convertibles deserved the same choice and, for the 1968 season, “Yacht Deck Paneling” appeared in the catalogues as an option on the top-of-the-line Park Lane. Clearly not wishing to be thought deceptive, Mercury not only didn’t disguise the synthetic origins of the “simulated walnut-tone” appliqué, its advertising copy made a virtue of being faux, pointing out: “This paneling is tougher, longer-lasting than real wood… and every bit as beautiful” before concluding “wood-tone paneling has always been a good idea”.
Chrysler Newports with “Sportsgrain” option: 1968 convertible (left) and 1969 two-door hardtop (right). This was the era when the big cars came to be called “land yachts” so references to “yacht decks” and such were not inappropriate. Inefficient in so many ways, in their natural environment (“floating” effortlessly down the freeways, passengers and driver isolated within from the rest of the world), they excelled and there’s since been nothing quite like them.
That sales pitch must have convinced Chrysler “wood-tone paneling has always been a good idea” because it responded to what Mercury were doing by slipping onto the market the mid-season offering of the “Sportsgrain Newport”, available as a two-door hardtop or convertible, both with the simulated timber used on the corporation’s station wagons. A US$126 option, it was a deliberate attempt to evoke spirit of the high-priced Town and Country convertibles of the late 1940s but, because the T&C moniker had already been appropriated for the wagons, someone in marketing had to come with “sportsgrain” which now must seem mystifying to anyone unaware the first element of the portmanteau word was a nod to the convertibles of the early post-war years. Other than the large slab of vinyl, the “Sportsgrain” cars were standard Newports (then the cheapest of the Chrysler-branded models). While demand for appliqué-adorned station wagons remained strong, Chrysler in 1968 had no more success than Mercury in shifting hardtops & convertibles with the stuff glued on, only 965 of the former and 175 of the later being ordered which, nationwide, was not even one per dealer. Remarkably, the option returned for 1969 with the new “fuselage” body styling, possibly because the corporation, anticipating higher demand, had a warehouse full of 3M’s vinyl but, being simply glued on, maintaining the option would not have been an expensive exercise. Sales however must have been low, the survivors of the 1969 range rare and Chrysler have never disclosed the final season's production totals.
Advertising for 1983 Chrysler Town & Country (with "plush cloth and vinyl" rather than "fine Corinthian leather", left), 1946 Chrysler Town & Country Convertible Coupe (with real timber, top right) and 1983 Chrysler LeBaron Town & Country Mark Cross Convertible (bottom right). LeBaron Carrossiers (1920-1953) was one of the storied named in US coach-building and during the 1920s & 1930s crafted bodies on chassis from some of the world's most expensive lines including Marmon, Isotta Fraschini, Chrysler Imperial, Rolls-Royce, Duesenberg, Lincoln and Packard. Changes in the post-war economy made such extravagances an unviable business and in 1953 the LeBaron brand was acquired by Chrysler which came to use it as a designation for higher-priced models, much as Ford for decades used Ghia.
A generation on, the public's restrained enthusiasm for appliqué adorned convertibles must have faded from Chrysler's corporate memory because between 1983-1986 there was the LeBaron convertible, recalling the post-war Town & Country range which used real timber. Now with a (minor) cult following because one appeared in the popular film Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), with some 1100 sold, the K-Platform based LeBaron Convertible coincidentally almost matched the 1968 run although it took four years to achieve the modest feat. Chrysler's front wheel drive (FWD) K-Platform (the so-called "K Cars", 1981-1995) is treated now as emblematic of the "Malaise Era" but it's no exaggeration to say it rescued Chrysler from looming bankruptcy and it yielded literally dozens of variants (many of them with only slight differences) including even an elongated "Executive" offered as a five seat sedan on a 124 inch (3150 mm) wheelbase (1983-1984) or a seven seat limousine (complete with partition) with a 131 inch (3327 mm) wheelbase. All the Executives were underpowered (the early versions with a 2.2 litre (134 cubic inch) four cylinder engine especially so); the "Malaise Era" gained the name for a reason.
Real and sort of real. 1964 Morris Minor Traveller (left) and 1961 advertisement for the Morris Mini Traveller (centre).
In the UK, one traditional woodie (there often called spelled "woody") did enjoy a long life, the Morris Traveller, introduced in 1953 as an addition to the Minor range (1948-1972 (1975 in overseas markets)) remaining in production until 1971, the body aft of the doors formed with structural ash timber members which supported infill panels in painted aluminum. However, while the Minor Traveller was real, the subsequent Mini Traveller (1961–1969) was a curious hybrid: Structurally it was exactly the same car as the Mini station wagon, the external members genuine ash but wholly decorative affectations which were attached directly to the steel body, the "infill" panels an illusion. The Morris version was marketed as the "Traveller" while Austin sold it as the "Countryman" but, in the way the corporation in the era handled "badge engineering", the two were identical but for the names and production of both lasted from 1960 to 1969. The original Mini enjoyed a forty-year life (1959-2000) but when in 2001 BMW introduced their retro-flavored take on the idea, although they resurrected a few motifs, they didn’t bring back a woodie, fake, faux or real, restricting themselves to calling the station wagon (ohne die Balken) the "Mini Countryman", possibly preferring to leave "Traveller" retired because admiration for the Romani people (known also as Travellers or Gypsies) is not universal.
Surreal: 1960 Jaguar XK150 3.4 FHC (fixed head coupé) shooting brake (Foxbat), creating by grafting the rear coach-work of a Morris Minor Traveller.
The Morris Minor Traveller was the last true woodie in production and is now a thing in the lower reaches of the collector market but there's one less available for fans because one was sacrificed to a project by by industrial chemist and noted Jaguar enthusiast, the late Geoffrey Stevens, construction undertaken between 1975-1977. He wanted the Jaguar XK150 shooting brake the factory never made so blended a XK150 FHC with the rear compartment of a Morris Minor Traveller of similar vintage. Dubbed the Foxbat (the influence of a Soviet pilot who in 1976 defected to the West, taking his MiG-25 "Foxbat" with him), it has been restored as a charming monument to English eccentricity and even the usually uncompromising originality police among the Jaguar community seem fond of it. In a nice touch (and typical of an engineer’s attention to detail), a “Foxbat” badge was hand-cut, matching the original Jaguar script. Other than the coach-work, the XK150 is otherwise “matching-numbers” (chassis number S825106DN; engine number V7435-8).
