Victorian decorative arts

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Dante Gabriel Rossetti's drawing room at No. 16 Cheyne Walk, 1882, by Henry Treffry Dunn. Henry Treffry Dunn Rossetti and Dunton at 16 Cheyne Walk.jpg
Dante Gabriel Rossetti's drawing room at No. 16 Cheyne Walk, 1882, by Henry Treffry Dunn.

Victorian decorative arts refers to the style of decorative arts during the Victorian era. Victorian design is widely viewed as having indulged in a grand excess of ornament. The Victorian era is known for its interpretation and eclectic revival of historic styles mixed with the introduction of Asian and Middle Eastern influences in furniture, fittings, and interior decoration. The Arts and Crafts movement, the aesthetic movement, Anglo-Japanese style, and Art Nouveau style have their beginnings in the late Victorian era and gothic period.

Contents

Architecture

St. Pancras railway station and Midland Hotel in London, opened in 1868 St Pancras Railway Station 2012-06-23.jpg
St. Pancras railway station and Midland Hotel in London, opened in 1868

Victorian architecture is a series of architectural revival styles in the mid-to-late 19th century. Victorian refers to the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901), called the Victorian era, during which period the styles known as Victorian were used in construction. However, many elements of what is typically termed "Victorian" architecture did not become popular until later in Victoria's reign, roughly from 1850 and later. The styles often included interpretations and eclectic revivals of historic styles (see Historicism). The name represents the British and French custom of naming architectural styles for a reigning monarch. Within this naming and classification scheme, it followed Georgian architecture and later Regency architecture, and was succeeded by Edwardian architecture.

Although Victoria did not reign over the United States, the term is often used for American styles and buildings from the same period, as well as those from the British Empire.

Interior decoration and design

Interior decoration and interior design of the Victorian era are noted for orderliness and ornamentation. A house from this period was idealistically divided in rooms, with public and private space carefully separated. A bare room was considered to be in poor taste, so every surface was filled with objects that reflected the owner's interests and aspirations.

The parlour was the most important room in a home and was the showcase for the homeowners where guests were entertained. The dining room was the second-most important room in the house. The sideboard was most often the focal point, which attracts visitor’s eyes immediately when they go into a room or space, [1] of the dining room and very ornately decorated.

Old interiors

Preserved interiors, private spaces

Preserved interiors, public spaces

Walls and ceilings

The choice of paint color on the walls in Victorian homes was said to be based on the use of the room. Hallways that were in the entry hall and the stair halls were painted a somber gray so as not to compete with the surrounding rooms. Most people marbleized the walls or the woodwork. Also on walls it was common to score into wet plaster to make it resemble blocks of stone. Finishes that were either marbleized or grained were frequently found on doors and woodwork. "Graining" was meant to imitate woods of higher quality that were more difficult to work. There were specific rules for interior color choice and placement. The theory of “harmony by analogy” was to use the colors that lay next to each other on the color wheel. And the second was the “harmony by contrast” that was to use the colors that were opposite of one another on the color wheel. There was a favored tripartite wall that included a dado or wainscoting at the bottom, a field in the middle and a frieze or cornice at the top. This was popular into the 20th century. Frederick Walton who created linoleum in 1863 created the process for embossing semi-liquid linseed oil, backed with waterproofed paper or canvas. It was called Lincrusta and was applied much like wallpaper. This process made it easy to then go over the oil and make it resemble wood or different types of leather. On the ceilings that were 8–14 feet the color was tinted three shades lighter than the color that was on the walls and usually had a high quality of ornamentation because decorated ceilings were favored.

Wallpaper

Wallpaper and wallcoverings became accessible for increasing numbers of householders with their wide range of designs and varying costs. This was due to the introduction of mass production techniques and, in England, the repeal in 1836 of the Wallpaper tax introduced in 1712.

Wallpaper was often made in elaborate floral patterns with primary colors (red, blue, and yellow) in the backgrounds and overprinted with colours of cream and tan. This was followed by Gothic art inspired papers in earth tones with stylized leaf and floral patterns. William Morris was one of the most influential designers of wallpaper and fabrics during the latter half of the Victorian period. Morris was inspired and used Medieval and Gothic tapestries in his work. Embossed paper were used on ceilings and friezes.

Furniture

The Chevy Chase Sideboard by Gerrard Robinson. Often considered to be one of the finest furniture pieces of the 19th century and an icon of Victorian furniture. Chevy Chase Sideboard.png
The Chevy Chase Sideboard by Gerrard Robinson. Often considered to be one of the finest furniture pieces of the 19th century and an icon of Victorian furniture.

There was not one dominant style of furniture in the Victorian period. Designers rather used and modified many styles taken from various time periods in history like Gothic, Tudor, Elizabethan, English Rococo, Neoclassical and others. The Gothic and Rococo revival style were the most common styles to be seen in furniture during this time in history.

Oscar Wilde's aesthetic of Victorian decoration

Chief among the literary practitioners of decorative aestheticism was Oscar Wilde, who advocated Victorian decorative individualism in speech, fiction, and essay-form. [2] Wilde’s notion of cultural enlightenment through visual cues echoes that of Alexander von Humboldt [3] who maintained that imagination was not the Romantic figment of scarcity and mystery but rather something anyone could begin to develop with other methods, including organic elements in pteridomania. [4]

By changing one’s immediate dwelling quarters, one changed one’s mind as well; [5] Wilde believed that the way forward in cosmopolitanism began with as a means eclipse the societally mundane, and that such guidance would be found not in books or classrooms, but through a lived Platonic epistemology. [6] An aesthetic shift in the home’s Victorian decorative arts reached its highest outcome in the literal transformation of the individual into cosmopolitan, as Wilde was regarded and noted among others in his tour of America. [7]

For Wilde, however, the inner meaning of Victorian decorative arts is fourfold: one must first reconstruct one’s inside so as to grasp what is outside in terms of both living quarters and mind, whilst hearkening back to von Humboldt on the way to Plato so as to be immersed in contemporaneous cosmopolitanism, [8] thereby in the ideal state becoming oneself admirably aesthetical.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aestheticism</span> Art movement emphasizing aesthetic considerations over social values

Aestheticism was an art movement in the late 19th century which valued the appearance of literature, music and the arts over their functions. According to Aestheticism, art should be produced to be beautiful, rather than to teach a lesson, create a parallel, or perform another didactic purpose, a sentiment best illustrated by the slogan "art for art's sake." Aestheticism originated in 1860s England with a radical group of artists and designers, including William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It flourished in the 1870s and 1880s, gaining prominence and the support of notable writers such as Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eastlake movement</span> Architectural movement

The Eastlake movement was a nineteenth-century architectural and household design reform movement started by British architect and writer Charles Eastlake (1836–1906). The movement is generally considered part of the late Victorian period in terms of broad antique furniture designations. In architecture the Eastlake style or Eastlake architecture is part of the Queen Anne style of Victorian architecture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neo-Grec</span> Neoclassical revival style of the mid-to-late 19th century

Néo-Grec was a Neoclassical Revival style of the mid-to-late 19th century that was popularized in architecture, the decorative arts, and in painting during France's Second Empire, or the reign of Napoleon III (1852–1870). The Néo-Grec vogue took as its starting point the earlier expressions of the Neoclassical style inspired by 18th-century excavations at Pompeii, which resumed in earnest in 1848, and similar excavations at Herculaneum. The style mixed elements of the Graeco-Roman, Pompeian, Adam and Egyptian Revival styles into "a richly eclectic polychrome mélange." "The style enjoyed a vogue in the United States, and had a short-lived impact on interior design in England and elsewhere."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Interior design</span> Design of interior spaces to benefit its occupants

Interior design is the art and science of enhancing the interior of a building to achieve a healthier and more aesthetically pleasing environment for the people using the space. An interior designer is someone who plans, researches, coordinates, and manages such enhancement projects. Interior design is a multifaceted profession that includes conceptual development, space planning, site inspections, programming, research, communicating with the stakeholders of a project, construction management, and execution of the design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Living room</span> Room in a residential house for relaxing and socializing

In Western architecture, a living room, also called a lounge room, lounge, sitting room, or drawing room, is a room for relaxing and socializing in a residential house or apartment. Such a room is sometimes called a front room when it is near the main entrance at the front of the house. In large, formal homes, a sitting room is often a small private living area adjacent to a bedroom, such as the Queens' Sitting Room and the Lincoln Sitting Room of the White House.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polychrome</span> Art terminology and color method

Polychrome is the "practice of decorating architectural elements, sculpture, etc., in a variety of colors." The term is used to refer to certain styles of architecture, pottery or sculpture in multiple colors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Interior architecture</span> Design of a building or shelter from inside out

Interior architecture is the design of a building or shelter from inside out, or the design of a new interior for a type of home that can be fixed. It can refer to the initial design and plan used for a building's interior, to that interior's later redesign made to accommodate a changed purpose, or to the significant revision of an original design for the adaptive reuse of the shell of the building concerned. The latter is often part of sustainable architecture practices, whereby resources are conserved by "recycling" a structure through adaptive redesign.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward William Godwin</span> British architect

Edward William Godwin was a progressive English architect-designer, who began his career working in the strongly polychromatic "Ruskinian Gothic" style of mid-Victorian Britain, inspired by The Stones of Venice, then moved on to provide designs in the "Anglo-Japanese taste" of the Aesthetic movement and Whistler's circle in the 1870s. Godwin's influence can be detected in the later Arts and Crafts movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Morris & Co.</span> Decorative arts firm founded by William Morris

Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (1861–1875) was a furnishings and decorative arts manufacturer and retailer founded by the artist and designer William Morris with friends from the Pre-Raphaelites. With its successor Morris & Co. (1875–1940) the firm's medieval-inspired aesthetic and respect for hand-craftsmanship and traditional textile arts had a profound influence on the decoration of churches and houses into the early 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">C. F. A. Voysey</span> British architect and designer (1857–1941)

Charles Francis Annesley Voysey was an English architect and furniture and textile designer. Voysey's early work was as a designer of wallpapers, fabrics and furnishings in a Arts and Crafts style and he made important contribution to the Modern Style, and was recognized by the seminal The Studio magazine. He is renowned as the architect of several country houses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Green Room (White House)</span> Historic site in Washington, DC

The Green Room is one of three state parlors on the first floor of the White House, the home of the president of the United States. It is used for small receptions and teas. During a state dinner, guests are served cocktails in the three state parlors before the president, first lady, and a visiting head of state descend the Grand Staircase for dinner. The room is traditionally decorated in shades of green. The room is approximately 28 by 22.5 feet. It has six doors, which open into the Cross Hall, East Room, South Portico, and Blue Room.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lincoln Bedroom</span> Room on the White Houses second floor

The Lincoln Bedroom is a bedroom which is part of a guest suite in the southeast corner of the second floor of the White House in Washington, D.C. The Lincoln Sitting Room makes up the other part of the suite. The room is named for President Abraham Lincoln, who used the room as an office.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anglo-Japanese style</span> Hybrid artistic style

The Anglo-Japanese style developed in the United Kingdom through the Victorian period and early Edwardian period from approximately 1851 to the 1910s, when a new appreciation for Japanese design and culture influenced how designers and craftspeople made British art, especially the decorative arts and architecture of England, covering a vast array of art objects including ceramics, furniture and interior design. Important centres for design included London and Glasgow.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eclecticism in architecture</span> Architectural style

Eclecticism is a 19th and 20th century architectural style in which a single piece of work incorporates a mixture of elements from previous historical styles to create something that is new and original. In architecture and interior design, these elements may include structural features, furniture, decorative motives, distinct historical ornament, traditional cultural motifs or styles from other countries, with the mixture usually chosen based on its suitability to the project and overall aesthetic value.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Pabst</span> American furniture designer

Daniel Pabst was a German-born American cabinetmaker of the Victorian Era. He is credited with some of the most extraordinary custom interiors and hand-crafted furniture in the United States. Sometimes working in collaboration with architect Frank Furness (1839–1912), he made pieces in the Renaissance Revival, Neo-Grec, Modern Gothic, and Colonial Revival styles. Examples of his work are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sideboard (Edward William Godwin)</span>

This sideboard was designed by Edward William Godwin (1833–86), who was one of the most important exponents of Victorian Japonisme or Anglo-Japanese style, the appropriation of Japanese artistic styles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stencil House</span>

<i>The English House</i> Architectural book about England

The English House is a book of design and architectural history written by German architect Hermann Muthesius and first published in German as Das englische Haus in 1904. Its three volumes provide a record of the revival of English domestic architecture during the later part of the nineteenth century. The main themes he discusses are history, form and decor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kimbel & Cabus</span>

Kimbel & Cabus was a Victorian-era furniture and decorative arts firm based in New York City. The partnership was formed in 1862 between German-born cabinetmaker Anthony Kimbel and French-born cabinetmaker Joseph Cabus (1824–1894). The company was noted for its Modern Gothic and Anglo-Japanese style furniture, which it popularized at the 1876 Centennial Exposition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Modern Gothic style</span>

Modern Gothic, also known as Reformed Gothic, was an Aesthetic Movement style of the 1860s and 1870s in architecture, furniture and decorative arts, that was popular in Great Britain and the United States. A rebellion against the excessive ornament of Second Empire and Rococo Revival furniture, it advocated simplicity and honesty of construction, and ornament derived from nature. Unlike the Gothic Revival, it sought not to copy Gothic designs, but to adapt them abstract them, and apply them to new forms.

References

  1. Nguyen Hoang, Viet. "Focal Point In Interior Design". Stunninteriors.
  2. van der Plaat (2015), pp. 9–10.
  3. van der Plaat (2015), pp. 1–2, 12.
  4. Flanders (2002), pp. 200–202.
  5. van der Plaat (2015), pp. 11–14.
  6. van der Plaat (2015), pp. 11–16.
  7. Blanchard (1995), pp. 39–45.
  8. Monsman (2002), pp. 26–29.

Works cited