Victorian buffet sideboards were large and highly decorative and primarily built to showcase a family’s wealth rather than serve food from. However it was particularly the Arts and Crafts movement that set about simplifying the sideboard to something essentially more fit for purpose.
Charles Eastlake’s Reformed Gothic earlier in the 19th century had already disposed of (more…)
By the 1840s, taste for highly regimented classic architectural lines was disappearing in favour of something much more eclectic and exotic.
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The speed of industrial production during Victoria’s reign created in its wake many critics. Although voiced by people like Thomas Carlyle and Charles Dickens, dissention was also to be seen within art, design and culture. In fashion, there were reactions against the tight laced bustle and in commerce against hard and fast American selling; even colours seemed to suggest one side of the cultural divide where bright purples and greens suggested the new aniline dyes of mechanised processes where pastel colours were produced by more natural means.
The stalwart Victorian wing arm chair also came under attack where Morris and Co. produced their own version of a hand made rush seated Sussex arm chair which, for him and his followers, promoted the work of the artisan rather than the machine. William Morris politically and aesthetically was very much against the machine age and Victorian mass production and through the Arts and (more…)
The lighter, late 18th century English Neo-classical furniture, designed by Sheraton was now being eclipsed in favour of generally heavier made furniture. Designers such as Thomas Hope and George Smith, influenced by the architectural qualities of French decorators such as Fontaine and Percier, were producing much heavier pieces than those made by Sheraton a few years earlier.
Rosewood was now replacing satinwood, very popular during the Neo-classical period, although mahogany still remained popular and French brass inlay boulle work also came back into fashion. These heavier Neo-classical forms remained in vogue for the first quarter of the 19th century until they began to compete with revivals of historicist styles such as Jacobean and Gothic. The French Rococo or ‘Louis Quatorze style’ also made a revival during this period but these new 19th century pieces were hybrids of earlier period (more…)
Although mass production during the Victorian era had created a much wider domestic furniture market, towards the latter part of the 19th century there was growing criticism that aesthetics were being lost where manufacturers were purely copying decorative styles of the past.
A main exponent for change was the renowned painter, decorator, political activist and general cultural icon William Morris (1834-96) who wanted to bring about reform across the arts generally. For Morris, it was a retrospective to a simpler time where the craftsman, rather than the machine, was celebrated and this focus became part of a manifesto for the Arts and Crafts movement. Other Victorian worthies such as John Ruskin (1819-1900) and A W N Pugin (1812-52) also looked to the qualities of the artisan (more…)
Those antique collectors seeking antique bedroom furniture should know that of Ambrose Heal. Heal had sold mainly bedroom furniture from its inception as a retailer in 1810 through to the 1880s and had led the field in good design throughout the period. Their furniture represented a wealth of revival styles, from the Grecian, Gothic, the Italian Renaissance and French Rococo to produce many examples of fine bedroom furniture for their wealthy clients. (more…)
From hidden messages in Pre-Raphaelite paintings to trompe l’oeil and the obscure narrative device, Victorians were infatuated with intrigue and history that would become intertwined into their everyday lives.
Iconic panels could be introduced into handmade wood panelled corner cabinets and huge medieval styled desks and sideboards. The finest and most highly prized examples contained panels with paintings by Pre-Raphaelite artists such as Rossetti, Madox Brown, Morris and Burne-Jones to recreate medieval splendours. The handcraftsmanship of these pieces also celebrated the return of the artisan, which was the raison d’être of the Arts and Crafts Movement. (more…)
Names like William Morris, John Ruskin and Archibald Knox have become synonymous with the Arts and Crafts’ rebellion against Victorian mass production. Their vision was a return to the celebration of the individual craftsman through their simply built furniture, predominately made of English oak. Pieces of antique furniture made under the Arts and Crafts banner during the late 19th century are easily recognisable therefore through their simplicity and restraint against the flamboyance of Victorian revivals.
Along with the instantly recognisable handmade pieces came the Arts and Crafts vision for a return to the simple life. Colleges supported by C R Ashbee’s Guild of Handicraft were set up in 1880’s Whitechapel in London where working men were taught design in the fields of coppersmithing, lithography and cabinet making. The items that were made would then be sold to (more…)
The excesses of Victorian furniture design prompted the Arts and Crafts movement to follow Gothic principles of good craftsmanship rather than the machine made revivalist styles that were flooding the Victorian furniture market at the time. William Morris was the main exponent of the Arts and Crafts furniture movement and under his commercial banner many of his colleagues were hand crafting pieces such as the buffet sideboard, tables and chairs which all happily exposed the hand made elements and the skill of the artisans who made them.
Others that moved along similar philosophical lines to the Arts and Crafts were people such as Charles Eastlake who said that there should be an ‘honesty’ in good furniture design where its real purpose should be (more…)
In the middle of the flourishing revivals of the Victorian period, the simplicity of Arts and Crafts designs must have seemed incongruous to the prevailing styles that were being recreated in such profusion. However, this is just what the Arts and Crafts movement set out to do. Its predominant use of oak rather than exotic hardwoods, its elements of hand chiselling and simple rather than ostentatious design sought to epitomise what exponents felt to be lacking in Victorian culture. Theirs was a return to the celebration of the skill of the artisan (more…)