Patterns and Styles Galore

Since Jacquard looms were now generally used in the Yorkshire woollen mills and the silk mills of Macclesfield and Manchester, elaborate woven patterns in furnishing damasks and brocades were plentiful. Among roller- printed cottons there were some Audubon flower and bird prints and many showy designs of roses and hydrangeas. The light, bright yellows, greens and- scarlet of Regency times continued to be favourites for a time, but by about 1840 bottle-green, crimson and other darker colours were preferred.

In carpets, too, patterns became available from the power looms of carpet-weaving centres such as Kidderminster, Wilton, Axminster, Halifax, Edinburgh and Kilmarnock. Most in tune with the times were the tapestry carpets made from 1832 and especially the multicoloured, profusely patterned Axminsters available from 1839.

Antique Collector MagazineDecoration within one house was as varied and piecemeal as style generally. Sober Neoclassical and Gothic or Tudor styles were thought apt for ‘masculine’ rooms, notably dining rooms and libraries, while a lighter touch suited the ‘feminine’ drawing-rooms and boudoirs. Here the Rococo Revival came into its own.

Many people remained unaffected by fashion. Their rooms were simply furnished, and papered with reticent floral prints, perhaps with a stencilled border. This was a style also for lesser bedrooms and servants’ rooms — and any house of some substance had at least one live-in servant. A range of cheap furniture was made for these rooms, including caned bedroom chairs, painted pine chests-ofdrawers, and cast-iron bedsteads.

Science has Say on Style

For fashionable principal rooms, however, schemes were more daring. Many designers heeded theories on the colour spectrum, and believed science could help them in choosing successful colour combinations. Science also had its say on curtains. Fringes, tassels and braids abounded, but swags above the curtains were declared by medical wisdom to harbour dust, even vermin. Stiffened pelmets called lambrequins were used, or curtains were hung on rings from poles left unconcealed. Roller blinds — some of them painted to look like stained glass — were also used.

In the bedroom, where floral-patterned chintzes were popular, drapes around the bed were reduced in the cause of hygiene. Instead, a canopy was suspended from the wall or ceiling to hang curtains at the bedhead only.

Medical wisdom had nothing to say of ladies’ corsets, an indispensable means to the fashionable tiny waist, which could hamper breathing until the wearer swooned. Ever more voluminous ankle-length dresses were pushed outwards by up to nine petticoats. Sleeves were a great puffed leg-of-lamb shape until the 184os when a sloping shoulder came in, emphasised by flat folds around the shoulders and down to the waist.

Gentlemen, however, were comfortably dressed. Their light-coloured trousers were narrowly cut while their dark frock-coats, full-skirted to near knee length, were left unbuttoned at the waist and fastened high on the chest. High collars were lowered and had a narrow cravat tied in a wide bow.

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