While Victorian householders were still revelling in the comforts and novelties that mass production offered, designers pined for the individual craftsmanship of earlier centuries. Oddly, their yearning for the past led to progressive styles that gave a foretaste of today.

Cosily cluttered rooms with red flock wallpaper, heavy curtains and ample deep-buttoned seats draped with anti‑macassars were still at the height of their popularity during the 1870s. The love of curtaining had found yet another outlet in the massive portieres that now hung at the large, open arch between two rooms. To the majority of Victorians, this was the kind of living room to aspire to. (more…)

Beauty with usefulness was the aim of the Arts and Crafts movement’s followers, and their homes made a striking contrast with the crowded rooms of the same time furnished in mainstream taste. Although seen as progressive in its day, the Arts and Crafts style, developed largely by William Morris, showed a nostalgic yearning for the simple pre-industrial cottage. This living room combines dining and sitting room, echoing cottage life. Progressive people were furnishing their rooms like this as early as the 1870s but, as more designers worked in Arts and Crafts style, similar rooms were more common in the 1880s and 90s, and the momentum continued into Edwardian days. (more…)

Heavy handed Decor

Cosy family life remained the aim of mid- Victorians. This still demanded comfortable furnishings such as deep-buttoned chairs, ottomans and chesterfield sofas, but now everything had a heavier look, showed more wood — along the top of seat backs, for example — and bore fancy carving or fretwork. The front legs of the graceful balloon-back chairs were elaborated into carved cabrioles. (more…)

The enduring image of mid-Victorian style is a sombre drawing room with red flock wallpaper, heavy curtains and table covers trimmed with braids and fringes, thickly upholstered seating, and ornaments and knick-knacks jostling on the mantelpiece, on tables and on display shelves. In fact the clutter gathered gradually after 1850, but it was well established by the 1860s.

Mid-Victorian style is often dismissed as lack of style. Certainly it had no single vision, but embraced many visions with eclectic enthusiasm. Yet the numerous unrelated elements making up its cluttered effect were deliberately put together and the result was a recognisable look. It expressed what the newly rich chose to buy, and was the first style to reflect the taste of the broad middle band of society, not its small upper set. (more…)

Ornaments and knick-knacks crowded on every surface. Some were homemade, the result of the family’s female members keeping themselves busy — idleness was regarded as close to moral turpitude. The ladies made arrangements of wax flowers and fruits to sit under protective glass domes. They created pictures from feathers or shells, painted vases, decorated wooden plaques with poker work, embroidered Berl in-woolwork covers for footstools and workboxes, diligently stitched together patchwork for cushion covers, and crocheted antimacassars. (more…)

Piety, propriety and domestic comfort were the aims of early Victorian households. They expected sober family life to ensure the first two and industry gave them goods and money enough for the third. Moral certainty was not equalled by aesthetic certainty, however, and buyers turned to the past to prove their own good taste. (more…)

Setting aside a room of one’s house for books was an idea that developed slowly from the later 17th century onward. Before that, people had few books and these were usually kept in the closet or cabinet. There were outstanding exceptions, however, such as the celebrated diarist Samuel Pepys, who had a library lined with bookcases built especially to hold his collection of books. (more…)

Dinner consisted of a soup, fish, fricassee of chicken, cutlets, veal, hare, vegetables of all kinds, tart, melon, pineapple, grapes, peaches, nectarines with wine in proportion. Six servants wait upon us, a gentleman-inwaiting and a fat old housekeeper hovering round the door. Four hours later the door opens and in is pushed a supper of the same proportions.’ So the Countess of Granville recorded in 18 o a meal served just to her husband and herself. Food and drink were central to luxurious living and the wealthy offered guests dozens of dishes at dinner. (more…)

With a feverish desire to be in tune with high society, the well-to-do aped the taste of the Prince Regent’s court. The result was a Classical elegance with exotic flourishes.

No style more aptly named than Regency, for unlike most styles that bear the name of a current ruler, Regency has at its heart the tastes of the Prince Regent himself. The architects he employed set the style in buildings, and the furnishings in his homes were copied by the fashionable set. Even his critics fed off him by lampooning and caricaturing his scandalous private life and outrageous cronies. (more…)

Rococo STY LE was the height of fashion in the 1740s and 50s, but few purely Rococo rooms have survived in Britain. Perhaps it was too difficult to make a pleasing scheme of such profuse ornament with its swirling flowers and scrolls, asymmetric forms and figures caught in the instant of movement. Nevertheless, householders — especially in London — eager to be in tune with the latest trends, included Rococo features in some of their rooms. (more…)