Gothic and Elizabethan Styles

Possibly the most retrospective of all these styles was the Gothic, which had seen a new flowering during the 18th century in England but which achieved its most popular heights, both in Europe and America during the 19th century. In the course of the 1820s, George IV was engaged on the renovation of Windsor Castle, and a great deal of the work was done in the Gothic style. Much of the handmade furniture design was entrusted to Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, who was only 15 when first commissioned. Pugin, as well as being a talented designer, was also an extremely able self-publicist, and above all it was this that enabled him to obtain such a commanding influence over his contemporaries.

 

Because of his extremely strong religious faith, he became convinced that Gothic was the 'only true style of architecture' and therefore by extension, of fitted and non fitted furniture design, but even he was never able satisfactorily to solve the difficult transition between ornament that was suitable for buildings and ornament that was suitable for tables and chairs. His designs, however, appealed strongly to the middle-class mass market, for it was a taste with which they were instantly familiar from their religious observances. While in his hands the style had some hold on everyday reality, in the hands of less restrained practitioners it could be positively dangerous and he himself commented on the danger of impalement on irrelevant crockets or of cracked shins on stray flying buttresses.

Pugin was a compulsive worker, cramming more into his 40 years than most men could into 100. Perhaps the work for which he is best known is that undertaken for the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster, where, aside from any involvement with the design of the building itself, the subject of acrimonious pamphleteering between the sons of Pugin and Sir Charles Barry, the official architect, he was certainly responsible for the design of most of the furniture. This reflects his conscientious and scholarly approach to Gothic, but was without the more excessive detail of his earlier work, for he himself publicly decried his own designs for Windsor Castle. He died in 1852, worn out it is said, by the work that he undertook for the Great Exhibition of 1851, when he was responsible for the Medieval Court. This was the type of work, involving committees and commissioners that he disliked most, being more accustomed and indeed better suited to working on his own.

Not surprisingly, in view of the English influence in Germany, especially on the northern states, the taste developed there as well, and in the international exhibitions so popular during the period, the German and English craftsmen vied with each other to produce the most extravagant colossi for the stupefaction of the juries. Scale in these special pieces seems to have become unimportant: surfaces that logically should be at waist level are not reached until eye level, giving a sense of having strayed into Brobdingnag. One of the foremost makers of this type was Karl Leistler of Vienna, who made a display cabinet in this style for presentation to Queen Victoria by the Austrian emperor, which was received with approbation at the Great Exhibition.

to be continued tomorrow...