Neoclassicism - England - Part 1

By the mid 1760s the spirit of Neoclassicism - the disciplined antithesis to frolicsome Rococo - was stirring the interests of fashionable English cabinet-makers, and the new movement led to enormous changes in handmade furniture styles during the next ten years. For several decades an elite minority had concerned themselves with the study of classical ornament, but it was not until the 1740s and 50s, with the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum, that a more general interest was stimulated.

In 1754 a young Edinburgh architect, Robert Adam, was sent on a grand tour which took him to Italy, at that time agog with interest in ancient Roman civilisation. There he met Giovanni Battista Piranesi whose highly imaginative approach to archaeology was the chief influence on Adam.
In 1758 he returned to his family architectural practice he shared with brother James in London and soon began to enjoy the patronage of the wealthy and fashionable. One of his first commissions was for the interior of Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire, and this was followed by work for Harewood House (with Chippendale), Syon House, Osterley Park, Newby Hall, Kenwood and several others. For many of them Adam not only designed the decorations but also the furniture of the principal rooms. His concept of interior decoration as a total entity led him to design the smallest details like keyhole escutcheons for doors, and fireplace grates. Many of his ceiling decorations were complemented by carpets of his own design on the floors.

Adam's interpretation of the styles of ancient Greece and Rome involved decoration rather than form. Classical details such as rams' heads, urns, festoons, anthemion (honeysuckle), paterae (carved rosettes) and trophies were applied to shapes based on the rectangle, the square, the circle or the oval. It was a copying of the essence rather than individual examples of the antique. After the asymmetrical fantasies of the Rococo the elegant linearity of the Neoclassical 'Adam' style which swept England in the late 1760s and 1770s must have been refreshing indeed.

A good deal of Adam fitted and non fitted furniture is gilded, and the fashion for Neoclassical furniture which he began stimulating an increase in the number of carvers and gilders working in London and the provinces towards the end of the 18th century. Painted furniture also came into favour under his influence. The intricacy of his decoration on, for example, mirrors and girandoles led to the use of new materials such as composition on wire for tracery and filigree ornament.

Another of his innovations was the use of a sideboard table in conjunction with a flanking pair of urns and pedestals and with a wine cooler underneath. This imposing arrangement was at first found suitable for the grand interiors of Adam himself, but was later taken up by the cabinet-makers of the gentry. The urns or vases (a favourite classical form) were used for storing cutlery or as water cisterns, while the pedestals held cupboards for plates, bottles and sometimes a chamber pot.