Victorian Furniture.

Although the years immediately following the French Revolution saw drastic social changes in almost all European countries, it was not until the end of the Empire that the most important of these became fully apparent. While it is an obvious truism to state the furniture reflects social custom, the evident differences in the relative importance of the social classes and the alterations in manners had significant effects both on the design and use of handmade furniture. Following each major war, changes have taken place in the general patterns of social behaviour at a significantly faster rate than usual. Prior to the Napoleonic Wars, life, especially among the upper classes, was a courtly minuet full of formal movements. This was reflected in the use of furniture, as well as its design; when not in use, furniture was arranged around the walls of the rooms, creating impressions of great formality, leaving large voids in the centres of rooms, which were only filled when the furniture was actually required. After the wars, this custom, even among the wealthy, ceased to be followed and the furniture was grouped naturally in the room ready for use.

It is also an almost inevitable concomitant of major wars that the centre of power shifts by an increase in the wealth and importance of the lower ends of the social strata with a corresponding and real reduction at the upper end. By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the centre of political and economic power was shifting towards the middle classes. Logically, the history of fitted and non fitted furniture must, and indeed does reflect this trend. There were, of course, still incredibly rich and powerful families, who furnished their houses in flamboyant style, but it was no longer the case that the rich completely set the fashions for others to try to follow, perhaps because the experience of the French aristocracy suggested that conspicuous overconsumption was not a trait likely to be viewed with approval. Even in Britain at this time, revolution was daily expected. Further, the number of major individual clients available to the cabinet-makers, in relation to the increasingly powerful and numerous middle classes, became relatively insignificant.

Throughout Europe, the old ruling classes had become less sure in their control of events, while the middle classes, who had achieved some measure of power during the course of the revolutionary period, were reluctant to return to a subservient role. It is true that during the period 1830 - 1848 the rulers of the German states reasserted their strength but the middle classes regained their position after the revolutions of 1848 - 1849.