Victorian Furniture - The Biedermeier Style 1

The middle-class strength was perhaps the most important influence on handmade furniture design during the period, for they were less sure in their taste than the former aristocracy, and in great measure sought the comfort of the familiar in design. Thus, style became largely retrospective or imitative and indeed ended in direct reproduction. This lack of sureness of place and taste was not to end until the next generation was established in the last third of the period and the beginning of a truly innovatory design again appear.

Although there were outbursts of furnishing on a truly magnificent scale throughout the period which have some importance in the development of taste - such as the work undertaken for the Empress Eugenie or King Ludwig II of Bavaria - these are atypical, and it is among the bourgeoisie that the major influences are to be sought. Biedermeier, the name given to the styles found in Austria and Germany after the wars, is perhaps the best evidence of this.

The name Biedermeier derives from bieder, which is translated as plain or unpretentious, while 'Meier' is simply a common German surname. Academic argument has raged over the origins of the term Biedermeier but it was certainly in use with its present connotation by the 1890s. Loosely, the term approximates to the English 'Everyman', but a decidedly bourgeois Everyman. The style was a conscious revolt against the magnificence and ostentation of the Empire and its predecessors. Its beginnings lay in the Congress of Vienna, which created the Confederation of German States, and at which the citizens of Germany, exercising their new-found power, obtained for themselves rights that they had previously been denied. The formal end to the period is said to be in the years of revolution, 1848 - 1849; however, from 1830, and coinciding with a period of repression from the German princes, the style degenerated and it is argued that the true end of the style should be put at this earlier date. While there were many Biedermeier craftsmen, none of them gained the total pre-eminence of, say, Chippendale or Boulle. Not surprisingly, in view of the fact that the Austrian Empire was still the most powerful of the Germanic States, it is the Viennese whose names are best known, and of these, Josef Danhauser was the most important. Aside from the brilliance of his designs, he was also responsible for another significant strand in the history of fitted and non fitted furniture making: the beginning of factory techniques.

 

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.

The Empire Style - England - Part 5

This latter type had been among the luxury items imported to Europe through the East India companies during the 18th century. Magnificent cabinets, desks, mirrors and other furniture made of ebony or coromandel wood were intricately decorated with all-over patterns of inlaid and incised ivory. They were, of course very costly, and besides, supply could never keep up with demand, so the expedient of imitating the technique with black and white 'pen-painting' was hit upon. Predictably, most penwork designs - mainly on small pieces such as work boxes, tea caddies, chess tables, firescreens and miniature cabinets, but occasionally on quite large pieces of handmade furniture - were of chinoiseries and oriental plant motifs, but Neoclassical scenes were also favoured. Penwork was taken up by ladies amateurs often very skilfully, and was a popular pastime well into the Victoria period.

Simulated rosewood and bamboo furniture was generally made of beech and then painted and varnished appropriately. Japanning on furniture had by this time degenerated into a form of painting with varnish and chinoiserie was mostly superseded by painted flowers or Neoclassical motifs in a variety of colours. Japanned tin plate was used for some small pieces of furniture. The Pontypool factory produced dressing tables in this material, about 1805. This factory, which produced the very best japanned tin plate in Europe, closed in 1822, although many other factories, chiefly in Wolverhampton and Birmingham, flourished until the mid 19th century. The japanning done at Pontypool was a complex industrial process, with handpainted decoration burnt in. Rather similar decoration appears on examples of furniture made from various forms of papier-mache, but this material reached its heyday in the early part of the Victorian period.

Brass inlay, as we have seen, was a favourite form of embellishment for the rosewood furniture of the Regency period. The technique was French in origin (it is known as boullework after Andre-Charles Boulle who first perfected it in the later years of the 17th century) and was practised in London to a large extent by emigre craftsmen from the French Revolution. The most famous of these was Louis Le Gaigneur who set up his 'Buhl Manufactory' in Edgeware Road in the second decade of the 19th century. Another expert in the field was John Bullock, some of whose pieces are recorded. He made a pair of cupboards inlaid with brass for Blair Castle, Perth, in 1827. Brass, sometimes backed with pleated silk, was also used in decorative trellis patterns on the doors of cupboards or for small ornamental grilles round the tops of cabinets and side tables. Indeed, one of the most pronounced characteristics of fitted and non fitted furniture of the Regency period was the use of metal for all sorts of decoration.

Although the Grecian style persisted for many years - even into the pages of J. C. Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Cottage, Farm and Villa Architecture and Furniture, a comprehensive record of vernacular furniture published in 1833 - the elegant lines of the Regency began to give way, after around 1820, to the international hotch-potch of ideas and styles that characterised the greater part of the 19th century. By then, improvements in communications, changes in class structure and, above all, the extraordinarily rapid development of mechanical technology, had begun to change furniture making forever.

The Empire Style - England - Part 4

As well as large two-tier bookcases with glazed doors above and cupboards below, there was now the smaller chiffonier, or sets of tiered bookshelves, sometimes circular and sometimes incorporating a drawer or two. Other bits and pieces - trinkets, needlework, sheet music, papers and so on - were accommodated on the invaluable whatnot or etagere which first appeared in the 1790s and enjoyed popularity for the whole of the 19th century. Non fitted furniture such as occasional tables for all purposes proliferated, many of them of a more compact size than was popular in the 18th century but of heavier construction than before.

Indeed many items were made in conveniently small sizes by this time. The voluminous hooped skirts of the 18th century had given way to the straight flowing lines of the Empire style in ladies' dresses, and chairs in particular became correspondingly less capacious, with narrower seats and lighter construction. This lightness was sometimes enhanced by caning in the seats and backs.

The lofty overmantels and pier glasses which had dominated 18th century rooms were now superseded by oblong overmantels, often in three sections with gilt decoration in the Neoclassical manner, and by circular convex mirrors in gilt frames sometimes flanked by candle sconces. Upstairs the convenient cheval glass with its long adjustable mirror had arrived in the bedroom.

There were more decorative finishes in use at this period than ever before. Gilding was used a great deal for the showiest handmade furniture, sometimes on its own and sometimes in conjunction with dark woods such as ebony, mahogany, rosewood or simulated versions of them. Indeed, simulated effects were very popular as a cheaper but still fashionable alternative to such expensive commodities as rosewood, bamboo or ivory inlaid furniture.

To be continued tomorrow...

The Empire Style - England - Part 3

In furniture the Gothic taste was no less exciting than it had been in the mid 18th century. Chairs sported Gothic tracery in their backs (even if they had sabre legs and were made of simulated bamboo); Gothic arches and crenellations appeared on bookcases, and all kinds of handmade furniture sprouted crockets and cusps, trefoils and quatrefoils, arches and columns. On the whole, Gothic was reserved for heavier furniture - for the hall, dining room or library - rather than elegant drawing room pieces. It was left to a later generation, the Victorians, to revive gothicism in a more conscientiously archaeological way.

While Thomas Hope left the Gothic alone until late in his life (when it became one of his enthusiasms) another designer, this one a practical cabinet-maker, included many illustrations of Gothic furniture in his books. This was George Smith whose Collection of Designs for Household Furniture and Interior Decoration had first appeared in 1804 and 1805 but was issued in its most famous edition in 1808.
Smith 'Upholsterer and Cabinet-maker to HRH Prince of Wales', and later 'Upholsterer and Furniture Draughtsman to His Majesty, and Principal of the Drawing Academy', was much influenced by Hope, but translated his ideas into more practical terms for the furniture buying middle classes. His classicism was less disciplined but a great deal more comfortable than Hope's. His main claim to fame is said to have been his popularisation in England of the circular dining table and the ottoman, but several other items of fitted and non fitted furniture he illustrated, notably the chiffonier and the convex mirror, were to become indelibly associated with the Regency style. Smith later published A Collection of Ornamental Designs after the Antique (1812) and The Cabinet-makers' and Upholsterers' Guide (1826), but his first work provided by far the freshest and most vivid portrayal of Regency furniture.

While chinoiserie continued to flower in the exotic interiors of the Prince Regent and at the hands of ladies pursuing their 'fancy works' (never at the forefront of changes in taste) it was, generally speaking, out of fashion quite early in the 19th century. The Egyptian taste too had blown over by about 1810, much to the relief of critics like Rudolph Ackermann who wrote in his magazine The Repository of Arts, 'the barbarous Egyptian style, which a few years since prevailed, is succeeded by the classic elegance which characterised the most polished ages of Greece and Rome'.

'Classic elegance' did indeed prevail in the smartest interiors during this period, but a great deal of furniture was still made in styles deriving from the 18th century - gentle, convenient and very English.

To be continued tomorrow...

The Empire Style - England - Part 2

Thomas Hope was a collector of Egyptian as well as classical antiquities and at his country house, The Deepdene, in Surrey, he furnished an Egyptian room to show them off. But Hope's exoticism did not end there for he also incorporated decorations in Turkish, Chinese and 'Hindoo' styles - with hardly a vestige of comfort in any of them.

His Greek designs were the most lasting influence: anthemion motifs and Greek key patterns were used for decoration, and swans, griffins, caryatids or massive claw feet form supports, while rams' heads, lion masks and classical busts become terminals. Forms such as the X-stool and the klismos chair with sabre legs and often a tablet back were widely adopted  and variations of it persisted into the Victorian period. Hope had been called 'the man of chairs and tables, the gentleman of sofas', and it was probably in these items of non fitted furniture that his influence was greatest. He made widespread use of gilded metal mounts as decoration for furniture, a habit adopted by many cabinet-makers of the time.

The ideas embodied in hope's handmade furniture were distilled by contemporary cabinet-makers into what has become known as the Regency style. Strictly speaking, the Regency period encompassed the years from 1811-1820 when the Prince of Wales (the future George IV) acted as Regent during the illness of his father George III. It was associated with the flamboyant taste of the Prince Regent himself - epitomised by his extravagant pleasure dome, the Royal Pavilion, Brighton. However, the term Regency is now generally used to describe furniture of the first quarter of the 19th century, often much more restrained in design than anything associated with the Prince Regent and much less pedantic than the designs of Thomas Hope, but still influenced by both of them.

Brighton Pavilion was an oriental fantasy; its architecture was vaguely Indian and much of its interior decoration was Chinese. The furnishings included chairs, sofas and tables of bamboo, and this provoked a general fashion for bamboo furniture, much of it simulated from stained or painted beechwood, which persisted for several decades.

One style which hope avoided in Household Furniture but which found its way intermittently into all kinds of Regency furniture was the Gothic. Often mixed indiscriminately with the Neoclassical or the Oriental, the Gothic taste was associated with romanticism. Its most important champion in the early 19th century was William Beckford, a rich a reclusive eccentric whole Fonthill Abbey, a vast folly built at ruinous expense by the architect James Wyatt (and rebuilt several times when it fell down in the course of construction), towered above the Wiltshire countryside. People flocked to see this Gothic extravaganza, and artists like Turner painted it but, like the Gothic taste itself, it had insecure foundations, and it crashed magnificently to the ground only 25 years after it was built.

  

The Empire Style - England - Part 1

The opening years of the 19th century saw a renewed enthusiasm among the English both for Neoclassicism and for the Gothic taste. Although the Neoclassical style introduced by Adam and other architects in the 1760s had never really died out, it had become watered down and overlaid with non-classical influences, particularly from France. The new Greek revival was more strictly purist in its search for classical form and design and, again, the influence was mainly French. The Prince of Wales, a supporter of the Whigs and a sympathiser with the revolutionary aspirations of the French, led the fashion for classicism and many of his commissions were carried out by Frenchmen.

By the opening years of the 19th century the classical designs of the French architects Fontaine and Percier were being widely circulated, but at the same time, a distinctly English version of the Greek revival style was emerging. Its chief influence was the architect Henry Holland, who had been in charge of the refurbishing of Carlton House for the Prince of Wales and also worked for many other eminent Whigs. he was the close friend of another Greek revivalist, Charles Heathcote Tatham, whose Etchings of Ancient Ornamental Architecture, published in 1799, proved invaluable to contemporary designers. In his furniture, Holland made use of darker woods, especially rosewood which began to replace satinwood for the best quality handmade furniture. Ormolu (gilt bronze) mounts and brass inlays were also beginning to be used in preference to marquetry or painted decoration.

The most enthusiastic exponent of the Greek revival in England was the wealthy dilettante Thomas Hope, whose book, Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, was published in 1807, a year after Holland's death. This was mainly a record of Hope's London house in Duchess Street and the fitted and non fitted furniture he had designed specifically for it to complement his remarkable collection of classical antiquities. It contained designs in the Egyptian style as well as the Grecian.

Napoleon's campaigners in Egypt in 1798 had stimulated interest in the antiquities there, and Egyptian motifs such as sphinxes, terms and hieroglyphic figures began to appear on furniture soon afterwards, often intermingled with classical ornament. An especially English brand of Egyptian taste, manifested in the occasional appearance of crocodile heads of furniture, was stimulated by Nelson's victory at the Nile in 1798. while the national nautical interest fostered by the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 found expression in rope-back or Trafalgar chairs. Anchors and dolphins also appeared on furniture about this time as decorative features. Of these, the dolphin was the longer lasting and was used on chairs and table legs for the following two decades.

...to be continued tomorrow