Victorian decorative arts

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti's drawing room at No. 16 Cheyne Walk, 1882, by Henry Treffry Dunn.

Victorian decorative arts refers to the style of

aesthetic movement, Anglo-Japanese style, and Art Nouveau style
have their beginnings in the late Victorian era and gothic period.

Architecture

This section is an excerpt from Victorian architecture.[edit]
St. Pancras railway station and Midland Hotel in London, opened in 1868

Victorian architecture is a series of architectural revival styles in the mid-to-late 19th century. Victorian refers to the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901), called the Victorian era, during which period the styles known as Victorian were used in construction. However, many elements of what is typically termed "Victorian" architecture did not become popular until later in Victoria's reign, roughly from 1850 and later. The styles often included interpretations and eclectic revivals of historic styles (see Historicism). The name represents the British and French custom of naming architectural styles for a reigning monarch. Within this naming and classification scheme, it followed Georgian architecture and later Regency architecture and was succeeded by Edwardian architecture.

Although Victoria did not reign over the United States, the term is often used for American styles and buildings from the same period, as well as those from the British Empire.

Interior decoration and design

Interior decoration and interior design
of the Victorian era are noted for orderliness and ornamentation. A house from this period was idealistically divided in rooms, with public and private space carefully separated. A bare room was considered to be in poor taste, so every surface was filled with objects that reflected the owner's interests and aspirations.

The parlour was the most important room in a home and was the showcase for the homeowners where guests were entertained. The dining room was the second-most important room in the house. The sideboard was most often the focal point, which attracts visitor’s eyes immediately when they go into a room or space,[1] of the dining room and very ornately decorated.

Old interiors

  • Dining room of the Theodore Roosevelt Sr. townhouse, New York City (1873, demolished).
    Dining room of the Theodore Roosevelt Sr. townhouse, New York City (1873, demolished).
  • Victorian style dining room, USA, early 1900s.
    Victorian style dining room, USA,
    early 1900s.
  • Victorian style parlor, USA, early 1900s
    Victorian style parlor, USA, early 1900s
  • Room with Victorian design, early 1900s
    Room with Victorian design, early 1900s
  • Parlor in a New York House from the 1850s.
    Parlor in a New York House from the 1850s.
  • The parlor of the Whittemore House 1526 New Hampshire Avenue, Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C
    The parlor of the Whittemore House 1526 New Hampshire Avenue, Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C

Preserved interiors, private spaces

Preserved interiors, public spaces

Walls and ceilings

The choice of paint color on the walls in Victorian homes was said to be based on the use of the room. Hallways that were in the entry hall and the stair halls were painted a somber gray so as not to compete with the surrounding rooms. Most people marbleized the walls or the woodwork. Also on walls it was common to score into wet plaster to make it resemble blocks of stone. Finishes that were either

wainscoting at the bottom, a field in the middle and a frieze or cornice at the top. This was popular into the 20th century. Frederick Walton who created linoleum in 1863 created the process for embossing semi-liquid linseed oil, backed with waterproofed paper or canvas. It was called Lincrusta
and was applied much like wallpaper. This process made it easy to then go over the oil and make it resemble wood or different types of leather. On the ceilings that were 8–14 feet the color was tinted three shades lighter than the color that was on the walls and usually had a high quality of ornamentation because decorated ceilings were favored.

Wallpaper

Wallpaper and wallcoverings became accessible for increasing numbers of householders with their wide range of designs and varying costs. This was due to the introduction of mass production techniques and, in England, the repeal in 1836 of the Wallpaper tax introduced in 1712.

tapestries
in his work. Embossed paper were used on ceilings and friezes.

Furniture

The Chevy Chase Sideboard by Gerrard Robinson. Often considered to be one of the finest furniture pieces of the 19th century and an icon of Victorian furniture.

There was not one dominant style of furniture in the Victorian period. Designers rather used and modified many styles taken from various time periods in history like

Elizabethan, English Rococo, Neoclassical
and others. The Gothic and Rococo revival style were the most common styles to be seen in furniture during this time in history.

Oscar Wilde's aesthetic of Victorian decoration

Chief among the literary practitioners of decorative aestheticism was Oscar Wilde, who advocated Victorian decorative individualism in speech, fiction, and essay-form.[2] Wilde’s notion of cultural enlightenment through visual cues echoes that of Alexander von Humboldt[3] who maintained that imagination was not the Romantic figment of scarcity and mystery but rather something anyone could begin to develop with other methods, including organic elements in pteridomania.[4]

By changing one’s immediate dwelling quarters, one changed one’s mind as well;[5] Wilde believed that the way forward in cosmopolitanism began with as a means eclipse the societally mundane, and that such guidance would be found not in books or classrooms, but through a lived Platonic epistemology.[6] An aesthetic shift in the home’s Victorian decorative arts reached its highest outcome in the literal transformation of the individual into cosmopolitan, as Wilde was regarded and noted among others in his tour of America.[7]

For Wilde, however, the inner meaning of Victorian decorative arts is fourfold: one must first reconstruct one’s inside so as to grasp what is outside in terms of both living quarters and mind, whilst hearkening back to von Humboldt on the way to Plato so as to be immersed in contemporaneous cosmopolitanism,[8] thereby in the ideal state becoming oneself admirably aesthetical.

See also

References

  1. ^ Nguyen Hoang, Viet. "Focal Point In Interior Design". Stunninteriors.
  2. ^ van der Plaat (2015), pp. 9–10.
  3. ^ van der Plaat (2015), pp. 1–2, 12.
  4. ^ Flanders (2002), pp. 200–202.
  5. ^ van der Plaat (2015), pp. 11–14.
  6. ^ van der Plaat (2015), pp. 11–16.
  7. ^ Blanchard (1995), pp. 39–45.
  8. ^ Monsman (2002), pp. 26–29.

Works cited

External links
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