The Victorian Era

Victorian Furniture and Decorative Arts

Article · Architecture & Design · The Victorian Era, 1837–1901

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The furniture and the decorative arts of the Victorian period were the subject of a major industry, supplying the new middle-class home in unprecedented quantities and, by the end of the century, reaching an international market as well. The early years continued the heavy, dark, elaborately carved tradition of the 1820s and 1830s, in mahogany, rosewood, and walnut, with carving, inlay, marquetry, and gilding, and upholstery in horsehair, wool, silk, or damask. The middle years saw a turn towards more comfortable and more varied seating, with the introduction of the coil-sprung seat and the deep-buttoned upholstery. The later years were shaped above all by the design reformers, who argued for simpler, more honest, and more aesthetic work, and by the great reforming firms — Morris & Co., Liberty, Heal’s, and the rest — that put those arguments into production. The history of the subject is set out in Victorian Architecture and Interior Design.

The Early Victorian Period

The furniture of the early Victorian period was largely a continuation of the late Regency furniture of the 1820s and 1830s, in a heavier, darker, and more elaborately ornamented style. The main woods were mahogany, rosewood, walnut, and oak, often contrasted with gilded or brass mounts. The decoration was rich: carved foliate scrolls, naturalistic flowers, acanthus, gadrooning, and beading, combined with marquetry, ormolu, and japanned work. The principal upholstered seat was the horsehair-stuffed easy chair, the buttoned library chair, and the heavy, fringed ottoman.

The early period drew heavily on contemporary continental fashions, particularly the French furniture of the Restoration and Louis Philippe periods, the German Biedermeier, and the established English Regency tradition. Among the most characteristic pieces were the balloon-back chair, the whatnot, the pole screen, the papier-mâché tray painted with flowers or ruins, and the rich, often uncomfortable chaise longue in rep or velvet. The history of the most iconic early piece is examined in What is a Victorian Chesterfield sofa?.

The Mid-Victorian Period

The furniture of the mid-Victorian period was a development of the early Victorian furniture, in a more comfortable, more practical, and more innovative style. The coil-sprung seat and the deep-buttoned upholstery transformed the comfort of chairs and sofas; the new range of brilliantly dyed aniline fabrics, made possible by William Henry Perkin’s synthesis of mauve in 1856, transformed the colour and the pattern of upholstery; and the new range of stitching and tufting techniques allowed the cabinet-makers to produce work of considerable visual richness.

The mid-Victorian period also saw a succession of revival styles fashionable at mid-century, including the Rococo Revival, the Gothic Revival, and the Renaissance Revival, together with the French taste of the Second Empire. The cabinet-makers of London, of the Midlands, and of the North — Gillows of Lancaster, Holland & Sons, Maple & Co., Heal’s, and the rest — produced work in all of these idioms, often to high standards, often to no standard at all, and they were the target of the design reformers from the 1850s onwards.

The Late Victorian Period

The furniture of the late Victorian period was a development of the mid-Victorian furniture, in a simpler, more honest, and more aesthetic style. Under the influence of the design reformers, more furniture was made in oak, ash, and other native woods, with plainer decoration and simpler upholstery, although the commercial firms continued to produce elaborately carved and richly upholstered pieces for the conservative market until the end of the century.

The late period was shaped above all by the Aesthetic Movement and the Arts and Crafts Movement. Morris & Co., founded in 1861, produced furniture, textiles, wallpapers, stained glass, and tapestries in a handcrafted medievalist style that owed more to the workshop than to the factory. Liberty, founded in 1875 by Arthur Lasenby Liberty, imported Japanese goods, Art Nouveau work, and the so-called Anglo-Japanese pieces, and it became the showroom of the Aesthetic interior. Heal’s, the long-established firm of Ambrose Heal, turned to simple, well-made furniture in the 1890s and became a byword for the new taste. The history of the movement is examined in How did the Arts and Crafts movement begin?.

The Decorative Arts

The decorative arts of the period were as varied as the furniture. Pottery and porcelain came from the great Staffordshire firms, from the Worcester Royal Porcelain, from the Royal Doulton factory at Lambeth, and from a hundred smaller makers. Stained glass came from the great ecclesiastical firms — Clayton and Bell, Hardman, Heaton, Butler and Bayne — and from Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., whose windows transformed the churches and country houses of the second half of the century. Silver and electroplate came from the City of London firms, from Mappin & Webb, and from the great retailers. Textiles came from the new mills of Lancashire and the West Riding, from the surviving looms of Spitalfields, and from the new tapestry and embroidery workshops of the Arts and Crafts movement.

Jewellery of the period ranged from the heavy gold mourning brooches, set with jet or with the hair of the deceased, of the 1860s and 1870s, to the delicate, enamelled, art nouveau pieces of the 1890s. The wallpaper of the period is examined in How to identify Victorian wallpapers?, and the colour schemes of the period are examined in What defines a Victorian color palette?.

The Arts and Crafts Movement

The Arts and Crafts Movement, founded in the 1860s and 1870s around William Morris, was the most important reform movement of the period. The principal founders were Morris himself, the painter Edward Burne-Jones, the painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the painter Ford Madox Brown, and the architect Philip Webb. The first business of the movement was Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., founded in 1861 to produce furniture, decorative arts, stained glass, and tapestries; the firm was reorganised as Morris & Co. in 1875 and continued in production until 1940.

The Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, founded in 1887, gave its name to the broader movement and to the work it displayed. The Society held eleven exhibitions between 1888 and 1916 and helped to establish the new taste among collectors, museums, and the public. Its history is examined in How did the Arts and Crafts movement begin?.

The Aesthetic Movement

The Aesthetic Movement, which overlapped with the Arts and Crafts Movement but was in some respects distinct from it, took its name from the cult of beauty for its own sake that flourished in the 1860s and 1870s. The principal figures were James McNeill Whistler, whose Peacock Room of 1876–77 for the shipowner Frederick Leyland is the most famous Aesthetic interior in the world, and Oscar Wilde, who lectured on the movement in Britain and America in the early 1880s. The movement also included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, and William Morris himself, although Morris eventually distanced himself from the Aestheticist position.

The Aesthetic interior was pale, sparsely furnished, and deliberately artful, hung with blue-and-white china, Japanese fans, peacock feathers, and a few well-chosen pictures, and it stood in deliberate opposition to the heavy, cluttered rooms of the mid-Victorian middle-class home. The history of the movement is examined in What is Aesthetic Movement design?.

The Legacy

The furniture and the decorative arts of the Victorian period shaped the modern interior. The Morris wallpapers, the de Morgan tiles, the Liberty silks, the Doulton stoneware, and the Burne-Jones tapestries entered the international market in the 1880s and 1890s and became, by the early twentieth century, the recognised style of the artistic interior. The Arts and Crafts movement inspired the Art Nouveau, the Jugendstil, the Deutscher Werkbund, the Vienna Secession, and, more indirectly, the Bauhaus and the Modern Movement. The Aesthetic Movement shaped Art Nouveau directly and shaped the broader culture of design well into the twentieth century. The broader context of the period is set out in The Victorian Era: A Complete Historical Overview.