History of Furniture: Regency

Welcome to another installment of the History of Furniture! We are getting into the way-back machine to visit a period that sits between the British eras of Georgian (Regency technically happened during this period) and Victorian.

King George III of England and Ireland reigned from 1760 to his death in 1820. Fans of "Hamilton" will recognize him as the petulant King, and the Georgian period is named for him and his reign. However, he suffered from ill health as well as later mental illness (seen in the film "The Madness of King George" starring Nigel Hawthorne as King George and Helen Mirren as Queen Charlotte). Scholars and historians now postulate, based on contemporaneous descriptions of his symptoms, that he had porphyria and most likely suffered from acute bipolar disorder.

Here I am with a wax bust of George III taken from an original modelled from life by Madame Tussaud in 1809, on view at Kew Palace in London. It must look exactly like him...

However, in 1810 George III became too ill to function, and in 1811 his son, George the Prince of Wales was appointed Prince Regent to rule in his stead, hence the Regency period began. When his father died in 1820, he became King and ascended the throne as George IV. But his reign was controversial: he was, by accounts, selfish, irresponsible, gluttonous, and supremely wasteful of money and resources. However it must be said that much of what was spent went to creating some enduring structures which have come to symbolize England itself. He tasked John Nash with renovating Buckingham Palace and designing the spectacular Royal Pavilion in Brighton, while also commissioning Jeffry Wyatville to reconstruct Windsor Castle. You can see that, strictly speaking, the Regency era spanned 1811 to 1820 when George became King but speaking stylistically, Regency can be considered to cover a bit of time before (1795) and after his regency, into his reign proper, and even into the reign of his successor to the throne, his younger brother William IV. It wasn't until 1837 when Victoria becomes queen that we get a new title for an era.

When considering Regency interiors, it is good to keep in mind that the preceding architecture was neo-classical in nature with the elegant lines, columns, and symmetry of ancient Greece and Rome. This informed the style and silhouettes of interiors and furniture. Regency pieces are marked by straight lines, clean edges, and design elements of acanthus leaves, rosettes, laurel wreaths, busts of caryatids, U-shaped lyres, and with discoveries in Egypt at the time (as well as Napoléon's campaign in that country), sphinx imagery, animal heads, legs ending in animal feet carvings, and general Egyptian shapes and designs. Chairs often featured gently curved sabre legs or X-legs. Woods tended to be dark like mahogany or exotic like rosewood and zebrawood, and pieces were generally painted. And convex mirrors, often topped with flowers and eagles were very popluar.

One of the biggest names in Regency interiors is designer, traveler, author, philosopher, and art collector Thomas Hope. He traveled extensively and his home on Duchess Street in London featured an Egyptian Room complete with furnishings inspired by the kind of authentic designs he encountered in Egypt. This space was very influential in the development of the Regency style.

“The Egyptian Room,” Plate 8, from the book "Household Furniture & Interior Decoration"
written by Thomas Hope, London, 1807

Egyptian chairs designed by Thomas Hope for his Egyptian Room
Collection of the Powerhouse Collection, New South Wales, Australia

Happy designing!

History of Furniture: George Hepplewhite

In the context of the history of furniture, there were a lot of cabinetmakers (an old term for furniture makers) in England in the 18th and 19th centuries but there are only a handful of legendary names:  Thomas Chippendale, Thomas Sheraton, and George Hepplewhite are known as The Big Three.

We have covered Chippendale in a post post here but let's take a look at George Hepplewhite. Not much is known of Hepplewhite's early life. Even his precise birthyear is unknown. But we do know he opened a cabinetmaker shop in London and died in 1786. However his widow Alice kept the business in operation.

Fascinatingly, it was not until 1788 when Alice posthumously published her late husband's designs in the CABINET MAKER AND UPHOLSTERER'S GUIDE that his work gained any notoriety. She published two further editions in 1789 and 1790. Chippendale was producing furniture at the same time and while he worked in a variety of styles, Hepplewhite stood by a single distinctive look featuring a neo-classical silhouette. Instead of the curvy cabriole leg of Queen Anne and Chippendale pieces, Hepplewhite looked to Grecian and Roman columns to make his straight legs--whether round or square--which were often fluted like a column of antiquity. He also pioneered and made popular the sideboard and the short chest of drawers which he designed with a serpentine or bow front, a relatively new feature in furniture for that period. Pieces are of contrasting veneered woods with inlays in interesting and pastoral shapes.

Hepplewhite created a unique chair back that is known as a "shield back chair," and it is easy to see why: the shape is that of a shield.

Hepplewhite also pioneered a decorative and functional object that every well appointed dinign room of the period held: the cutlery urn or box. These were carved wooden vessels with removeable lids that held knives but also spoons and forks. They were displayed on pedestals of their own often flanking a sideboard. The urn shape was popular but  Hepplewhite and Sheraton also designed square boxes with sloped and hinged lids.

Happy designing!

Nine New Colors From Farrow & Ball

Unveiled at last week's London Design Week: nine new Farrow & Ball colors. Yes, they are expensive, but the depth of color and pigments is stunning.

Here they are (and please do watch the 30 second clips for explanations of the inspiration for each color and name):

Bancha

De Nimes

Jitney

Paean Black

Preference Red

Rangwali

School House White

Sulking Room Pink

Treron

And in case you couldn't get to London Design Week, here is a fast look at their immersive installation!

Happy designing!

History of Furniture: Charles Eastlake

For this installment of The History of Furniture, we are going to look at a specific sub-genre of the  larger Victorian style category. We have previously looked at what is known as a Victorian style sofa here, as part of the Know Your Sofas series. Strictly speaking, the term "Victorian" really only applies to a style in architecture, art, clothing, and interiors in Great Britain and not the United States, since Victoria's reign, from 1837 to 1901, only covered that realm. People use the term for a certain style of architecture here in the United States for homes that are actually more aptly termed "Italianate" but that is for another post.

During Victoria's reign--which was quite long (a record broken by the current Queen Elizabeth II)--several styles came and went. Interestingly, nearly all were revivals of some sort. The decades of her rule saw a Rococo Revival, a Gothic Revival, a Renaissance Revival, a Jacobean Revival, and digressions into styles known as Orientalism (look for a future post about Olana, one of the most famous Orientalist homes in the United States, coming soon) and an Egyptian Revival.

The Victorian style's hallmark is massive, heavy, phenomenally complex and ornately carved pieces of furniture but the sub-genre we are going to look at today deliberately eschewed this heavy ornamentation for a sense that was more aligned with the cleaner lines of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement.

Originally a proponent of Jacobean and Gothic Revival, Charles Locke Eastlake was an English architect and furniture designer (1836 - 1906) who believed that furniture and decor in people's homes should be made by hand or by machine-workers who took personal pride in their work.

The Eastlake style is derived from a book he published in 1868 called HINTS ON HOUSEHOLD TASTE IN FURNITURE, UPHOLSTERY, AND OTHER DETAILS. In it, he outlined his ideas for the reformation of the typical heavy, detail-laden tastes of the Victorians in favor of a lighter, more organic approach. He used incised wood, and geometric shapes as detail.

You can see how he avoided the scrolls and curlicues of Victorian Rococo in favor of straighter lines. There is a much more rectilinear sense to the pieces themselves in addition to the details they sport. Orbs, bobbin shapes, and bead shapes rest alongside minimally incised designs of leaves, vines, and simple rosettes. In this way, the Eastlake Style can certainly be seen as an important stepping stone toward Arts and Crafts, or American Craftsman in the United States along with its distant cousin, Mission Style.

Many years ago, I had the honor of refurbishing and reupholstering an heirloom Eastlake-style chair for a client. I think the traditional Victorian crimson makes the chair look like it must have in 1898.

Happy designing!