Know Your Chairs: The Balloon Back Chair

In our continuing series Know Your Chairs, we are taking a step back in time to examine a type of chair popular in the Victorian era.

The Balloon Back Chair first appeared around 1830 - 1835 and evolved from the rectilinear yoke back chair of the time. In time, the top rail became curved and integrated into the side stiles. Characterized by a rounded back that is nipped at the waist, the chair eventually featured cabriole legs in a nod to Louis XV and encouraged by the Great Exhibition of 1851 at which Rococo-detailed furniture featured prominently.

The chair back indeed looks like a hot air balloon which was in vogue during this period. It also features a stretcher or rail at the narrow, nipped part of the back. And the finishing touch was the addition of curved lines and swooping elements to the seat and seat deck.

Happy designing!

Know Your Sofas: The Fainting Couch

When I was in design school many, many years ago and had to take a multi-semester course called "The History of Furniture," I rolled my eyes and thought, "This is going to to be a torture class...how interesting can the history of furniture possibly be?" But that was shortsighted of me and once the class started, I saw that it was much like my Art History classes I took many, many years before that: nothing exists in a vacuum, whether it's art, furniture, clothing, novels, architecture, or design. Everything springs from a certain time period which is connected to a certain cultural and societal perspective, which naturally must be interwoven with politics and how people see themselves or wish to present themselves. By studying what people surrounded themselves with, one gains insight and understanding into what was happening in a single country, a continent, or the world at that time. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that studying furniture--or art or literature--is a way of studying and tracking human evolution; it is actually quite fascinating.

So with this in mind, let's look at a variation of the sofa from the Victorian era called a "fainting couch." This version of a chaise longue (previously here) is asymmetrical, featuring a raised backrest at one end. And of course, this being the Victorian era, the wooden section of these backrests were ornately carved. Upholstery was in the rich jewel-toned heavy velvets of the time, and the fainting couch could be finished off with tufting.

But why was it called a fainting couch? Well, there are a few concepts going on here at once...
Women of the Victorian era were considered fragile and delicate, so they often retired during the mid-day, to escape the heat of the sun when it was at its highest, or its merdian. Because of this reason, these sofas were also called Meridiennes.

But it wasn't just sexism or perception that women were delicate... the fashion of the day dictated that women wear corsets, not allowing them to breathe properly or take full breaths, which could literally cut off up to 29% of oxygen to the body. No wonder women would become light-headed and need to lie down!

But there was another, deeper, and indeed psychological reason for fainting couches. The piece of furniture would often be placed in "fainting rooms," a salon or parlour that could be closed off, so that the woman could rest...but the real reason for a fainting room is connected to an exclusively female "ailment" of the time, something called "female hysteria." Symptoms of this vague ailment included shortness of breath, irritability, vaginal leakage, sexual fantasies and "a tendency to simply cause trouble." Of course the underlying cause of such symptoms are now seen as sexual frustration but in the repressed Victorian era, such things could not be recognized or spoken of. So doctors or midwives would come to a patient's home for "treatment" which included fully clothed pelvic "massages" until a "hysterical paroxysm" (or orgasm) was reached...all in the privacy of the fainting room. Later, massages were replaced with mechanical means which could be used by a doctor or a patient alone. This odd moment in history was captured in a marvelous stage play by award-winning playwright Sara Ruhl called "The Vibrator Play."

Happy designing!

Famous Homes: Olana

Frederic Edwin Church (1826--1900) was an American artist who was of the second generation of the Hudson River School and the pupil of Thomas Cole, the school’s founder. Church and his wife Isabel bought a plot of land on a hillside near the town of Hudson in New York and built a house for themselves called Cosy Cottage. When their two infant children died of diphtheria in 1865, they consoled themselves by traveling to Jamaica for six months. Upon returning, Church bought an additional 18 acres at the top of his property and began to plan a mansion based on a style that was very popular at the time, a style that is referred to as Orientalism. Although the term itself is no loner politically correct, the Victorians used this term to denote anything opposite of the Occident (the Western world) which included countries and cultures east of the Mediterranean Sea and Southern Europe. They had a preoccupation for what was to them the exotic nature of these lands. And we use this word today without malice to indicate this period of Victorian interest in motifs and designs from this part of the world.

Named after a fortress castle in ancient Greater Persia (in what is now Armenia), Olana was constructed between 1870 and 1872 after the Church's spent a year and a half traveling throughout Europe and the Middle East. When they returned home, Church hired architect Calvert Vaux and worked closely with him to realize a fanciful home based on architecture they had seen in Beirut, Jerusalem, and Damascus. The resulting stone, brick, and polychrome-stenciled villa is an unusual mixture of Victorian structural elements and Middle-Eastern decorative motifs from different times and places. In his book GEOGRAPHICAL SNAPSHOTS OF NORTH AMERICA, author Donald G. Janelle says of Olana that Moorish elements mix with contrasting Italianate themes. And the hybrid, which served not only as a home but as an artist studio as well, is unique even to the Orientalism of the period.

The official Olana website has the story of the house after Mr. Church died:

"When Frederic Church died in 1900, Olana was willed to his youngest son Louis Palmer Church. The following year Louis married Sarah Baker Good (known as “Sally”) and the two of them lived together at Olana. After Louis’s death in 1943, Sally stayed on at Olana until her death in 1964 at the age of 96. She was the last Church family member to inhabit the estate, and she willed the property to her nephew, Charles Lark. In the mid-1960s, the Hudson River School had not yet seen the revival of its popularity, and Olana was seen as a curious remnant of the Victorian era. Lark planned to sell the land and auction off the contents of the house, including all of Frederic Church’s art. The art historian David Huntington had for some years been researching Frederic Church’s art and had been visiting Olana. He learned of Mrs. Church’s death, and after ensuring that her nephew would give him a little time, began to contact individuals who might be able to assist. Olana Preservation, Inc. was formed and began the two-year task of raising funds with which to purchase the property and contents of the house.

At the end of the two-year period, Olana Preservation, Inc. had raised over half the funds necessary to purchase the property, but was unable to raise the full amount. Lark made arrangements to have the contents of the mansion put up for auction, and to sell the property to a developer. At that moment, in September of 1965, Life Magazine ran a story on Olana, with the title “Must this Mansion be Destroyed?” This galvanized local and national attention. By June, 1966 the New York State legislature under Governor Nelson Rockefeller had passed a bill authorizing the purchase of Olana, with Olana Preservation contributing the funds it had already raised. Olana opened as a New York State Historic Site in June, 1967.

Olana Preservation, Inc. disbanded, but several of its key members rejoined to start the non-profit Friends of Olana in 1971, which changed its name to The Olana Partnership in 2000. The Olana Partnership continues to play an integral part in supporting New York State Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation’s efforts at Olana."

Here is a selection of his paintings which displays his propensity for the lyrical, the lush, the Romantic, and the exotic.

This historic home is open for tours and events. Visit the official Olana website for details.

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!

Know Your Sofas: The Victorian Sofa

When surveying antique furniture, one of the broadest--and most abundant--periods is the Victorian Era. Strictly speaking, the term "Victorian" really only applies to a style in architecture, art, clothing, and interiors in Great Britain 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 into vogue. Interestingly, nearly all were revivals of some sort. The decades of her rule saw a Rococo Revival, a Gothic Revival, an Egyptian Revival, a Renaissance Revival, a Jacobean Revival, and digressions into styles known as Orientalism and American Eastlake (based on the work of English architect and furniture designer Charles Locke Eastlake). But I think more than any other style, we equate the Rococo Revival with what we stereotypically think of as Victorian furniture. Massive pieces, elaborate curves, dark woods, and phenomenally complex and ornate high-relief carvings are hallmarks of the Rococo Revival (Victorian) style which lasted longer than any other style in the era.

Sofas were upholstered in luxurious fabrics like velvet, damask, brocatelle, satin and silk and feature oval, round medallion, or cartouche backs.

As you see, Rococo Revival is a very specific style that is not easily integrated into other periods or designs. I feel it works best in a strict period room of the time. But it's helpful to know about this period of furniture since subsequent styles such as Art Nouveau, the Secessionist Movement, and Arts and Crafts were rebellions against the massive, heavy design and over-the-top sense of embellishment of Rococo Revival. If there's one thing one can count on in matters of style in any art form, it is that the pendulum will eventually swing the other direction!

Happy designing!