Emma Ferry
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| Emma Ferry The Late-Nineteenth Century Interior 1870-1900: An Introduction ‘... in modern houses one seldom finds a room which makes a harmonious whole.’1 The word ‘modern’ is among those discussed by Raymond Williams in Keywords: a Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1976). Sandwiched alphabetically (and rather aptly) between ‘medieval’ and ‘monopoly’, ‘modern’ has developed from its Latin root, modo, meaning ‘just now’, to encompass a range of related words including the more specialized ‘modernize’, ‘modernization’, ‘Modernism’, ‘modernist’ and ‘modernity’, which form the common ‘keywords’ of this book. In his brief but beautifully clear essay, Williams notes the shifting and historically specific meanings of ‘modern’, particularly the persistence of ‘unfavourable’ and ‘comparative’ uses of the word and its associates, before highlighting a ‘strong movement the other way, until modern became virtually equivalent to improved, or satisfactory or efficient’.2 He notes that this ‘strong movement’ from negative to positive nuance began in the nineteenth century, however it is a shift that is often difficult to detect in the publications about the interior produced by architects, designers, decorators and aesthetes towards the end of this period. For many of them the word ‘modern’ was used to critique the contemporary and this is especially evident in the design advice literature aimed at the domestic market. Best-known for its Design Reforming discourse, Charles L. Eastlake’s Hints on Household Taste (1868) contains a wealth of critical references to the ‘modern’. For example, ‘the conventional ugliness of the modern drawing room’3 and ‘the extravagant and graceless appointments of the modern boudoir’ which are ‘mirrored on the modern canvas’4 are denounced in the introduction. Subsequent chapters continue to criticize most things ‘modern’ from the ‘legalized evils of modern house building’5 to ‘the hackneyed portraits of tame lions and grinning satyrs which have been adopted as types of the modern door-knocker’.6 ‘Modern’ even appears in the index to Hints as a less than favourable subject for discussion:
Modern furniture, shabbiness of, 83 Several of the writers contributing to Macmillan’s ‘Art at Home’ series also condemned the ‘modern’. A simple quantitative analysis of Rhoda and Agnes Garrett’s Suggestions in House Decoration (1876) identifies the word twenty-two times while a qualitative analysis demonstrates that on each occasion it is employed unfavourably.7 The same is true of the often-quoted book The Drawing Room (1877), written by Mrs Lucy Orrinsmith for the same series. In this case ‘modern’ appears thirty-six times, again, in negative phrases such as: It must have been remarked that great artists never choose to represent an ordinary modern English house, either inside or out; the ‘why’ is obvious. Our houses are crowded with ugly shapes disguised by meretricious ornament. The general forms are usually so bad as to require to be loaded with excrescences, which, while they blunt the critical power of the eye, leave the mind dissatisfied.8 In ‘Making the Best of It’ (1880), a lecture that bears a striking similarity in both its scope and advice to The Drawing Room, William Morris uses the ‘m’ word eight times, and with exception of his hopes for ‘modern civilised society’, the tone is once again decidedly unfavourable.9 Queen Anne and Georgian houses, he told his audiences: [...] are at the worst not aggressively ugly or base, and it is possible to live in them without serious disturbance to our work or thoughts; so that by the force of contrast they have become bright spots in the prevailing darkness of ugliness that has covered all modern life.10 Morris, that well-known ‘pioneer of modern design’ went on to complain ‘there is no dignity or unity of plan about any modern house, big or little’, and when discussing the proportions of the rooms, commented that ‘it will be great luck indeed in an ordinary modern house if they are tolerable; but let us hope for the best.’ Moreover, while floors were one of the ‘chief disgraces to modern buildings’ and decorative treatments he proposed for ceilings were unlikely to be achieved in ‘our modern makeshift houses’, this was as nothing to the rant occasioned by the modern fireplace, which he condemned as ‘mean, miserable, uncomfortable, and showy, plastered about with wretched sham ornament, trumpery of cast-iron, and brass and polished steel, and what not – offensive to look at, and a nuisance to clean ...’.11 Oscar Wilde’s lecture, ‘House Decoration’, is also distinctly unfavourable when it comes to things ‘modern.’ Written hastily, with the aid of copies of the Rev. W. J. Loftie’s A Plea for Art in the House (1876) and Mrs Haweis’ The Art of Dress (1879) while on tour in America, the man who was the persona of the Aesthetic Movement commented variously upon ‘the abominations of modern fashionable attire’, the coarseness and vulgarity of ‘modern jewellery’ and even described a contemporary museum as ‘one of those dreadful modern institutions where there is a stuffed and very dusty giraffe, and a case or two of fossils’. 12 This critique of the ‘modern’ continued in the work of Mrs Mary Eliza Haweis, who in The Art of Decoration (1882), used ‘modern’ ninety-nine times, again more often than not in an unfavourable and comparative manner: ‘however well a thoroughly modern room is arranged, it wearies, and wants freshness.’ 13 Like Eastlake, Morris, Wilde and the writers from the ‘Art at Home’ series, Mrs Haweis urged her readers to study models from the past, and with the hope that her ‘strictures on modern English decorations’ would ‘open the eyes of a few to the remediable flaws in taste’14, she criticised all aspects of ‘modern’ architecture, design, furniture, the decorative arts, books, dress, workmanship and trade: interestingly, though ‘modern science’, ‘modern mechanisms’ and ‘modern teaching’ receive more favourable comments. Usefully, Mrs Haweis also defines what she at least meant by ‘modern’:
The thirty-year period, 1870-1900, which forms the historical scope of the first section of Designs for Living, has received a great deal of attention from historians, critics and theorists working from within the disciplines of the histories of art, design and architecture. However, it is important to understand that the architecture and design of Victorian period – ‘modern’ or otherwise – has not always been looked on favourably. The best overview of Victorian architectural and (by extension) interior design history is to be found in David Watkin’s The Rise of Architectural History (1980), which includes a chapter on ‘Victorian and Neo-classical Studies’ that charts the ‘gradual rise of a sympathetic re-assessment of Victorian architecture’ over a fifty-year period. From the ‘amused affection’16 fashionable among Oxford undergraduates in the 1920s to ‘the great variety of serious studies of Victorian architecture published in the 1960s and 70s’17, Watkin considers the influence of the work of architectural historians and writers including H. S. Goodhart-Rendel, Kenneth Clarke, John Betjeman, Osbert Lancaster, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Christopher Hussey and John Summerson. Within Watkin’s discussion a number of important factors emerge that surround the ‘modern’, which have had a direct impact upon why and how the nineteenth century interior has been studied. First, is the long-lasting influence of Nikolaus Pevsner’s Pioneers of the Modern Movement from William Morris to Walter Gropius (1936), which Watkin describes as: [..] architectural history with a mission on a scale that had scarcely been seen since the days of Pugin. It was an attempt to persuade the English to accept the Modern Movement as the only style in which a modern man ought to express himself. It led to an historical approach which granted recognition to buildings or objects regarded as in a Line of Progress to the Authentic Modern Movement.18 The dominance of this approach explains the early tendencies of architectural and design historians working on the nineteenth century to focus upon the use of new materials and building types; to highlight the work of designers like Morris and Mackintosh; and, to trace the emergence of the avant-garde rather than popular revival styles. 19 Indeed, lamenting the fact that Modernist agenda focussed only upon the ‘progressive aspects of the story’, Peter Thornton, former Keeper of the Department of Furniture and Woodwork at the Victoria and Albert Museum, commented, ‘everyone knows something about William Morris, the Aesthetic Movement, Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, the Viennese Secession, Hoffmann, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Bauhaus ...’ 20 Despite Thornton’s hopes that from a critical evaluation of the Modern Movement ‘a rather more balanced assessment of the alternatives will emerge’21, this version of 19th century interior design history endures. In Victorian and Edwardian Furniture and Interiors: from the Gothic Revival to Art Nouveau, (1987), Jeremy Cooper follows the Pevsnerian model with eight specialist chapters on A. W. N. Pugin, William Burges, ‘Geometric Gothic’, Aestheticism, Morris and Co., the Arts and Crafts Movement, ‘New Art’, ending with ‘Heal’s and Liberty’s’. Although the taste for the exotic and Renaissance Revival styles are mentioned briefly in the introduction, Cooper’s aim is to highlight the ‘modern’. He concedes that ‘Not all homes, of course, were progressive and modern in their design’ but comments that Unlike today, the designers of the best furniture between 1830 and 1915 were mostly practising architects and much of what they produced was progressively modern, so much so that even now chairs by Pugin, for instance, retain an air of elemental originality.22 So keen is Cooper to demonstrate that ‘despite his medievalism’, Pugin was ‘almost an early modern’23, he fails to explore the range of revival styles, which should also be interpreted an analysed as a direct response to the forces of modernity and the threats posed by modern life. Fortunately, studies such as Simon Jervis’ High Victorian Design, (1983), Joanna Banham, Julia Porter, and Sally MacDonald’s Victorian Interior Style, (1995), Charles Newton’s Victorian Designs for the Home, (1999) and Design and the Decorative Arts: Victorian Britain 1837-1901 (2004) edited by Michael Snodin and John Styles, have deliberately attempted to redress the balance and discussed the styles often missing (or simply dismissed as vulgar) from the history of nineteenth century interior. These include the Oriental styles (Chinese, Moorish and Indian); the Renaissance styles (Flemish, French, German and Italian); Egyptian, Pompeian and Greek styles (the latter often referred to as ‘modern’); the Antiquarian or Early English, (Elizabethan, and Jacobean) styles; the Old French styles known as Tous les Louis; the ‘Cottage’ or Vernacular styles; the ‘Queen Anne’ Revival style; the Colonial Revival style that became popular in the USA after the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876; and the Neo-Georgian styles (Regency Revival, Empire Revival and neo-Biedermeier) that re-appeared at the end of the century. Examining objects, designs and interiors, these studies allow for an investigation of the nineteenth century interior as a cultural response to modernity in its broadest sense. Very often the use of revival styles is at the centre of the discussion. Indeed, Charles Newton asks: Why did the Victorians employ a mixture of styles from the past instead of inventing something totally new? They had invented an impressive range of completely new things in other areas, and had immense confidence in their radically new designs for engineering for example. Why did they not also find a completely new style of decorative art appropriate to the age?24 Given that the majority of these more recent publications have been produced by curatorial staff and scholars from the Victoria and Albert Museum, it is not surprising that another factor that has encouraged the study of the nineteenth century interior is the exhibition of collections of nineteenth century furniture and decorative arts from the 1950s onwards. Watkin identifies Victorian and Edwardian Decorative Arts, which was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in 1952 as the first and one of the most significant of these exhibitions, but stresses that the exhibits were chosen ‘in accordance with Pevsnerian orthodoxy in which special emphasis was placed on what was regarded as sincerity and originality.’25 Indeed, Peter Floud’s introduction to the Catalogue noted: We have deliberately eliminated what was merely freakish or grotesque. At the same time we have purposely left out a whole host of Victorian designers whose work was unashamedly based on the copying of earlier styles.26 Nevertheless, this exhibition gave impetus to the collection of nineteenth century objects and furnishings and was succeeded by other Victorian exhibitions organised by the V&A during the 1970s, which drew on the expertise of curators who had all written on aspects of Victorian Design and Decorative Arts.27 The importance of these later exhibitions, Victorian Church Art (1971-2); ‘Marbles Halls’: Drawings and Models for Victorian Secular Buildings (1973) and High Victorian Design (1974-5) ‘consisted in their emancipation from the ambition of excluding from our understanding of Victorian design anything that in 1952 would have been considered insincere, grotesque or imitative.’ 28 The high profile exhibitions, particularly those organized at the V&A, such as Pugin: A Gothic Passion (1994), William Morris (1996), Art Nouveau (2000) The Victorian Vision (2001), Christopher Dresser 1834-1904: A Design Revolution (2004), Thomas Hope: Regency Designer (2008) and the permanent Collections displayed in the refurbished British Galleries 1500-1900 continue to be significant to the study of both the nineteenth century and the interior.29 As well as providing a focus for exhibitions, a number of museums play an important role in the study of the late-nineteenth century interior. The Archives, Collections and National Art Library at the V&A offer the historian a wide range of research materials and expertise. Similarly, smaller London-based museums, such as the Geffrye Museum and the Museum of Domestic Architecture and Design (MODA), offer access to a range of objects, period room displays and archival materials as well as holding exhibitions and producing publications that are specific to aspects of the interior.30 The third important factor that has affected the study of the nineteenth century interior is the development of the preservation movement. Watkin stresses the significance of the foundation of pressure groups such as the Victorian Society (f. 1958) and Marcus Binney’s SAVE Britain’s Heritage (f. 1975) whose popular, though sometimes unsuccessful, campaigns to save monuments, buildings and interiors threatened by post-war urban redevelopment and modernization have helped raise the profile of existing nineteenth century buildings and interiors.31 The work of the Victorian Society, which celebrated its 50th Anniversary in early 2008, today encompasses a range of activities at national, regional and personal levels. For example, under the Town and Country Planning Act (1969) the Society comments upon all applications involving demolition and it continues to campaign to save threatened Victorian sites; it organises local events including architectural walks and visits to important Victorian buildings; and, it also offers advice to Victorian home owners through lectures and study days and a range of publications, such as the Society’s journal, The Victorian, a series of booklets titled Care for Victorian Houses, and Kit Wedd’s book The Victorian Society Book of the Victorian House (2002). The preservation movement and the debates surrounding ‘heritage’ and ‘conservation’ have generated a tremendous amount of literature – some practical, others polemical. Focussing upon the work of organizations like the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (f. 1877), the National Trust (f. 1895), the Historic Houses Association (f. 1973), and English Heritage (f. 1984)32 a number of scholars have considered the display of the historic house interior. Here, the emphasis is often on museological concerns rather than ‘the interior’, and the debates consider the various techniques employed by these organisations and private owners such as the creation of the ‘Country House’ look, academic restoration projects, ‘preserve as found’ or the preservation of ‘layers of occupation’. 33 The final important factor that emerges from Watkin’s discussion is found in his concluding chapter, ‘Some Recent Tendencies’. Writing in 1980, Watkin commented upon the ‘increasingly determined attempts’, prompted by an interest in Marxist theories in the 1960s and 70s, ‘to relate buildings to the society in which they were produced, and for the way of life for which it is believed that they and their contents were originally intended.’ 34 This shift in architectural history was complemented by the emergence of Design History as a separate discipline in the 1970s. Of particular importance for the present study, Watkin noted that this ‘interest in the interlocking patterns of environment and social activity’, was reflected ‘in the study of interior design and furnishings, including the use and arrangement of furniture.’ 35 Linked closely to the development of the preservation movement and the mergence of heritage tourism, the earliest studies of the interior also reflect an interest in the country house, perhaps inspired by the exhibition, The Destruction of the English Country House held at the V&A in 1974. According to Clive Wainwright, this ‘epoch-making’ exhibition aroused ‘public anger at such wanton destruction’ and ‘focussed attention upon the history and the surviving documentation of both destroyed and surviving houses.’36 The country house interior became the subject of pioneering work by John Fowler and John Cornforth, whose work was the direct result of the authors’ concerns ‘about the problems of preservation, restoration and presentation of country houses’.37 This early interest in the country house also indicates the partial nature of the study of the nineteenth century interior. As the authors of Victorian Interior Style, (1995), remark: [...] the majority of working-class people in both Britain and America could not afford to decorate and furnish their homes with new and fashionable products. Few writers wrote for working-class readers or bothered to describe working-class homes. Few artists or photographers chose to record them. Surviving interiors, even individual items of furniture are rare; in poorer homes most things were used until they were worn out.38 Thus, the dominance of Modernist design histories of the nineteenth century since the 1930s, influential exhibitions of nineteenth century art, architecture and design from the early 1950s, the emergence of the preservation movement combined with shifts in architectural and design histories from the mid-1960s onwards have all impacted upon the study of the ‘modern’ interior. However, as Penny Sparke has commented ‘significant studies of the history of the design and decoration of the interior are few and far between’39: they become fewer and even further between once the historical scope is limited to a single century. Fortunately, while the interior is still emerging as a fruitful field for historical enquiry, the last thirty years has seen growing interest in nineteenth century culture. Influenced by critical theories, the period has become the subject of rich multi-and inter-disciplinary work by historians and scholars from a wide range of disciplines, which in addition to art, design and architectural history include literary history, gender studies, philosophy, sociology, cultural geography and anthropology. The fascination with an era of high imperialism, emerging nationhoods, religious revivals and crises of faith, contested gender and class politics, and public debates on sexuality has resulted in the publication of more nuanced and complex analyses of the late-nineteenth century interior, both public and private, which move beyond simple discussions of style to highlight the connection between the interior and consumption, taste and identity. While Adrian Forty’s classic text Objects of Desire: Design and Society 1750-1980, (1986) includes an important chapter on ‘The Home’ stressed the importance of gender and class identities in the construction and maintenance of the domestic interior, this shift in emphasis has been made explicit in more recent publications such as Interior Design and Identity (2004) edited by Suzie McKellar and Penny Sparke, and in Intimus: Interior Design Theory Reader (2006), edited by Mark Taylor and Julieanna Preston, both of which aim – in very different ways – to make interior design history and its theories conspicuous as an emerging discipline.40 Both studies highlight the many challenges the interior poses for historical and theoretic analysis and the centrality of gender to that analysis.41 Indeed, Taylor and Preston comment: [...] any book on theory surrounding interior design can not escape discussion about feminism, gender, race and sexuality, if not because of interior design’s own history as a practice stemming from the upholsterer’s trade then for its alliances (or stereotype associations) with domestic, residential and feminine decorative practice. 42 What follows is an attempt to offer a broad survey of publications relevant to the study of the late-nineteenth century interior published since the mid-1980s. It is not intended as an exhaustive bibliography, but instead an overview of studies produced from within this emerging field of research that are interesting and inspiring. The publications included here demonstrate the diversity of source materials and historical evidence left behind by the makers of the late-nineteenth century interior; some of them also highlight the range of methodological approaches and tools of analysis which can be employed. There are a number of books based on the collection, organization and analysis of nineteenth century visual culture, which incorporates a range of media: painting, drawing, engravings and the new medium of photography.43 The type of images considered includes designs, plans, advertisements, cartoons and caricature, magazine illustrations, interior views and portraiture: this wealth of visual materials reflects the fascination with the interior and the objects and ideas contained within it during this period. Inspired by the work of Mario Praz (1964)44, Peter Thornton’s seminal study, Authentic Décor: the Domestic Interior, 1620-1920 (1984) devotes an entire chapter to the period ‘1870-1920’, which in an attempt to counter the dominance of Modernist discourse includes a wealth of images of ‘delightful, extremely comfortable and in no way despicable interiors’ in the popular styles that sprang from Neo-classicism to evolve into what is sometimes termed ‘Free Renaissance’. 45 Geographically, this visual survey covers the western world and the images of domestic interiors that Thornton discusses have been selected from a range of sources – magazine illustrations, advertisements in trade catalogues, plates from influential publications written by architects, designers and upholsterers, room plans, paintings of interiors and photographic collections. Along similar lines, Charlotte Gere’s Nineteenth Century Decoration: the Art of the Interior (1989) is a collection of exclusively nineteenth century imagery. Divided into twenty-year periods from 1800-1900, this study examines a range of domestic interiors: it also very usefully includes a bibliography of nineteenth and early twentieth century works and a biographical index of Artists, Designers, Decorators and Architects. However, unlike Frances Borzello’s study At Home: the Domestic Interior in Art (2006), neither Thornton nor Gere offer their readers art historical interpretations of the interiors reproduced; instead the images are discussed as fairly straightforward historical evidence. While Thornton’s assertion that ‘these illustrations show rooms as they actually were’46 will continue to be contested, both Authentic Décor and Nineteenth Century Decoration remain essential reading for the study of the interior. In contrast, the problems of interpreting representations and the changing meaning of the domestic interior in its broadest sense are placed at the very centre of Imagined Interiors: Representing the Domestic Interior since the Renaissance (2006).47 While the main emphasis of these studies is visual evidence, other historians have interrogated texts taken from a wide range of nineteenth century publications. Occupying a position somewhere ‘between fact and fiction’,48 domestic design advice is a complex source, one often more concerned with the formation of class and gender ideologies than with suggestions about interior decoration. Indeed, as Elizabeth Langland has commented ‘these non-literary materials did not simply reflect a ‘real’ historical subject, but helped to produce it through their discursive practices’.49 Similarly, in her introduction to that quintessential advice book, Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, Nicola Humble stressed the value of studying this type of non-fictional text but added a note of caution: It is precisely because they are an ephemeral, market-led form of writing that cookery books reveal so much about the features of a particular historical moment. We must remember, though, that like any other text they consist of constructed discourse, and can never be clear windows onto the kitchens of the past.50 However, few scholars have made clear the distinction between advice and evidence or between prescription and practice. Some have commented on this difficulty: Jane Rendall, for example, has noted that the ‘proliferation of all kinds of advice manuals […] has left historians at times confused as to the extent to which such advice was ever taken, even practicable’.51 Other scholars, while acknowledging this dilemma, have nonetheless emphasised the popularity of the genre, suggesting that ‘it is hard to over-estimate the role of the household book in promoting the ideal pattern of middle-class life.’52 Following the organising principles of the domestic advice manual, Judith Flanders’ hugely successful popular history The Victorian House: Domestic Life from Childbirth to Deathbed (2003) is gendered account of Victorian urban domestic space that describes the functions and arrangement of the middle-class home while relating different rooms in the house to events in the female life-cycle. Focussing on the period 1850-90, this book aims to compare the ‘theoretical’ domestic space prescribed by advice manuals and described in contemporary novels with the ‘reality’ of Victorian diaries and memoirs. However, while she acknowledges that these represent an ideal she nonetheless treats them simplistically as historical evidence rather than considering them as a literary genre. A special issue of The Journal of Design History (2003), edited by Grace Lees-Maffei, examined advice domestic design literature and included several articles that considered the role this type of literature played in the formation of the nineteenth century domestic interior and the writers associated with this type of literature. Moreover, providing a methodological context the editor’s essay, ‘Studying Advice: Historiography, Methodology, Commentary, Bibliography’ considered the problems of using advice literature.53 My own contribution to this special issue, ‘‘Decorators may be compared to doctors’: An Analysis of Rhoda and Agnes Garretts Suggestions for House Decoration (1876)’, argues that domestic advice manuals cannot be used as conventional historical evidence, and suggests that they need to be understood both as historical documents that engage with contemporary notions of design and taste, and as a genre of Victorian literature. Offering arguably clearer windows onto the interiors of the past, other studies have examined examples of nineteenth century texts that relate to the construction of the interior, sometimes quite literally. The number of publications aimed at the artist, the decorator, the furniture maker or retailer, the architectural profession and building trades that were published during the course of the nineteenth century is quite staggering: the number of magazine titles that appeared in this period is particularly noteworthy. These include, alphabetically: The Architect (f.1869), The Architectural Review (f. 1896), Art and Decoration (1885-6), The Art Designer (f. 1884) The Art Journal (1839-1911), The Art Union (1838-49), The Art Workman (1873-83), The Artist (1880-92), The Artist and Journal of Home Culture (1880-94), The British Architect and Northern Engineer (f. 1874), The Builder (f. 1843), The Building News (1855-926), The Cabinet Maker and Art Furnisher (f.1880), The Cabinet Maker’s Assistant (f. 1853), The Cabinet Maker’s Monthly Journal of Design (f. 1856), The Craftsman (1901-16), Decoration in Painting, Architecture, Furniture etc., (1880-93), The Decorator (1864), The Ecclesiologist (1841-68), The Furnisher (1899-1901), Furniture and Decoration (1890-98), The Furniture Gazette (1872-93), The Hobby Horse (1884-8), The House (1897-1902), The House Furnisher and Decorator (1872-3), The Journal of Decorative Art (1881-1937), The Journal of Design ad Manufacturing (1849-52), The Magazine of Art (1878-1904), The Studio (f. 1893) and The Workshop (1869-72).54 This long list, for which I apologise, is intended highlight the wealth of periodical material available for the study of the interior that a number of scholars have drawn upon to produce interesting and informative studies. 55 For example, Helen Long’s Victorian Houses and their details: the role of publications in their building and decoration, (2002) draws upon publications that include architectural pattern books, trade manuals, decoration and home manuals, trade catalogues, pattern books of designs and journals of architecture, building trades and home furnishing. Set in the context of the nineteenth century publishing world and the development of illustrative printing techniques in these types of publication, this study explores their importance in the transmission of practical advice and taste and demonstrates the profusion of published materials available for the study of the interior in this period.56 Other types of textual materials, such as inventories, probate records, private letters and diaries have also been subject to critical investigation. Margaret Ponsonby’s Stories from Home: English Domestic Interiors 1750-1850 (2007), uses lists of houses contents as its main type of documentary evidence. Just outside the period covered by this volume, the methodological discussion within this study provides an interesting and useful addition to fuel current debates surrounding source material and the methods of analysis and interpretation employed by scholars working in this fascinating field.57 A number of the essays published in Women and the Making of Built Space in England, 1870-1950 (2007), edited by Elizabeth Darling and Lesley Whitworth, also draw upon texts of a private nature. In his essay ‘‘Everything Whispers of Wealth and Luxury’: Observation, Emulation and Display in the well-to-do late-Victorian Home’, Trevor Keeble, who has edited and contributed to the present study, draws upon the diary of Emily Hall and the letters of Maud Messel in order to explore the extent to which late-Victorian domestic space was both a gendered and a fluid social construction, while, in ‘Women Rent Collectors and the Rewriting of Space, Class and Gender in East London, 1870-1900’, Ruth Livesey uses the diary of Beatrice Webb in a case study of the women rent collectors at the Katharine Buildings, a block of model flats in the East End of London.58 There are also a few thought-provoking studies that are based on an analysis of the ‘interior’ as it has been century represented in nineteenth century fiction. The first of these studies was Philippa Tristram’s Living Space in Fact and Fiction (1989), which considered the domestic interior of very different types of buildings described in a range of nineteenth century novels, including Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1811), Charles Dickens’ Bleak House (1852-3), George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871-2), Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), and Henry James’ The Spoils of Poynton (1896). Sharon Marcus’s Apartment Stories: city and home in nineteenth century Paris and London (1999), Domestic Space: Reading the 19th Century Interior (1999) edited by Janet Floyd and Inga Bryden and Thad Logan’s The Victorian Parlour: A Cultural Study (2001) have also used literature, art historical and other sources to explore and interpret the interior. Fiction is however an incredibly problematic source as is demonstrated in ‘The Domestic Interior in British Literature’, an issue of Home Cultures (2005) edited by Charlotte Grant.59 The mediated nature of these types of primary materials has meant that the use of images and texts as design historical evidence has prompted a great deal of critical debate. Similarly, analytical work has been published in the field of architectural history, which also has implications for the study of the interior. The nineteenth century was a period that saw the development of a range of new building types that emerged as a direct result of industrialization accompanied by resultant political, economic, social and religious changes and made possible by new technologies, materials and construction techniques. These new building types include sites of production, exchange and consumption: the factories, warehouses, and office buildings, financial institutions and department stores; places of entertainment: hotels, clubs and music halls; and the spaces of culture and collection such as Board Schools, exhibition halls, libraries, art galleries and museums. Significantly, many of these buildings were directly affected by legislation at both national and local levels. Moreover the period also saw the development and re-formation of older building types such as places of worship, army barracks, hospitals and asylums, prisons and theatres. During this period, each of these new or re-developed building types required and acquired specialised forms of interior design, many of which persist today. Consequently, there are a number of informative and well-researched studies based upon an examination of surviving nineteenth century buildings, topographical collections, photographic surveys, architectural drawings and plans. These offer either broad chronologies of Victorian architecture, case studies of particular building types, or monographs of individual architects and designers. However, in Buildings and Power: Freedom and Control in the Origin of Modern Building Types (1993; 2004), Thomas A Markus analyses the form, function and space of a range of buildings in what is a fascinating and inspirational study that offers the historian of the modern interior much to think about.60 Yüklə 73,25 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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