In the first of a series of extracts from The Victorian House Book, international interior designer the late Robin Guild, takes us through some of the influences of architectural style through the mid to late Victorian era.
All great art is subject to instant plagiarism and dilution, none more so than architecture. The original and lively minds in any generation provide the direction and, eventually, a kind of accepted grammar. The grammar of the 18th century, based on simple rules of proportion and scale, resulted in a coherent architecture guided by the taste of an educated few and limited by contemporary building technology. Mass-production and mass-communication of the 19th century changed all this. To the consumer, any underlying theories were unimportant: what was new was, by definition, the best.
Naturally, the majority of houses to which this study is addressed are those which descended at second or third hand from the original models thrashed out by leading architects of the day. To unravel the threads of each stylistic history a study must be made of individual parts, to which end later chapters of illustrated details will be useful.
Many Victorians were concerned that no essentially Victorian style was emerging, and it is true that their architecture up to the middle of the reign relied almost entirely on interpretations of classical or medieval forms. In the second half of the century, this was to change. Resulting in an architecture which was genuinely different, eclectic and one which was, by the end of the century, to flower briefly in stylized forms which were adapted on the Continent into Art Nouveau or, in Italy, il stile liberty (named after the London Department store).
The first major figure in this new phase was William Morris. He was one of the greatest of all Victorians: designer, artist, poet and socialist, he worked tirelessly to improve the standards of everyday design which, as a young man, he had so despised at the Great Exhibition of 1851. ‘Have nothing in your home which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful,’ he proclaimed.