Revival Furniture The 19th century was marked by the Industrial Revolution, which caused profound changes in society. With increasing working populations in cities, the rise of a new class of wealthy of furniture buyers, together with the arrival of mass-production and the demise of the individual craftsman-designer, the gradual progression of furniture styles that had developed through the previous centuries was replaced by a raft of imitation or revival styles. These concurrent revival styles, including Gothic revival, Neoclassicism and Rococo revival became easy and inexpensive to manufacture as technology developed during the industrial revolution.
With mass-production technology in place it was a simple matter to graft historically correct ornaments onto all sorts of furniture, thereby making possible for the creation of a continual stream of revival styles to meet the demands of the public. The result was a century of furniture whose common denominator was excessive ornamentation in the form of applied metal or wood carvings, inlays or stencils.