Antique Eastlake Furniture

(mid-1860's)

History and Illustrations

The Early English style, also sometimes called Modern English Gothic, of which Charles Lock Eastlake (1836-1906) was a leading exponent, started to gain popularity around the mid-1860's.

 

A marked feature of this style was the rectangular form of the structure, as it followed the tradition of the medieval joiner which required a framework of
verticals and horizontals (posts and rails) joined with mortise and tenon. Glue was never used.

 

Interest in this style was roused by the publication in 1868 of Eastlake's book, HINTS ON HOUSEHOLD TASTE, which enjoyed wide popularity both in England and in America. Eastlake, who designed some furniture, none of which has apparently survived, bitterly attacks in his book the predominance of the curve in mid-Victorian furniture: "Our modern sofas and chairs aspire to elegance, not with gaily embossed silk or delicate inlay of wood, but simply because there is not a straight line in their composition... The tendency of the present age of upholstery is to run into curves. Chairs are invariably curved in such a manner as to insure the greatest amount of ugliness with the least possible comfort. The backs of sideboards are curved in the most senseless and extravagant manner; the legs of cabinets are curved, and become in consequence constructively weak; drawing room tables are curved in every direction -perpendicularly and horizontally- and are therefore inconvenient to sit at, and always rickety. This detestable ornamentation is called shaping."

The furniture illustrated and designed by Eastlake was a vaguely traditional
rural style based on Early English forms, somewhat Elizabethan and somewhat
early Jacobean, uncomfortable but marked by sound joinery. It was simple, rectangular and practically without ornament, with a rough Gothic quality which no doubt prompted J. Moyr Smith to write later in 1887: "perhaps in decoration it was too simple... and in construction too much like a packing case." Regardless, it became fashionable and such was the influence of his book, for he was regarded as the chief theorist of the Art movement, that furniture produced in this manner is frequently called antique Eastlake furniture. In America the furniture trade produced a debased Gothic which was far different from Eastlake's illustrations.

 

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