Eastlake Style
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pbw00518
Violets
("Banner of Liberty" Publishing House, 1873)
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Charles Locke Eastlake (1836-1906) was an architect and
designer who profoundly influenced popular taste in the decorative arts
in the 1870s and 80s. He was born in Plymouth, England to an admiralty
law agent and studied architecture under Philip Hardwick and at the Royal
Academy schools. He worked first as a journalist, then as the secretary
at the Royal Institute of British Architects from 1866 to 1878. After
this he was the keeper of the National Gallery, a post held earlier by
his uncle Sir Charles Lock Eastlake (with whom he is sometimes confused).
Though
he never practiced formally as an architect, he was highly influential
as a writer in this field and in the decorative arts. In 1872 he
published A History of the Gothic Revival , which was the first scholarly
work to explicate the Gothic Revival movement
in England. In 1868 he published Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery,
and Other Details,
portions of which had previously been published as a series. This
manual on interior decoration was immensely popular and influenced
public taste in the decorative arts. It even went through four editions in
Great Britain and seven in the United States in the 1870s and 80s.
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pbw00548
Kitty's Class Day
(Loring, 1849)
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In Hints on Household Taste Eastlake
voiced his concern that people did not have an educated taste in art
and that this was reflected in their choice of home décor. Their
tendency was to choose decoration based on what was novel and
fashionable instead of what was beautiful and well made. He hoped to
rectify this by providing basic tips on interior design.
Much
of Eastlake's message was a reaction to both the overdone Victorian
Rococo Revival style and a decline
in manufacturing standards brought on by mass-production
in the Industrial Revolution. He disliked
the eclecticism of his own era and wanted a decorative art where form
and ornament followed function. He traveled in Europe for a period
early in his career and gained there an admiration for Gothic style -
not just its decorative form but also its quality of construction - and
he reflected this in some of his own designs. Eastlake advocated simple
solid, unvarnished furniture with abstract, rather than naturalistic
decoration. His ideas were by no means unique or new. Theorists like
John Ruskin and Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc had also written similar
calls for a return to simplicity. These early voices contributed to what later
developed to be the Arts and Crafts movement.
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pbw00964
Mark Twain's Sketches Old and New
(American Publishing Co., 1875)
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Given
the popularity of Hints on Household Taste, American furniture makers in particular
were quick to capture the market on this style, producing large
quantities of "Eastlake style" furniture, which typically was
"rectilinear in form, made of oak, walnut or ebonized wood; with turned
spindles, balusters, and finials; chamfered edges, and structural
hardware; and often finished with gilt-incised geometric surface
decoration." (Bolger, 423). A. Kimbel and J. Cabus, Daniel Pabst, and
Herter Brothers are a few of the manufacturers who designed in this
style.
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Detail from pbw01811
The Spirit World
(Colby and Rich, 1880) |
Though some of this directly mimicked the drawings Eastlake included in Hints on Household Taste ,
a great deal of it was not necessarily what Eastlake had intended,
particularly with respect to quality. At one point, he complained: " I
find American tradesmen continually advertising what they are pleased
to call Eastlake furniture, the production of which I have had nothing
whatever to do, and for the taste of which I should be very sorry to be
considered responsible" (quoted in Bolger, 423). Manufacturers went so far
as to even try to create the "Eastlake" folding chair, refrigerator and
bathroom.
The "Eastlake style" book cover was also popular in the
1870s. In creating this style, designers adopted some of
the surface forms of furniture decoration. Eastlake covers
were usually black stamped (sometimes
blind or gold stamped), and they emphasized abstract geometric
patterns, with the most idiomatic feature being thin defined
lines ending in a stylized
leaf (see detail examples below). The covers also often
include other geometric forms like wheels, bands of repeated
patterns or other stylized natural
forms. As part of the Eastlake craze, the Mackeller, Smiths
and Jordan Foundry even created an Eastlake typeface, though
it was not used on a high percentage of Eastlake covers.
(see examples of similar
typefaces on pbw01144 and pbw02011)
There was no publisher or designer who appears to have
specialized in Eastlake
style; just as many furniture
manufacturers adopted the name for their products, so to
did many publishers have their own interpretations of the "Eastlake" cover
style.
Search the PBO database for Eastlake
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Detail
from pbw01144
The Cats' Arabian Nights
(D. Lothrop and Company, 1883)
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Detail from pbw01292
Grandmamma's Letters from Japan
(James H. Earle, 1877) |
Sources:
Bolger, Doreen, et al. In Pursuit of Beauty: Americans and the Aesthetics Movement .
Rizzoli: New York: 1986.
Eastlake, Charles Locke. Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery and Other Details. London, 1868; Boston, 1872; New York: Dover, 1969.
Madigan, Mary Jean Smith. Eastlake-Influenced American Furniture 1870-1890.
Yonkers, NY: The Hudson River Museum, 1973.
Wiffen, Marcus. "Eastlake style." Dictionary
of Art. Edited by Jane Turner. New York:
Grove, 1996. (online version is available at some colleges and universities)
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