Rethinking the Interior, c. 1867-1896: Aestheticism and Arts and Crafts (review)

While the aesthetic and the Arts and Crafts movements have dominated understandings of interior design in the second half of the nineteenth century, scholars have frequently considered the two separately or in opposition to one another. But this new collection of essays, edited by Jason Edwards and Imogen Hart, demonstrates their close connection in artistic thought and practice. The essays show evidence of both movements in architecture, interior design, sculpture, and painting. Victorianists will welcome this book's repositioning of the late-nineteenth-century interior not as a forerunner to modernism—as it is often portrayed—but as a significant development in its own right. Rather than seeing the cluttered Victorian interior inspiring stripped-down modernist designs, Edwards and Hart suggest that the eclecticism of the Victorian interior is worthy of further study, explanation, and enjoyment.

This thesis underwrites a series of fascinating essays that reconsider well-known designs and objects. Sally-Anne Huxtable returns to the iconic Green Dining Room in the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum), traditionally associated with William Morris but in fact produced via the collective efforts of Morris, Phillip Webb, and Edward Burne-Jones. As a Morris and Company interior, the room has been aligned with Arts and Crafts. Yet Huxtable makes a convincing case for seeing this 1860s space as a prototype aesthetic interior—with its green colouring; panels depicting fruit, foliage, and blossoms; and themes of arcadia and rural beauty amidst the London bustle. Likewise, art objects previously labelled aesthetic are linked to the Arts and Crafts movement. Morna O'Neill argues that while the paintings of Walter Crane embody aesthetic eclecticism, they also depict socialist ideals. Jane Hawkes examines the interior decoration of the Church of St. Mary at Studley Royal in North Yorkshire, designed and produced by William Burges in the 1870s. The density of the design—a riot of carving, applied metal work, gargoyles, plant motifs, and stained glass—might well be seen as eclectic, even representing the "superabundance and disorder" that John Ruskin cautioned against (qtd. in Edwards and Hart 42). Yet Hawkes reveals a carefully organised interior constructed with meticulous attention to archaeological detail.

The book repositions key artistic figures in relation to both movements. Morris, the grand old man of Arts and Crafts, is linked to the aesthetic movement through the interior of Kelmscott House, his London home. Using Morris's personal papers and photographs taken at the end of his life, Hart offers a sensitive reading of the house. The decoration clearly carried political meaning, yet its eclecticism and furnishings (described by some observers as "sumptuous" [qtd. in Edwards and Hart 79]) might also be viewed as aesthetic. Likewise, Edwards considers Leighton House, finding that its tiled walls and mosaic floors evoked political philosophies of craftsmanship, yet its interior was resplendent with the tokens of aestheticism: sunflower heads picked out in gold in the ebonised woodwork, blue and white china, and walls decorated in green and yellow tones.

The essays also show how the movements were adopted across different practices and markets. Paul Holden explores the combination of the two styles in the work of the architectural team Richard Code and James McClaren, focusing on their refurbishment of Lanhydrock House near Bodmin and the building of an extra wing to "The Park" at Ledbury in Hertfordshire. The architects sought to combine "old and new" (132), establishing continuity with the interiors of the new buildings, yet introducing a restrained aesthetic decor. Anne Anderson examines the representation of blue and white china in nineteenth-century culture, demonstrating that aesthetic tokens were not without critics: "Chinamania" was ridiculed in Punch (112). The tea pot in particular served as a symbol of femininity, even emasculation. Reconsidering the market for nineteenth-century domestic sculpture, Martina Droth argues that while statuettes and smaller sculptures produced for the home have often been labelled as domestic, these complex art objects should...