A Taste for Eastlake

QUESTION: I recently discovered two chairs and a settee at my grandmother’s house. Unfortunately, there are no markings of any kind as she apparently planned to refinish them and sanded everything off! What can you tell me about them? After hours and hours of searching on Google, the best I could come up with is that they're possibly Victorian.

ANSWER: You’re half way there as far as your chairs and settee are concerned. Yes, they are Victorian—Eastlake Victorian, as a matter of fact. This style was popular from 1870 to 1885 and is one of seven different furniture styles popular during the Victorian Age.

Charles Locke Eastlake, an English critic of taste, did more to affect a change in American taste in the late 19th Century than anyone before or since. More than any other individual, he was responsible for introducing the principles of the English design reform movement to the American public.

Eastlake considered simplicity the key to beauty. He thought the objects in people's homes should be attractive and well made by workers who took pride in their work. He published a book, Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery and Other Details, a runaway bestseller from 1870 and 1890. The book became the decorating bible for upper middle class American housewives.

Though Eastlake included some of his own sketches among the illustrations of well-designed furniture chosen for his book, he was primarily a critic of taste, not a furniture designer. The furniture illustrated in Hints had ornamental features including shallow carving, marquetry, incised or pierced geometric designs, rows of turned spindles, chamfered edges, brass strap hinges, bail handles, and keyhole hardware inspired by Gothic forms. Every decorative device, according to Eastlake, also had to fulfill a useful function.

To relieve the simplicity of rectilinear forms, Eastlake advised using turned legs or spindle supports. When a homeowner desired an "effect of richness,” he suggested restrained, conventionalized carving, inlay, and sometimes even veneer. Ornament, he felt, should be stylized rather than naturalistic, for it’s "this difference between artistic abstraction and pseudo-realism which separates good and noble design from that which is commonplace and bad." A functionalist, Eastlake cautioned that carved decoration should always be shallow and never "inconveniently" located, as were the "knotted lumps" of grapes or roses decorating rococo-revival chairs that often stabbed the sitter between his or her shoulder blades. His book further suggested that furniture be made of such solid, strongly grained woods as oak, walnut, or mahogany. He preferred oil-rubbed finishes to "French-polished" ones, and varnish was taboo.

By 1876, homeowners of the nation's most elegant homes decorated them in subdued "artistic" tones, set off by rectilinear furniture of rich bird's eye maple or elegantly ebonized cherry wood. Critics broadly categorized the new designs as "art furniture," but also called them "modern Gothic," "Queen Anne Revival," or "Eastlake" in honor of the man who brought a sense of taste to America.

To the modern eye, such furniture with its intricately stylized marquetry, gilded incised designs, spindled galleries, inset tiles, richly grained woods, and decorative turned elements hardly seems "simple." But in contrast to the heavily carved furniture of preceding decades, embellished with naturalistic roses and bunches of grapes imposed on the elaborate rococo shapes that we now regard as the embodiment of Victorian design, Eastlake-inspired furniture was remarkably functional and clean-lined.

The Eastlake style was quickly taken up by the manufacturers of cheaper furniture, who until then had given very little attention to artistic form. The furniture produced in these factories ranged from excellent to shoddy, depending on the grade of lumber used, how well it was seasoned in the drying kilns appended to the larger factories, and upon the skill of each machine operator throughout the manufacturing process. At its worst, factory furniture was poorly designed and rickety. However, there was a middle range of
moderately priced but well-constructed factory furniture produced in the Midwest for wholesale shipment to Eastern retail outlets. These chairs and settee fit into this group.

Eastlake-style furniture often featured tables and chests with marble tops, some the traditional white, others in rich Italian pinks and browns. Tables and chairs had aprons and legs incised with horizontal or vertical lines called reeding and chamfered corners. Round legs on chairs also featured ring-like annulets. Quatrefoils were another popular addition, since flat cutouts often graced the more elegant pieces. Lastly, acanthus-leaf designs could be found incised into even the cheapest versions.

Pieces of furniture in this style had low relief carvings, moldings, incised lines, geometric ornaments, and flat surfaces that were easy to keep clean. Also called Cottage Furniture, the mass-produced pieces were much more affordable than the fancy revival pieces. Unfortunately, while Eastlake-style furniture may have looked refined, most chairs and sofas weren’t very comfortable and were meant to be used in formal parlors for guests only.

The Vintage Trap

QUESTION: I recently purchased a vintage formal living room set for a steal of a price and am looking to learn more about it. What can you tell me?

ANSWER: Depending on how much you paid, the question is who got taken, the dealer or you. I suspect it was you. While this is a very well-built living room set, it’s really not very old—most likely from the 1940s or 1950s, but could be as old as the 1920s.

Furniture of this sort falls into the category of what used to be known as “period” furniture. Many people in their 60s grew up with such furniture. Their mothers warned them about not putting their feet on the couch or sleeping in the chairs. Generally, manufacturers overstuffed these pieces so they would be more comfortable. They provided thick blocked cushions so that anyone sitting in them would sink into them. Your set happens to be styled after French “Louis” pieces of the Rococo period. But that’s where the similarity ends.

People like yourself often fall into the “vintage” trap. The word vintage originally applied to wine making
and the process of picking grapes and creating the finished wine. A vintage wine is one made from grapes that were all, or primarily, grown and harvested in a single specified year. In certain wines, it can denote quality.

The people who sell on eBay and other auction sites saw that word “quality” and figured why not use the word “vintage” to describe their pieces and make them more attractive to bidders. In this case, vintage means referring to something from the past of high quality. Let’s face it folks, anything from yesterday—the day before today—is from the past and if it’s of good quality, then it technically can be labeled vintage. When the buyers on the auction sites saw the word quality, they perceived vintage to mean something old that has lots of value. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always apply.

Online sellers throw the word vintage around like it’s a catchall word that will instantly add credibility and perceived value to the items they’re selling. You’ll see vintage jewelry instead of estate jewelry, vintage furniture instead of used furniture, and vintage kitchenware instead of used kitchen utensils. It’s all in the wording.

Unfortunately, middle and lower-market antique and flea market dealers have picked up on the use of vintage to describe goods for which they don’t know the age. Since using the word online has become rather successful—you can full a lot of people a lot of the time, to paraphrase an old saying—they figured they might as well try it.

Don’t fall into the vintage trap. Find out about a piece before you buy it. In the end, you’ll make an informed decision and just might get something of real value for a steal.

Charles Eastlake—America’s Harbinger of Taste

QUESTION: I have a three-piece set of furniture that belonged to my grandparents and perhaps to their parents, and I'm trying to identify what it is. Can you tell me if you think it might be Eastlake and if so, what can you tell me about this furniture style?

ANSWER: What you have is an Eastlake parlor set, dating from around 1880. But it wasn’t designed by Charles Locke Eastlake. Instead, he only suggested designs in his book Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery and Other Details. More than any other person, he was responsible for introducing the principles of the English design reform movement to America.

Eastlake considered simplicity the key to beauty. He thought the objects in people's homes should be attractive and well made by workers who took pride in their hand work or machine work. His influence led to a broad demand for relatively simple, clean-lined "art furniture" between 1870 and 1890.

Written to instruct the average housewife in the principles of tasteful home decoration, Eastlake’s book achieved immediate popularity. Though Eastlake included some of his own sketches among the illustrations of well-designed furniture chosen for his book, he was primarily a critic of taste, not a furniture designer. The furniture illustrated in it had ornamental features including shallow carving, marquetry, incised or pierced geometric designs, rows of turned spindles, chamfered edges, brass strap hinges, bail handles, and keyhole hardware inspired by Gothic forms. Every decorative device, according to Eastlake, also had to fulfill a useful function.

He especially disdained the "shaped" forms of Rococo Revival. He considered the curved forms of this Victorian style rickety and constructively weak. To relieve the simplicity of rectilinear forms, Eastlake advised using turned legs or spindle supports.

For those who wished more richness in their furniture, he suggested restrained, conventionalized carving, inlay, and sometimes even veneer. Eastlake believed ornament should be stylized rather than naturalistic.

His book further suggested that furniture be made of solid, strongly grained woods such as mahogany, walnut, or oak. Most Eastlake-style furniture found today is usually made of the latter.He preferred oil-rubbed finishes to "French-polished" ones, and disliked the shiny look of varnish.

To the modern eye, Eastlake-style furniture, with its intricate marquetry, gilded incised designs, spindled galleries, inset tiles, richly grained woods, and decorative turned elements, hardly seems “simple.” But in contrast to the heavily carved furniture of earlier Victorian decades, embellished with naturalistic roses and bunches of grapes imposed on the elaborate Rococo shapes now regarded as the embodiment of Victorian design, Eastlake-inspired furniture was remarkably functional and clean-lined.

Eastlake-style furniture often featured tables and chests with marble tops, some the traditional white, others in rich Italian pinks and browns. Tables and chairs had aprons and legs incised with horizontal or vertical lines called reeding and camfered corners. Round legs on chairs also featured ring-like annulets. And acanthus leaf designs could be found incised into even the least expensive pieces.

Unfortunately, while Eastlake-style furniture may have looked refined, most chairs and sofas weren’t very comfortable and were meant to be used in formal parlors for guests only.

A Case of Mistaken Identity

QUESTION: I saw a Queen Anne dining set in a shop, and it appears to be old, however the chairs are upholstered in a ‘vinyl’ material which also appears old, but is this an antique?

ANSWER: I get questions like this a lot. Most of the time, the persons asking them think that because a piece of furniture is in a particular style that it’s an antique. But they fail to realize that certain popular styles of furniture have been reproduced over and over throughout the last several centuries.

From the photo, I could tell that the dining table and chairs had been made in the Queen Anne style, but I could also tell right away that it wasn’t an antique. The giveaway was the extra leaves in the table. From the looks of it, I'd say the set might be as old as the 1930s, but I'm leaning more to the 1960s. Let’s see why.

At the time Queen Anne was popular in the 18th century, dining tables like this one with added leaves didn't come into use until the 19th century. During the 1750s, joyners–the person’s who made furniture–made Queen Anne dining tables as drop-leaf tables with large leaves or wings that could be folded up and stood against a wall until ready for use. In many cases, the owners stood them in their front hallways to allow for more space. A wealthy 18th-century family would have only used a larger table like this when dining with guests. They often ate at a smaller table by the fire, especially in winter, or had “tea”–what we call supper–in their bedrooms by the fire. When not in use as a dining table, they may have used it for other things and stood the chairs against the wall around the room.

At the end of the 19th century, a style called Colonial Revival came into popularity because of the colonial exhibits at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876. Furniture makers began to make what they thought looked like colonial furniture although it was often stylized and lacked the fine details of the original.

That said, this table and chairs did seem to be well constructed of solid woods and, therefore might sell for somewhere between $1,500 and $2,000. But don’t mistake the identity of this dining set for the real thing. It isn’t.