Arts & Crafts House Styles

ARTS AND CRAFTS INTERIORS

FIG 5.1: Arts & Crafts interiors could range dramatically from rich historic designs with beautifully crafted fittings to revolutionary bright and simple spaces as here at C.F.A. Voysey’s own house, The Orchard, in Chorleywood, Hertfordshire.

Arts & Crafts designers swept through the clutter of a Victorian house like a breath of fresh air. The dark sludgy colours, multiple busy patterns and scattered collections of furniture, plants and ornaments that characterise 19th-century interiors were cleared out of fashionable middle class homes in its last decade and replaced by simple, natural and lighter schemes that were both spacious and bright, letting in the sunshine and fresh air. The interior was no longer controlled by the demands of the exterior: now rooms could be arranged to make the most of the brighter and warmer south side or shaped to form tall, open meeting places or low, intimate spaces for private conversation. Arts & Crafts architects were encouraged to take control of all aspects of the home including the interior decoration and fixtures, while some like Voysey designed every detail, even down to the hinges on the door. With the greater freedom in structure they could better adapt the rooms to suit the individual demands of the owner, in order to make a beautiful and comfortable home. At the same time they took greater consideration for the servants, those vital cogs in the running of most middle and upper class homes, who were becoming difficult to retain as new industries offered better incentives. Therefore, basements were replaced by dry, bright service rooms and facilities provided closer to hand to make the daily chores less arduous.

FIG 5.2: An Edwardian middle class drawing room, with labels of the fixtures and fittings that might be found. Arts & Crafts interiors were simple and lighter than those before but still may appear traditional and busy to modern eyes, with dark colours and strong patterns still employed, especially in the dining room.

FIG 5.3: An interior view of Broad Leys by Voysey who thought rooms should be light, bright and cheerful, easily cleaned and inexpensive to maintain, with the architect designing every detail down to the hinges on the door. In his own house, The Orchard (see Fig 5.1) he had whitewashed walls, white or natural oak ceilings, plain carpets and simple oak furniture, and large tiled fireplaces were a feature.

For those middle classes moving into their new speculative-built suburban home it became easier to emulate the Arts & Crafts houses of their social superiors. They might be tempted to fill all the available shelving with ornaments but now they would be beautiful and artistic, purchased from shops like Heal’s and Liberty’s rather than the hideous mass-produced items that had to content their parents. Furniture that had often been over-worked and ostentatious copies of historic styles with highly polished veneered woods were replaced by more honest, simple and solid pieces with an emphasis upon exposing the natural grain – although they could still be decorative and elaborate as long as the beauty of the craftsmanship was revealed. Restricted by the regular layout of their semis and terraces, owners had to rely upon the use of lighter patterns, strong colours and natural woods to create moods in different rooms, although without the guiding hand of an architect they were quite content to mix up styles from various historic sources. At the same time they had to bear in mind practical concerns, such as sanitation and cleanliness and the increasing shortage of servants.

FIG 5.4: Liberty’s was the first call for the fashionable middle classes happily adopting the Arts & Crafts style but not buying into its ethical message. It was founded by Arthur Lazenby Liberty (1843–1917), a draper from Chesham, Buckinghamshire, who with financial backing from his second wife’s father established his shop on Regent Street, London, in 1875 selling Oriental art, fabrics, silverware and small pieces of furniture. Much of their work was produced by machine with hand-made details and were copies of pieces by leading Arts & Crafts designers. Ashbee was one who objected to this, blaming them in part for the failure of his guild. Designers who produced work for Liberty’s, like Archibald Knox who designed the chalice illustrated here, remained anonymous as their work was stamped with ‘Liberty and Co’.

The Rooms

The hall, which had gradually been reduced from the centre point of the medieval house to a mere passageway in the Victorian period, was now revived as an important meeting place. In many Arts & Crafts homes the door opened into a small vestibule or directly into a square-planned room complete with fireplace and seating. In the finest examples it could almost emulate the busy and noisy hall of the Middle Ages, with a double height, open plan broken down into areas for groups to gather, talk and play. In most suburban houses the hall might be wider than before so a small fireplace and chair for people waiting to be welcomed in by the owner could be fitted. For most, though, the concern was to make a favourable impression and at the same time hide the dirt that got dragged in. Walls still had dado rails to protect them as people entered and passed through, and Lincrusta and Anaglypta wall-coverings were fitted below for the same reason.

FIG 5.5: Arts & Crafts furniture like this cabinet by Voysey emphasised the natural grain of the wood and often featured highly decorative metalwork. Heal’s of Tottenham Court Road, London, was one of the leading suppliers of simple, robust pieces, many designed by Ambrose Heal (1872–1959), a cabinet maker, who joined the family business in 1893.

FIG 5.6: The hall from Blackwell, Windermere, by Baillie Scott. This large welcoming room was described as a ‘living hall’ with its distinctive open plan broken down by partitions and varying height, with carefully planned windows emphasising the grandeur, while a gallery and lowered ceilings created intimate spaces.

FIG 5.7: The hall in an Edwardian suburban terrace with Arts & Crafts style paper and a black and white tiled floor. With muddy streets and a sooty atmosphere outside, the hall tended to avoid plain surfaces in order to hide the dirt.

The principal rooms could range from a suite of specialised spaces designed for gentlemen and ladies to dine, entertain and retire, down to the typical front and back room of a middle class terrace. In all there would be a dining room (usually at the front in a terrace), a masculine room with strong colours and luxurious fittings emphasising the wealth of the owner and his good taste, although Arts & Crafts examples would be lighter than many contemporary schemes. An oak or similar-quality wooden floor, an opulent fireplace, wall panelling and exposed beams or plaster mouldings on the ceiling could all be found in the finest examples, with stained wood and mass-produced plaster kits enabling the owner of smaller houses to copy the style.

FIG 5.8: A section of the dining room at Blackwell by Baillie Scott. This masculine room had wooden panels on the walls and ceiling, strong coloured paper and rugs on the boarded floor. The inglenook fireplace flanked by windows and the blue and white Delft tiles were popular features with Arts & Crafts designers.

The drawing room was a lighter space, reflecting its feminine nature. In a large house it was traditionally where the ladies would withdraw to (hence ‘drawing’) while the men remained in the dining room, perhaps becoming progressively drunk and offensive! Light and delicate floral patterned papers, comfortable upholstered chairs and white painted fireplaces with overmantels could all be found, and there was often access to the garden or a recessed window seat. In a more modest terrace it would have been more of a living room, a general family space, usually at the rear of the house, and although not as dark as the front room it must still have seemed closed-in when furniture, a clock and a piano had been added. Morris wallpapers like ‘Willow’ were popular here although a number of patterns could be used within the room as long as they balanced each other.

FIG 5.9: A drawing room from an Edwardian terrace. This more feminine room was lighter than the dining room at the front of the house, in this example with floral papers and a complementary frieze on top, an overmantel above the copper-hooded fire grate and French windows opening onto the garden.

FIG 5.10: The kitchen in an Arts & Crafts house, like most contemporary houses, was now within the main structure of the house, with the versatile but unreliable and tiresome-to-clean range cooker at its centre.

Service rooms had emerged from the basement: the kitchen, larders and scullery were now usually incorporated within the main structure, rear extension or wing of an Arts & Crafts house, providing the staff with lighter and drier conditions than before. There would have been a cast iron closed range to provide hot water, as well as an oven and hot plates, while in the largest houses there may have been an additional open fire for roasting joints. A large central table for the preparation of food and dressers around the wall for utensils were always included in larger kitchens but if there was a sink it was only used as part of the cooking process, as all washing was done in a separate scullery.

FIG 5.11: An Edwardian bedroom with rugs on the floorboards, light floral wallpaper and a washstand (although bathrooms were fitted, most people still preferred to wash in the bedroom).

Upstairs the bedrooms would continue the simple theme, with owners encouraged to use free-standing furniture and light colours for the walls and curtains. Four-poster beds, which kept the cold out for occupants, had fallen from fashion; half testers with drapes at the head of the bed were still found but conventional iron or brass bedsteads were now becoming common. A fireplace was fitted in most bedrooms in a larger house but it would only be lit when an elderly or infirm member of the family was using the room. Muslin, chintz and other light fabrics were used for curtains, white walls were popular, often coordinated with green, and an embroidered or patchwork quilt over the bed was another favourite Arts & Crafts touch.

Bathrooms, which were fitted into most middle class houses, were a relatively new feature; those lower down the ladder still used a tin bath in front of the fire, while many wealthy owners had servants to bring hot water to them and were reluctant to change to plumbed-in facilities! The rooms were usually small, with only a bath and wash basin; the water closet was in a separate room next door. As sanitation and health were major issues, most late Victorian and Edwardian bathroom suites were left open beneath with the pipes exposed, though some can still be found with the slightly earlier fashion of having them boxed in a traditional wood casing. There was little room for expression of style, although plain glazed tiles were usually run halfway up the wall with decoration in the border, or the small window might have featured stained-glass patterns.

FIG 5.12: An Edwardian bathroom was small, with fittings left open to make the room easy to clean (where large examples are found today in old houses they will often turn out to be a rear bedroom converted into a bathroom at a later date).

The Decoration

Most Victorian interiors were a sham! Fireplaces and staircases were painted to appear like marble or a fine-quality timber; wooden floors and the trim around the walls were stained and grained to look like maple, oak or mahogany; and mass-produced mouldings were used on the ceiling to imitate fine hand-made plasterwork. Arts & Crafts designers advocated honesty in materials and used wood in its natural form, emphasising the grain and beauty of the timber in furniture, floors and fittings.

Walls could be plain, with skirtings and picture rails painted white (Morris was one of the first to recommend this last idea – a shockingly modern concept at the time), although in most Arts & Crafts houses wallpapers were used on at least a few walls. These had only become mass-produced onto rolls from the 1840s and although widespread in middle class homes were still out of reach for many poorer families, who stencilled instead. Dado rails were only to be found in hallways and occasionally in dining rooms, most walls having a deep and sometimes elaborately moulded skirting with a picture rail above. In the Edwardian period this was often dropped down to line up with the top of the doorway, so a large space above could have a decorative frieze fitted, sometimes up to 3 or 4 ft tall.

FIG 5.13: Wallpapers with stylised natural forms, continuously flowing designs and carefully arranged repeats were hallmarks of the best pattern designers like Morris and Voysey. In the Edwardian Arts & Crafts houses they were often further simplified with two-dimensional designs and a pair of co-ordinating colours or a single colour on a cream or off-white background (centre and right). Art Nouveau wallpapers became popular in the first decade of the 20th century with colours like mustard yellow and lime green and patterned birds and foliage. Other distinctive colours that could be found on fabrics and wallpapers included peacock blue, russet brown, madder reds, subtle yellows and sage green. One of the most popular producers of papers was the Silver Studio, founded by Arthur Silver (1853–96), a fabric designer who supplied Liberty’s with some of its most characteristic designs.

FIG 5.14: Anaglypta and Lincrusta embossed papers were popular in the hall in terraced houses, in this example featuring a distinctive Art Nouveau stylised floral design.

Windows could be covered by multiple layers of fabric in Victorian homes. This was simplified by the turn of the 20th century to two or three, with linen, muslin or cotton curtains, and in the Edwardian period chintzes in plain colours or with printed stylised natural patterns hung from brass or wooden poles.

Strong colours and bold designs in most Arts & Crafts interiors were restricted to small areas, most notably the tiles around the fireplace, which was the centre point of principal rooms. Art Nouveau with stylised natural forms or more exotic colourful hand-painted types could be found, although Morris and other leading designers loved Delft tiles, with their distinctive blue and white rustic scenes of rural Dutch life. Although simplicity was the theme, designers were not afraid to mix up different patterns within the same room as long as there was some balance between them.