Don’t know your art nouveau from your art deco, and feeling overwhelmed at where to find those dream pieces for your home? Well, Hutch is on hand to guide you through some of the most important styles of antiques and the eras that defined them.
Baroque
Baroque generally refers to the start of the 17th Century to the early 18th Century, and is considered the first visual style to have a considerable global impact.
It developed in Catholic Europe as an antidote to the austerity of Protestant art, architecture and music - wealth and strength displayed through theatrical artistic techniques. While the styles vary slightly from country to country (the more measured approach of the French compared to the exuberant Italian style), all these countries’ interpretation of Baroque is florid, ornate, and a little bit extra.
Lavish, decorative features proliferate: angels, floral garlands and horns of plenty festoon the architecture and furniture. A sense of overwhelming drama was created through light, bold colours and a vast increase in scale.
The music scene too was a hotbed of experimentation and innovation. The 17th century saw the popularisation of opera and with it, extravagant opera houses replete with appropriately opulent interiors.
Baroque furniture is an extreme departure from the styles that preceded it. Massive cabinets, cupboards and wardrobes were the order of the day with pediments, ebony inlays and marble tabletops. Perhaps the most famous furniture designer of the period is André Charles Boulle, whose work for Louis the XIV pioneered marquetry (the use of inlays), and can be seen throughout Versailles.
Rococo
Alternatively known as Late Baroque, the Rococo period is considered to be the period between Louis XIV’s death and the beheading of Louis XVI. Originating in France, the years after Louis XIV’s death and before the young Louis XV ascended to the throne (the French Régence) left a swathe of artists no longer bound to aristocratic rule and free to express different ideas.
The result? Allegorical art, a greater freedom of form and more secular subject matters. Design during the Rococo took the Baroque ideas and went even further with ornamentation, marquetry and decoration. With a growing bourgeoisie, patrons weren’t just royalty and aristocrats, and smaller, handcrafted items like chandeliers and silverware grew in popularity to suit the needs of the buyers.
Although starting in France, the style of the period quickly spread throughout Europe. Stucco work flourished in countries like Spain, Austria and Germany, turning the humble plaster into works of decorative art. Profuse, intricate decorations adorned furniture and smaller household items. Shells and acanthus leaf motifs were a common feature, often in an asymmetric form that invokes a sense of superfluity and playfulness. Colours were lighter, with artists veering towards pastels and softer hughes. Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s ‘The Swing’ epitomises Rococo sentiment - the sensuous and the delicate laced with frivolity.
Neoclassical
Neoclassicism swept the visual arts in the 1760s, partly in reaction to the frivolous aesthetic of the Rococo and after a slew of archeological discoveries brought about renewed interest in antiquity.
Lasting until the mid-19th Century, Neoclassicism represented rationality, logic and order. Its rise coincided with the apex of the Age of Enlightenment, and a time of social revolution in France and America.
Design, therefore, followed suit. Architecture was strictly proportioned and symmetrical, with columns, simple geometric shapes and pediments. Architects like Robert Adams and John Soane championed the form, along with Thomas Jefferson in the United States. It isn’t surprising that a country in its infancy took inspiration from the home of democracy - landmark buildings like the White House and the US Capitol Building in Washington DC are archetypal for this period and evoke a sense of extreme confidence.
In furniture, rectilinear forms like fluted or tapered table legs replaced the curves of the Baroque and Rococo. Marquetry and decoration were still popular, but had a lighter, more refined touch. Inlays and painted furniture featured classical motifs, inspired by recent excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Arts & Crafts
The Arts & Crafts movement was born as a reaction against the effect the Industrial Revolution had on craftsmanship and decorative arts in the second half of the 19th Century in Britain. Spearheaded by William Morris, the movement aimed to renew an appreciation for crafts and move society away from the impersonal, man made reproductions popular at the time.
As with other practitioners of the movement, his emphasis was on the people that made the products and the relationship between the maker and their art. By prioritising this connection, they believed creations became intrinsically more beautiful.
This is inherent in all Arts & Crafts antiques, and items showcase both the skill of the craftsman and the quality of material. Look for exquisite joinery using traditional techniques (wooden dowels, mortise and tenon) and flecks and rays in the grain of the wood.
Decorative arts and fine art had little distinction; textiles and wallpapers are richly patterned with stylised flora and fauna, bold outlines, flat motifs and natural colours. Morris said, ‘have nothing in your house you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful’, and the enduring popularity of Arts & Crafts shows how far people took this philosophy into their homes.
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau was the global development of the ideas and sentiments started by the Arts & Crafts movement. The style swept through Europe and the US during the turn of the 19th/20th Centuries, and has had a lasting effect on the aesthetic of our urban and domestic landscapes.
Inspired by natural forms, the linear style of Art Nouveau is full of movement - curving ‘whiplash’ lines and asymmetrical forms to uplift and inspire. Modern materials like iron and glass were used to create unusual shapes and larger, open spaces - like Hector Guimard’s iconic designs for the Paris Metro.
The Japanese isolationist regime had recently been softened, and the influence of Japanese masters like Hokusai and Hiroshige can be seen in the elegant, clean lines and flattened motifs of designers like Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Overall, the style wanted to blur the lines between fine art and design, incorporating functional design into the beauty of everyday products - a rejection of the mass produced items of the Victorian industrial era.
Art Deco
Getting its name from the 1925 Paris ‘Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes’, the iconic Art Deco has seen a huge resurgence since its heyday in the 1920s and 30s.
Think Gatsby extravagance and decadence - the aesthetic of Art Deco is all about luxury and anti-traditional elegance. Clean, geometric lines; hard angles and bold shapes in symmetrical repetition inspired by the surge of industrialism and design of the machine.
Wealth and sophistication are conveyed in striking, expensive (or expensive looking) materials. Steel and chrome, polished exotic woods or gleaming veneers and gilded inlays abound. Soft furnishings are upholstered with lush fabrics in geometric designs or bold, block colours, paired with lacquered wooden features.
Architecture from the time takes these bold, streamlined shapes and supersizes them. The Chrysler Building’s iconic jewelled crown of a spire is just one of the defining silhouettes of New York’s Art Deco architectural collection.
Above all, Art Deco creates a sense of unapologetic excess, and the ‘Bright Young Things’ of Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Vile Bodies’. Fashion, art and music all fed into a post war collective psyche of abandon and exuberance.
Mid-Century Modern
A significant design movement with enduring popularity. Started in the US by Bauhaus designers fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the period is synonymous with simplicity and functionality.
The suburbanisation and expansion of American cities following WWII led to an increased demand for modern homes and furnishings, and so some of the best examples can be found in the architecture of California, particularly Palm Springs. Buildings feature floor to ceiling windows, open spaces and changes in elevation. Think large living rooms with open fireplaces, partial walls and short staircases connecting the rooms throughout the house.
With mid-century modernism, form follows function. Designs are uncluttered, with sleek, clean lines and gentle curves and minimal ornamentation. Furniture features the juxtaposition of traditional and non-traditional materials - natural wood with vinyl for instance. Plastic was hugely influential in its own right, not just used to imitate wood or other natural materials, and Plexiglass and Lucite are used frequently.
Designers like Charles and Ray Eames and George Nelson popularised the aesthetic, and imitations of their work are still incredibly popular today. The democracy of design and natural shapes of their products echo the Danish and Swedish Modern movements, based on human proportion and functionality.
Which is your favourite era or style?
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