During the course of the1800's Britain industrialized into the most flourishing and technologically industrialized nation on earth. Invention, mechanization and industrialization brought the greatest and far reaching turn in England and the English. The nation rapidly grew in confidence of its place as a foremost world power. Fueled by the wealth of its industrialization and new manufacturing industries its affect reached far colse to the world to the furthest corners of its empire. This was a new world and with it came a new order to challenge the old acceptable power structures. A new class middle class of wealthy industrialists whose money gave them power and affect became the Victorian rich and their choices and values were to be a major affect in Victorian life. Their money, founded in the output from the new factories bought them fine new homes, large and important. These great new houses borrowed from the styles of the upper classes with many rooms which needed filling. The rise of the middle classes meant more homes with more money to spend and the need for more furniture.
Along with the new modern Victorian world came an confident turn in style of the Victorian home and the history of Victorian furniture is one of variety. Furniture styles that reflected a fascination with the past were also a showcase of what was now inherent in produce and production. This age saw the beginning of mass output of furniture in a manufacturing commerce whose new commercial techniques could rapidly reproduce the styles and designs which before now has been expensively carved by craftsmen.
Solid Oak Stools
The history of Victorian furniture is one of variety. Out of favour went the grace and fine lines of the Regency style furniture which were substituted by the more robust heavy furniture of the flourishing Victorian home. Ornate ornamentation and dark shining woods of mahogany and rosewood veneer and account for machined turned legs. However no one style was dominant in the Victorian home as designers, encouraged by the fast output of the new furniture manufacturing industries gave their imaginations free run. It was now inherent to mass yield styles from other historical periods and the gravidity of earlier styles from the Tudor, Elizabethan, and Neo Classical periods became popular. However the one style that maybe recalls this period most is the Gothic revival style. Large heavy furniture pieces in Gothic produce were made in solid oak to reflect Englishness. The Victorians embraced the Gothic style with enthusiasm as can be seen in architecture and art as well as in the produce of these furniture pieces. The history of Victorian furniture reflects the history of the Victorian age where a community underwent huge changes yet also huge uncertainties. Which made them look forward with pride and confidence while still looking back to a fictional age of order, glory and chivalry.
