THE BEDROOM AND BOUDOIR CIRCA 1880

Victorians were developing a mania about clean, undisease-laden fresh air. One of the reasons for having a fireplace in the bedroom was that the chimney flue helped ventilate the room.
“I take it for granted that every one understands the enormous importance of having a fireplace in each sleeping-room in an English house, for the sake of the ventilation afforded by the chimney”. The author of Bedroom and Boudoir (1878), went so far as to suggest that perhaps a brick in the wall might be loosened, or perhaps some holes drilled by an auger into the panel of the bedroom door.
If for some reason, one couldn’t sleep with an open window, then they should leave their door open at night, as long as there was a window open in the hallway all day and night, no matter what the weather.

If one cannot afford carpets, bare wooden floors with a simple animal skin will suffice.

It was advised that you paint or paper bedrooms in delicate colors. One author advised the walls be painted for washability with “harmoniously contrasting lines” at the ceiling. She also advised patternless cretonne curtains of the same shade as the walls, edged with stripes matching the ones near the ceiling. For those who preferred wallpaper, “…let it be all of one soft tint, a pearly gray, a tender sea-shell pink, or a green which has no arsenic in it; but on this point great care is requisite”.
Chintz, stretched tightly in panels, so it could be taken down for cleaning was another decorating idea for the bedroom wall. Yet another scheme mentioned was for panels upon which gathered white muslin was stretched over pink, blue or apple-green silk.
On the other hand, sometimes dark colors were desirable. The following paragraph illustrates a case.

“This pretty room is in a handsome, moderately sized country house, that was built and furnished by the occupants after their own cherished ideas. The result was eminently pleasing; and the bedroom in question, having plenty of windows and sunshine, was not furnished in the light colors that usually predominate, as this would have made it altogether too glaring. It was a large, square apartment; and the dark, brilliant coloring seemed to produce the effect of a gorgeous tropical bird. The ebonized furniture was relieved by scarlet cushions, and the curtains were in stripes of Turkey-red alternating with cream-colored stuff, and finished with a plaited ruffle of the red. The wall was covered with a particularly rich French paper, the pattern wrought in bouquets of poppies, daisies, and morning-glories“.

Assorted kinds of lightweight fabrics, generally washable cottons, were used for curtains.
If cheesecloth was used for the bedroom curtains, it was recommended that it be lined with a fabric the same color as the trim, with perhaps a simple straight lambrequin or valance.

Described as a Dutch bedstead


Beds
The old four poster beds were out of style, replaced for a time by “…frightful and vulgar frames of cast iron, ornamented with tawdry gilt or bronze scroll-work…” . But in 1884, noted design critic Ella Rodman Church suggested that an inexpensive metal or cane bed could be improved with a little gilding.

She gave instructions on how to make 2 kinds of bed canopies.
Head canopies, so much in use, have a very inviting effect. They are not objectionable in regard to ventilation, like close curtains, and they can be arranged with very little expense on almost any bed. Take two upright pieces of wood, two or three inches wide and as high as is desired for the canopy; have two short projecting side-pieces fastened at the top, and with these support a horizontal strip the whole forming a framework which may be covered with colored cambric stretched tightly over it, and afterward with dotted or plain Swiss, or any other thin material that may be desired. The curtain part is then gathered on to the back, sides, and front of this oblong frame, which should project not more than half a yard or so from the head-board ; then ribbon to match the color of the cambric loops them back at the sides, where they are fastened to the strips of wood. The curtains may also be lined with cambric, or silesia, which is softer.
Should the bed stand with one side against the wall, as it must where it is desirable to economize space, a very pretty canopy can be made on a frame shaped like half of a circle with the rounded part in front, and supported at the back with a narrow strip of wood fastened to the side of the bedstead, and also secured at the top against the wall. This is also to be covered with cambric and draped all around, the drapery at the back corning in front of the wooden support to conceal it. If the rounded top can be fastened to the wall (bracket fashion) without the strip of wood, it will be all the better; and a pretty finish can be made when the curtains are attached to this frame by a pointed valance of the cambric covered with the thin material, and trimmed with a plaiting or fluting of the same or lace. The trimming on the curtains should be of the same ; and they may be gracefully laid back over the head-and foot-board.
A canopy of this sort gives a peculiar grace and quite an elegant look to the whole room ; and curtains of dotted or figured Swiss, with the same at the windows, have a fresh, airy appearance that is very desirable in a sleeping-room.
People slept on the new, improved mattresses . The author of Bed and Boudoir felt that two mattresses, one of horsehair and another of wool made as soft a bed as anyone could want. “Frowsy old feather beds” were out, as were mattresses stuffed with chopped grass or seaweed. In the US, mattresses were also filled with cornhusks.

With about 8 yards of muslin and 3 bales of cotton-batting one could make a very nice “comfortable” or comforter. This, together with a couple of good wool blankets would keep most any Victorian warm on cold winter nights.
A popular kind of bedroom furniture of the day was painted and enameled, decorated with flowers and gilding.
Mrs. Church describes a bed ;" The bedstead of elder wood is painted white, varnished, and ornamented with red, blue, and green Turkish arabesques. The bedding consists of a spring mattress and a curled-hair mattress. The linen sheet is hemstitched on the ends. At the head and foot of the bed are bolsters, filled with curled hair, the length of which corresponds with the width of the bedstead. The bed is also furnished with a large and a small square pillow and an edredon, or down quilt. The fine linen pillow-cases are trimmed with embroidered insertions and ruffles, and the upper side of the case for the edredon is trimmed besides with embroidered foundation figures. In the center of the case for the small pillow is a monogram."

A draped toilet stand. The box held milady’s face powder, and any other cosmetics of the time that she may have used.

Described as a simple toilet table.


Toilet Tables
Although the ladies of the day didn’t use make up as we know it ( perhaps a burnt match to darken the lashes), they did use an assortment of creams and lotions to keep their skin soft and white. There were also hair preparations, back in the days before shampoos, to make one’s hair silky smooth.

Toilet tables made of drapery over a pine framework were a popular furniture item in a ladies’ bedroom of the 70’s and 80’s. Male design critics apparently railed against them, but the ladies mentioned them in their books with favor.
“If the room be an essentially modern one, and especially if it be in the country, nothing affords a prettier spot of colour in it, than the old-fashioned toilet-table of deal (pine) covered with muslin draperies over soft-hued muslin or batiste. Of course the caricature of such an arrangement may be seen any day in the fearful and detestable toilet-table with a skimpy and coarse muslin flounce over a tight-fitting skirt of glaring pink calico, but this is a parody…..” .
Ella Rodman Church felt it was “quite an article of convenience”, and described how to make one in detail.
An "antique" toilet table



“ Quite an inexpensive one may be made from a dry-goods box three feet high, four wide, and two feet six inches deep, with four blocks of wood one inch thick and four inches square nailed beneath each corner, to which casters are screwed. The box is placed with open side out, and fitted with a convenient shelf or two. The whole interior should be neatly papered or painted and varnished.
On each side (at the back) of the top are fastened two long, narrow boxes, which may be obtained generally from the drug or dry-goods stores. These should be about two feet long and one wide, and from eight to ten inches deep. By sawing pieces of lath to fit the sides, and tacking them on in proper position, shelves may be made that will be convenient for holding various articles. The covers to the boxes, fitted with small hinges, will make doors ; and the whole must be neatly finished with moldings put on with small brads, and an ornamental top and base made of square boards an inch or two deeper than the cases themselves. To these are screwed a pair of the iron brackets which we can purchase for from thirty-five to fifty cents, or for seventy-five cents to one dollar, fitted with lamps
complete.
These cases are screwed or nailed very securely on the top of the table, as they are to sustain the glass, which is of 'comfortable size 'perfectly plain, but of good quality and neatly framed. Such a one can be purchased new for three or four dollars, and at second hand frequently for half of that sum.
Over the top of the glass is fastened a frame …..around which is draped a hanging made of Swiss (figured or plain), lined with rose-color or other tint. First, a width reaching from the top to within a few inches of the floor is fastened to the upper back ends of the semicircular tester, the ends finished with a deep ruffle of the same ; then on the tester above this are arranged two pieces made by tacking a width of the Swiss and lining two yards long, folding it diagonally from corner to corner, cutting and trimming the two cut edges with ruffles of the same, and arranging them back of the boxes on either side. Around the top tack another ruffle made with an edge above the cord, which runs along the center of all the ruffles.
The table-top is covered with a piece of the Swiss over a lining like the curtains, and a drapery arranged around the front made with rings at the top, which slide on a wire beneath the narrow ruffle finishing the edge. This allows access to the shelves within. The wood-work of this table should be carefully polished and ornamented to correspond with the rest of the furniture, which may be ebonized, enameled in colors, embellished with marquetry, ivory inlaying, decalcomanie, painting, bronzing, and gilding, or enriched with carvings at pleasure. Any one of these methods of beautifying will be found elegant, and may be made perfect of its kind."
Some felt that the fashion for draping the mirror above the toilet table was a fire hazard, seeing as it was a time of open flame lighting, but others continued to do so.
A "modern" French washing stand


Other furniture
Folding screens were a favorite item in many Victorian bedrooms. One could dress behind them privately, if one was sharing a room, they could protect one from the ever present drafts, and they were pretty.
A couch or lounge, a low easy-chair or a rattan chair with a bright cushion were some other pieces to complete a room. Another example of seating was described as “ a round box on casters, with a low wooden back attached, curved to fit the back against it, and generously stuffed and padded. This should be covered like the other furniture, and finished with a deep fall of the material all around the seat.”
A round or oval table which could be used for writing or sewing was a very convenient item for the bedroom. In 1882, Mrs. Church described a bedroom table cover.
“A very appropriate table-cover for a bedroom may be made of squares of cretonne. There is a bordering cut from the striped material, and the groundwork of this bordering and that of the central square should be the same. These squares, for quite a large cover, are three eighths of a yard each, and seven in number, the ground of the central one being black like that of the border, and the other six being two each of red, blue, and buff. These colors may of course be varied to suit different tastes. The squares are joined like patchwork, and the seams are covered with a black worsted braid about two thirds the width of skirt braid, herring-boned with gold-colored silk. A lining of silesia, blue, pink, buff, or gray, and a deep edging of antique lace, completes an exceedingly pretty table-cover.”

Every bedroom of the period should have a wash stand, with a large basin and water jug, and space for sponges and soap. If there was no maid, or for convenience sake, one also needed to have a receptacle for the dirty water, which would be emptied occasionally during the day. The author suggested a china one, as tin ones began to smell from the dirty water and soapsuds. Some wash stands were available with a tipping basin feature. They looked rather similar to a sink, with running water, but when you finished washing, you’d tip the bowl and it would empty into a basin inside the cabinet. Of course, later someone had to come and take out the bucket of dirty water.


A wash stand for a corner of a boy‘s bedroom or downstairs corner or closet with a “long towel on a roller behind it”. My boys would have knocked this one over constantly.


If you didn’t have a separate room for bathing, you could bathe in your room behind the ever present folding screen. An oil cloth would be spread on the floor, and the tub placed upon it, then filled.

A small bedroom fireplace.


A fireplace in the bedroom was a desirable item, as mentioned in the opening paragraph, for proper ventilation, but also for aesthetic reasons.
On the subject of fireplaces, “When one thinks either of the imitation marble mantelpiece, or its cotton velvet and of false-lace-bedizened shelves, the artistic soul cannot refrain from a shudder.” The fireplaces now in favor harkened back to the old fashioned looking open hearths, lined with tiles. In England an iron basket for coals would be set within it, in America, where wood was abundant, a different sort of grate or iron “dogs” would be used.
It was a common practice to cover the mantel with drapery, which could match the curtains or the table covering. It could then be covered with china candlesticks, vases and a clock.



To finish off the bedroom, “one or two light stands are always convenient”, and a shelf by the bed for a book for bedtime reading. Some photographs, engravings and brackets for china statuettes or vases of flowers, though “china twisted into such outlandish forms as dolphins, frogs, porcupines, or small pink dogs is not to be tolerated “ as were “slippers with cut flowers in the toe, fishes with open mouths for the same purpose, and a host of other preposterous devices in china“.

A bedroom could be decorated and furnished simply, as seen from this 1880 illustration.



Or as lushly as this example from 1882. The lady is seated in her boudoir, her bed can be seen in the alcove in the background.



Finally, the following is a paragraph on a boy’s bedroom .
“If I had my own way, I would accustom boys as well as girls to take a pride in making and keeping their bedrooms as pretty and original as possible. Boys might be encouraged to so arrange their collections of eggs, butterflies, beetles, and miscellaneous rubbish, as to combine some sort of decorative principle with this sort of portable property. And I would always take care that a boy's room was so furnished and fitted that he might feel free, there at least, from the trammels of good furniture. He should have bare boards with only a rug to stand on at the bed-side and fire-place, but he should be encouraged to make with his own hands picture-frames, bookcases, brackets, anything he liked, to adorn his room.”

A view of 19th century architecture as seen from 1907

An excerpt from the book
THE HOUSE: its plan, decoration and care
1907 Isabel Bevier


TRANSITIONAL HOMES
The word transition suggests change and that suggests variety, uncertainty, and these are the words which characterize the period beginning about 1825. The war of the revolution was over, but the spirit of it yet remained; traditions and customs were being questioned. The Americans were experimenting in politics, business, and social customs and naturally this spirit of experimentation expressed itself in architecture. For a time Colonial customs and traditions were maintained, but they were bound to yield sooner or later to the demands of the revolutionary spirit for a newer style of architecture as well as changes in social order and business methods. Architecture is too complex to yield easily to experimentation. As a result the dwellings of the period show all sorts or incongruities.

The well-trained handicraftsmen lost much of their skill in their attempt to build quickly rather than well. They lost, too, the inspiration of association with skilled workmen and good standards as they journeyed westward. The amateur architects lacked judgment and adaptation. Greek art and architecture have been the standard of beauty for all ages, but these architects overlooked the fact that these models of beauty were public buildings, not private residences. The results were incongruities in domestic architecture. Imitations of Greek and Doric temples made strange looking houses on the Hudson. Many towns in the United States are still in their transitional period as regards art, and architecture, witness the tiny cottage with Doric and Ionic columns of a size sufficient for a Greek temple, or the house with Dutch gambrel roof, French windows and old Colonial outline.

The wooden Parthenon endured longer in the South. The veranda with pillars served to shut out some of the heat of the Southern sun. This lawless imitation of old world forms obtained not only in architecture, but furniture and furnishings as well. Empire furniture lacking the refinement and simplicity of Colonial became common and what one has called the "Dark Middle Age" of American interior decoration began.

The condition of New York residential architecture in the fifties may be gathered from the complaints of one-writer who does not like to have the "streets of New York filled with costly and meaningless copies of Greek porticos, of Gothicized dwellings, of ambitious imitations of baronial castles, Egyptian tombs, turreted churches, useless campanile towers." The writer adds, "As yet there is no American architecture whose name is known beyond the circle of his own employers" and he predicts that we must outgrow our childish dependence upon the old world before we shall be able to boast of our architecture as we boast of our ship builders. One style followed another in rapid succession. All lands, all materials were brought into requisition by the energetic American architect, aided by the ambitious rich man who had traveled in other lands. Perhaps the most extreme example of the incongruities of the house of the transition period may be found in "The Celebrity," where the new rich man gives this description of his favorite country seat.
"I had all these ideas I gathered knocking about the world, and I gave them to Willis of Philadelphia to put together for me. But he's honest enough not to claim the house. Take, for instance, that minaret business on the west. I picked that up from a mosque in Algiers. The oriel just this side is whole cloth from Haclclon Hall, and the gallaried porch next it from a Florentine villa. The conical capped tower I got from a French chateau, and some of the features on the south from a Buddhist temple in Japan. Only a little blending and grouping necessary, and Willis calls himself an architect, and wasn't equal to it. Now," he added, "get the effect. Did you ever see another house like it?"
Extreme as this description may seem, such monstrosities existed and similar examples are yet to be found. It would appear that the United States is still in the transitional period so far as its architecture is concerned though distinct types of American houses are being developed. It is also evident that while the house of the transitional period may be inconvenient it is certain to be incongruous because of its blending of elements which do not belong together.

What a House Should Be???

THE HOUSE THAT JILL BUILT AFTER JACK’S HAD PROVED A FAILURE 1882
By E.C.Gardner , revised 1895

"It appears, Jack, my dear, to be absolutely indispensable to our future happiness that the house shall front north, south, east and west."

"Let's build it on a pivot."

"We must not have large halls to keep warm in cold weather, and we must have large halls 'for style.' The stories must not be less than eleven nor more than nine feet high. It must be carpeted throughout and all the floors must be bare. It must be warmed by steam and hot water and furnaces and fireplaces and base-burners and coal grates."

"We shan't have to go away from home to get into purgatory, shall we?"

"Hush! The walls of the rooms must be calcimined, painted, frescoed and papered; they must be dyed in the mortar, finished with leather, with tiles, with tapestry and with solid wood panels. There must be blinds—outside blinds, awnings, inside shutters, rolling blinds, Venetian shades and no blinds at all. There must be wide, low-roofed piazzas all around the house, so that we can live out of doors in the summer, and on no account must the sun be excluded from the windows of the first story by piazza roofs. At least eight patent sanitary plumbing articles, and as many cooking ranges, are each the only one safe and fit to be used. The house must be high and low—"

"I'm Jack and you shall be game—"

"It must be of bricks, wood and stone, separately and in combination; it must be Queen Anne, Gothic, French, Japanesque and classic American, and it must be painted all the colors of an autumn landscape."

"Well, there's one comfort," said Jack; "you haven't paid for this advice, so you won't be obliged to take it in order to save it."

"I should think not, indeed, but that isn't the trouble. These letters are from my special friends, wise, practical people, who know everything about building and housekeeping, and they speak from solemn conviction based on personal experience."

"Moral: When the doctors differ, do as you please."

THE VICTORIAN BATHROOM

There were house plans in the 1850’s that showed bathrooms. There were plans in the 1890’s that showed none. Some of the earlier rooms labeled bathrooms had running water and tubs and perhaps even toilets, others were just rooms in which one could bathe if one placed a tin bathing tub within it.

By the turn of the 19th c at least 17 American cities had experimented with water supply systems. Philadelphia, the largest city in the US at the time, commissioned Benjamin Latrobe to build a steam powered waterworks. It opened in 1801, but it was plagued with problems and replaced by a new system in 1815. Boston embarked on a water supply system in 1846, and was soon supplying over 11,000 households with running water “for all domestic purposes, including private baths and water closets” according to an almanac of 1850. In 1860 Boston had 3,910 bathtubs and 9,864 water closets, for a population of 178,000. An interesting point is that even if your house was supplied by public water, it didn’t necessarily mean you had running water in the house. Some had hydrants in their yards and brought the water indoors by the bucketful.

In the 1850’s the water closet was expensive to install and imperfect in its workings, thus there weren’t very many in use. The bathroom of 1900, however would be pretty familiar to all of us.

In 1799 Elizabeth Drinker wrote in her journal that she had taken a shower bath, and that it was the first time she had been wet all over in 28 years. By 1836 it was advised that a young lady should wash herself completely with soap and water every 24 hours so as not to offend. Godey’s Lady’s Book , was advising readers in 1860 that bathing at night was ill advised, while bathing briefly in the morning once a week was fine. Before the 19th century, and even well into it, people washed themselves with water and a sponge when they felt they needed it. This final point was a matter of personal choice. Some felt they needed a washing every day, some once a week, or once a month or once every few years or so. At that, they didn’t use soap. Soap was for laundry. Soap for bathing wasn’t commonly used till the second half of the 19th c.

Before the use of bathrooms, bathing was often done in the kitchen, close to the hot water, and usually the warmest room in the house. Bathtubs often came under the heading of kitchen equipment.

The contraption on the wall by the door was for bathing. The sides slope down to the center basin to catch the water that was poured over the bather.

Another technological advancement that advanced the use of the bathtub, in addition to the increased amounts of public water systems was the attic cistern. It was filled by rainwater or by pumping water up from a well or spring. Gravity would then take over to provide running water to any room in the house.

Showers were generally used only by men. Elizabeth Drinker’s husband and sons had been using the shower for a year before she agreed to give it a try. Women were considered the weaker sex, delicate and fragile compared to men. The streams of water were widely felt to be harmful to women. Home décor authority Charles E. White wrote in 1914 that "……some constitutions cannot stand the rigors of shower bathing, a practice which should be resorted to only under the advice of a physician." Until well into the 1930’s few women showered, so there were few showers within the home. People bathed. Of course, there were households that didn’t mind paying extra to get a shower installed.

an example of one kind of Victorian shower, fill the can first.


the rest of the tiny bathroom
This is an example of a bathroom that was merely a cubby off the upstairs hall, in which a gentleman could have a very quick shower and a shave.

by the way, here's the commode in the same house

Following is a segment on the bath from the book Manners, Culture and Dress, published in 1890.

In most of our houses in the city there is a separate bath room with hot and cold water, but country houses are not always so arranged. A substitute for the bath-room is a large piece of oilcloth, which can be laid upon the floor of the ordinary dressing-room. Upon this may be placed the bath-tub or basin.
There are various kinds of baths, both hot and cold, the douche, the shower-bath, the hip-bath and the sponge-bath.
We do not bathe to make ourselves clean; but to keep clean, and for the sake of its health-giving and invigorating effects. Once a week a warm bath, at about 100°, may be used, with plenty of soap, in order to thoroughly cleanse the pores of the skin.

A douche or hip-bath may be taken every morning, winter and summer, with the temperature of the water suited to the endurance of the individual. In summer a second or sponge-bath may be taken on retiring.
Only the most vigorous constitutions can endure the shower-bath, therefore it cannot be recommended for indiscriminate use.
After these baths a rough towel should be vigorously used, not only to help remove the impurities of the skin, but for the beneficial friction which will send a glow oyer the whole body. The hair glove or flesh-brush may be used to advantage in the bath before applying the towel.
Before stepping into the bath the head should be wet with cold water, and in the bath the pit of the stomach should first be sponged.
There is no danger to most people from taking a bath in a state of ordinary perspiration. But one should by all means avoid it if fatigued or overheated.

Next in importance to the water-bath is the air bath. Nothing is so conducive to health as an exposure of the body to air and sun. A French physician has recommended the sun-bath as a desirable hygienic practice. It is well, therefore, to remain without clothing for some little time after bathing, performing such duties of the toilet as can be done in that condition.

IN THE VICTORIAN DRAWING ROOM

If you’ve read the other articles, pertaining to color and design, that related what the critics felt was right or wrong, well, this is a slice of real life.

The drawing room, or as it was sometimes known in America, the reception hall, was the center of the house, it showed your status, your gentility, your good taste. It was not the living room of today, that role was filled more by the Victorian dining room. Decorating the drawing room was treading a fine line. You did not want to live ‘below your station”, that would be very bad, very damaging. On the other hand, you didn’t want to be seen as trying too hard, that could be worse. You wanted your room to be ‘handsomely furnished’, but not ‘showy’. Not living up to your income was bad, trying too hard was worse, and living above it was the greatest sin of all.
Charles Darwin’s granddaughter wrote about her aunt and uncle; “They were well off and lived in style and comfort; but it was neither for the style nor the comfort that Aunt Sara really cared. Her religion was Duty, and it was her duty to her position and her class to live like that. It was Right, for instance, for people of
her kind to keep a carriage and horses. This was not a manner of speaking: she truly felt it a Duty.” In Charles Dickens’s book OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, a character says….”we have come into a great fortune, and we must do what’s right by our fortune; we must act up to it“.
You were expected to spend a certain percentage of your yearly income on home furnishings, the more you made, the higher your percentage should be. Of course, it’s like buying a diamond engagement ring. They say you should spend X% of your income to buy your sweetie a ring. There are some who do and some who say “ are you crazy?”
Another interesting point was that a man was expected to provide his bride with a fully furnished house equal to her parent’s home. This is why so many men put off marriage, they just couldn’t afford it. A couple might court for years while the prospective groom kept trying to make more money.

In the beginning of the Victorian era the things they bought to fill their drawing rooms, or as they were more often known in America, the parlor, or best parlor, were ………sofas, ottomans, upright chairs and easy chairs, stools, ladies’ writing desks, console tables, work tables, sewing tables, occasional tables, and screens. And the must-have, the round drawing room table. Chairs were getting heavier and more comfortable, coil springs were appearing. Easy chairs were either standard or ladies’ chairs, which were smaller, had a more upright back, and had lower arms to accommodate full skirts. Also, the furniture they bought generally lasted the rest of their lives. Their children would remark how long lasting and ugly they were.

In the 1860’s and 70’s men began writing about home design. This was a signal that it had become a serious subject. There wasn’t good taste or bad taste, it was just right or wrong. A writer of the day said; “..let us not consider what is handsome or effective or taking to the eye, but what is suitable to the husband’s position.”
Charles Dickens’s granddaughter, Gwen Raverat wrote about her family; (which had a slightly different order of preference ) “ When they bought an armchair they thought first of whether it would be comfortable, and next of whether it would wear well; and then, a long way afterwards, of whether they themselves happened to
like the look of it.

Design experts began to condemn imitation finishes, such as a varnished paper that was meant to look like marble and was rather widely used. There were many articles written on the subject of “gross shams and vulgar imitations “, “shams of all kinds are to be objected to” ,”If you are content to teach a lie in your belongings,
you can hardly wonder at petty deceits being practiced in other ways.” But people seemed to be buying quite a few of these sham, veneered articles. You could get plaster stag heads, painted to look like the real thing, and put them up to give your room a baronial air.

In small English terrace houses the front door opened into a small hallway that led to two rooms that were often linked by a wide doorway so they could open into one another. The back room was generally a family used room, for dining or any other daily activities. The front room was the drawing room or parlor, which was kept only forthe best furnishings. In a larger town home, the drawing room would take an entire floor, usually the English first floor, or in American terms, the second floor. The ground floor, or American first floor would be for the dining and morning rooms. This was apparently done so that guests could proceed gracefully down the stairs, by rank, to dinner. The set up in an American city row house would be similar. By the way, the front door generally opened into a hallway or vestibule.
Vestibules were widely used in the Victorian era, on both sides of the ocean. They kept the cold air from rushing through the house every time one opened the door. In a middle class American row home, you might have a parlor or drawing room in the front, then a dining room with a back parlor, or family sitting room behind it.

The ideally decorated drawing room changed over time, but they were high ceilinged rooms and usually rather long, and always had the best household furnishings in them. At one point it was exceedingly stylish to use a lot of ‘drapery’ and bows. Some people carried this to excess.. An American visitor, looking for rooms in London was appalled by what she saw, “….the flower pots were draped, and the lamps;
there were draperies round the piano -legs, and round the clock; and where there were not draperies, there were bows…… the only thing that had not made an effort to clothe itself in the room was the poker, and by contrast it looked very nude.” H.G.Wells remembered the lower middle class sitting rooms of his childhood,” ….something was hung about or wrapped round or draped over everything. There was bright-patterned muslin round the gas-bracket……round the mirror over the mantel, stuff with ball-fringe along the mantel…..”. Mrs.Panton, an interior decoration pioneer, who wrote many books on the decoration and proper upkeep of the home, suggested that the piano (a Victorian drawing room necessity ) might be coveredwith serge, felt or damask “….edged with an appropriate fringe….which thus makes it an excellent shelf for odds and ends of china and bowls of flowers.” The music stool could be covered with fabric and sheet music stored in a cupboard with a cloth covering it with ornaments “scattered” on top. If one had a grand piano, “..a good arrangement in the bend” would be a big palm in a brass pot or stand or a table with plants and books and a couple of chairs placed in a “conversational manner” with another stool in front of them with yet another plant on top. “This gives a very finished look to the piano” .. A couple of years later she suggested that an upright piano be turned so it’s back faced the room, and it be covered with a curtain hanging from a rod across its back. A piece of Japanese embroidery
could be placed on top, some framed photos, a cup for flowers and a few ornaments..

No one wanted to be thought of as old fashioned. They seemed to be constantly wanting to redecorate because the furnishings of the past looked so ugly and dated. At the same time, no one wanted their stuff to look brand new, that would be so vulgar. What a dilemma. By the way, one of the biggest crazes to hit came in the 1890’s. It was the ‘cozy corner’. They’d set up a niche with small sofas, cushions ,
draperies, knick-knacks, stools…whatever would fit into the space. This was found on both sides of the Atlantic, and continued in the US in a slightly different look into the 20th century by adding many cushions and shawls and perhaps a hanging brass lamp and renamed a Turkish corner.

A Mrs. Haweis told of an unfortunate man who tried to join his partner in order to take her in to dinner. He crossed the room……”knocking over the chair next to him, and arriving at his destination with a fringed antimacassar neatly fastened to one of his coat buttons. He then backed into a small table, on which stood some books and photographs, and only saved this, to send another spinning; this time smashing the whole concern and depriving me of my pet flower-holders. …But the worse was yet to come; in one heroic effort to get away from the scene of the disaster he backed once more into a ‘whatnot’ full of china .” Her solution was not to get rid of her clutter, but to be sure that the tables and objects upon them were solidly
weighted and anchored from then on.


In some lower middle class their drawing room or parlor was used by the family only on Sundays. What they did there might differ widely family to family. There was a religious revival in the early 19th century both in Britain and the United States. Changes came about because of its influence. In England in the 1850’s the Lord’s Day Observance Society began to lobby for a total shutdown of all public civic life on Sundays. They did manage to get Sunday postal service stopped for a few months. What was successful was their mission to close “ national properties” on Sundays. Parks, museums and zoos were closed. Concerts were forbidden, bands were no longer allowed to play on Sunday.. Those who were well off could still find ways of entertaining themselves, but the working class, who had one day a week to enjoy themselves and the fresh air were forbidden to. In 1854 a booklet was published that illustrated the things that most people would consider acceptable, but that the
Sabbatarians wanted to prevent ; family walks in the park, excursions on the river, fish dinners in Greenwich. The author pointed out that the Sabbath society, by preventing music, dancing and fireworks and other entertainment ensured that the day would be devoted by many to ‘decorous hard drinking”.
In the 1890’s Gwen Raverat’s family could not play cards, sew or knit, not because her parents felt that it was wrong to do these things on Sunday, but that it set a bad example for the maids. On the other hand Sunday was approve for being “at home” to visitors, never mind that the servants had to come home after their half day off and clean up.

The gloomy Sunday was a reality, however, for many Victorian families, even those who were not particularly religious, just because it was at the time the “proper” thing to do. In one not especially religious family, for example, all entertainment after church was forbidden , and even reading could only be from appropriate religious material, or books that had stories to improve your moral fiber. There were even separate toys that were saved only for Sundays for the younger children. One of these commonly seen was a Noah’s ark with animal figures. One little boy was reproached by his slightly older brother for un-Sunday conduct. He made a stable with his animals instead of properly marching them up the ramp two by two into the ark in the acceptable manner.

As people became more prosperous, and manufacturing methods improved, toys became more common in middle class households. Weekday toys were so much more interesting than Sunday toys.. On Weekdays you could play with toy soldiers and little horses with removable harness and little carts with filled with tiny wooden planks. There were rocking horses and horses on wheels that you could gallop down the street. There were barrel organs that you put punched metal cards into that played music.. There were dollhouses and toy theaters, tea sets, dolls and dolls furniture, toy bricks, pull toys and reins. I even saw an ad for these reins. They were leather, one child would be the horse and the other the driver. A magic lantern was a magnificent Christmas gift the children of one family received, with over 100 slides from pictures of cathedrals to comic drawings.

Not only were children getting more toys, but the adults were gaining more possessions themselves. Their drawing rooms contained things like lamps, footstools, fire screens, candlesticks, clocks, mirrors, workboxes, sewing boxes, figurines of all description, paintings, etchings, drawings, photographs, drapery, china, ceramics, mineral displays, fossils, boxes, fans, feathers, wax fruit, plants, stuffed animals (The kind that go on the wall) , scrapbooks, books, albums, pressed flowers, magic lanterns, birdcages, fern cases, aquariums, trays, musical instruments, vases, cushions, stereopticons, ink wells, table covers, antimacassars, doilies and mats. Not to mention the things the lady of the house may have made herself, like the framed floral display made out of human hair. No wonder it took hours to clean a drawing room.



a hair wreath, the black hairs came from a horse's mane

Some interesting points to remember about some of the dangers of the Victorian era. Wallpaper…..many colors were produced with the use of poisonous dyes. Green papers were especially dangerous, as were lilac, pinks, some blues and ‘French gray’, they all contained arsenic. This was one reason why a “change of air” was so beneficial to invalids. They were slowly being poisoned at home, then taken to the seaside, where they would start to improve, but when returned to their poisonous environment, they would sicken again. Clothing also contained arsenic. In 1862 there was an article in The Times on how to detect arsenic on fabric by using a drop of ammonia, but the test never caught on. In the 1890’s women were still being warned about arsenic in their clothing.

To help keep dirt and airborne infection from entering the house in good weather through open windows doctors recommended that curtains be replaced with blinds, known in America as shades. Stained glass and leaded glass windows became popular because you could get rid of window coverings, yet have privacy. In spite of health concerns, many still preferred window coverings. One might have lace or muslin
curtains topped with heavier draperies and perhaps a swag, plus Venetian blinds or roller blinds or shades. The sun was usually kept out because the dyes used in that era were susceptible to fading.

Fireplaces and mantles were prime areas for decorating in the drawing room. They would put ornamental screens in front of them in summer, in winter too for that matter, if there was no fire in the grate. A common way of decorating the ‘hole’ was with paper curls. One woman described the long silver paper curls in their bedroom grate. There was even a lesson printed in a decorating book of how to cut up muslin into strips, with fringe, and spread it gracefully over the hearth. As for the mantle, the simplest decoration might be a mantle clock flanked by candlesticks with a few ornaments. Remember also that a large mirror was invariably placed over the mantle. A common way to make room for all the bric-a-brac was to enlarge the mantle
with a board, draped with fabric and then another structure of shelves, brackets, etc. would be built up on top.

Middle class and up women who had a staff of servants had a great deal of leisure time which they filled by doing all sorts of fancy “work”. They made more hand embroidered slippers, spectacle cases and watch cases , etc. than they knew what to do with. They decorated their homes with them, gave them as gifts, sold them at church bazaars…… There were instructions on how to make decorative guitars out of
cardboard and silk scraps, beaded pen wipers, that of course could never be used to wipe the nib of a pen because they were covered in beads. There were ornamental frames for matchboxes. An interesting point was that a great many of the things these women made were totally useless. A very commonly made gift throughout the era was a pincushion. Sometimes it would be downright huge and decorated with patterns and sentiments made out of hundreds of pins. Of course, you wouldn’t dare actually mar its loveliness by sticking a random pin in it.

A craze that swept 1850’s Britain, and probably the USA was Pteridomania, or fern collecting. Women would buy and collect all sorts of varieties of ferns. They would buy glass cases to grow them in, books to write lists in of what kind of ferns they had. They would make spatter pictures, a sort of reverse stenciling, or perhaps wreaths of pinecones, seeds or acorns. Below you can see illustrations of some Victorian ladies' handiwork.



a bouquet of spring flowers and grasses


a cone wreath


a spatterwork design to be used for cushions, screens, portfolios, etc.


a firescreen

DECORATING IN THE 1890'S

A housepainter in 1893 observed, “Some people want their houses pure white throughout, while others have them painted as dark as possible, and some peculiar combinations of color are often selected, but we never dare object or we might lose the job.”

In the last years of the 19th c there was no single critic who dominated design as Downing or Eastlake had. What critics there were favored divergent styles, like Craftsman or the various revival styles. Homeowners had to sort out and decide what they liked best.
The seeds of the two most popular styles of this period were born at the Philadelphia Centennial of 1876. The displays that brought Eastlake and his followers to the forefront formed the basis of what later developed into the Craftsman style.
Another exhibit at the fair was a New England log house, complete with spinning wheel, a walk in fireplace, cradle, etc. This sparked an interest in all things colonial, and reviving simpler times. People started hanging brass warming pans on their parlor walls, a fad that House Beautiful warned against.
Other critics also favored traditional, or revival, styles such as Louis XV, Louis XVI and Empire. American manufacturers continued to sell products described as Colonial, Louis and Empire well into the 1920’s. The Colonial style was in vogue all through the 30’s,40’s and into the 50’s.

The American public at large, lacking any sort of single leadership in what was “right” or “wrong” chose whatever they darn well pleased. Japanese fans, Moorish “cozy corners”, spinning wheels, peacock feathers, Morris chairs, French draperies and small rugs scattered atop wall to wall carpet came together to form a new kind of strange individual “style”. It was this hodge podge, found in homes throughout the economic strata that caused early 20th c critics to condemn all Victorian interior decoration.

During the 1890’s wall, ceiling and woodwork treatment depended on which style the homeowner preferred, traditional or Craftsman. For traditional interiors, fresco painting, paneling and tapestries were advised, but the middle class homeowner, who could afford this, achieved similar effects with wallpaper or cheaper fabrics like chintz. Many traditionally furnished rooms used wallpaper and friezes without wainscoting. Floral papers were popular in bedrooms and in sitting rooms were the furniture was of a delicate design. Other papers included those with narrow stripes in two shades of the same color, tapestry patterns, single color flocked papers and damask patterns. The simplest wall decorating scheme was a painted or papered wall with a frieze above, just below the molding. This continued to be popular well into the 20th century.


two revival style wallpapers
Craftsman style interiors used different kinds of papers altogether. The papers had more geometric, stylized patterns. If a room had no wainscoting, then a frieze would be placed above a paper. If there was wainscoting, then a single paper would be used. Many homes were using plain solid color papers, but these disappeared toward the end of the century, replaced by burlaps and canvases . These fabrics could be painted or stenciled if desired.

Decorated ceilings remained popular into the 20th c. Some critics felt plain ceilings were dull and gloomy. Manufacturers sold ceiling friezes to complement patterns used on walls. On the other hand, there were those who condemned overly decorated ceilings, preferring something simpler, or just a single color. One treatment for ceilings was to use a simple wallpaper pattern on the ceiling, perhaps carrying it down to the picture rail, which could be a distance of anywhere from 6” to 3’. The junction of the wall and the ceiling could be bridged by a cornice, connected by a cove or just left plain. Another treatment was to paint the ceiling in a color that blended with the wallpaper. A single paper would cover the wall from baseboard to ceiling. A picture rail could be placed either at the top of the wall, or about 12” below it.

Until the 1870’s woodwork had generally been grained or painted a hue similar to the walls but darker. Eastlake and other reformers advocated stained and varnished wood or wood painted a color to contrast with the walls. By the 1890’s those following the Craftsman school recommended stained and varnished woodwork, especially for the first floor. Critics of the revival schools preferred painted woodwork. They felt that natural wood might be appropriate in dining rooms or halls, but never for parlors or bedrooms. White woodwork was increasingly gaining favor. Both the revival and craftsman schools accepted painted woodwork in bedrooms, kitchens and bathrooms because of its sanitary qualities. In other words, it was easier to keep clean.
Picture rails could be either next to the ceiling molding or below the frieze, if a room had one. Larger pictures were still being hung from cords, but smaller ones were often hung from screws hidden behind them on the wall, the beginning of the modern method of picture hanging.

Primary and secondary colors began replacing the older hues. One writer recommended six hues of a single color for painting one room, beginning with grayish blue and working through to a greenish blue. Another decorator used creamy yellows through medium russets in a room. The fewer colors were in a room, the better. Some went as far as saying that all the fabrics in a room be of the same color, and the walls painted a neutral ivory or gray. Another view was to use contrasting colors that were not opposite one another on the color wheel, but adjacent to opposites. For instance, red with green would be garish, red with blue-green would be acceptable.
A decorating tip from House Beautiful...
If the hall had India red walls and ceiling and a dark red rug, the dining room should have a tapestry paper in green and red, a red ceiling and woodwork stained green, with a green rug, etc.. The parlor should be "old Blue" with a French floral paper above the picture rail and on the ceiling a paper containing red, green and blue.
Room use was another consideration in color selection. Halls were to have low, quiet tones, parlors should be light and cheerful, and never done in “hot” colors like salmon or terra cotta.
Dining rooms were to be “full-toned and rich” and libraries “thoughtful and sober”. Mineral and earthly greens, white, stone, slate, bronze and copper were all suitable for halls, dining rooms and libraries. Pure color tints, fawn, sky grays, sky blues, silver, gold and leafy greens were all good for parlors and bedrooms.
The darkest colors should be used on the floor and maybe the woodwork, progressing to a lighter wall, then frieze and lightest yet, the ceiling. Stained and varnished woodwork also played into color selection. Mahogany blended well with deep blue or orange yellow, but never with red. Maple should go well with old pink or gray, walnut with golden yellows, chestnut with reddish brown or tan and light oak with gray blue or pale olive. I’d like to note, however, in the previous paragraph, the tip from House Beautiful, the hallway done in red had mahogany woodwork.
1895 color combination recommendations for wall and frieze…
Robin’s egg blue wall with dull yellow frieze
Pale olive and warm salmon
Golden brown and blue
Claret and buff
French gray and vermillion
Olive and orange
Pale lilac and lemon yellow
Blue and warm fawn
Apple green and warm tan
Chocolate and pea green

Advice from 1898 if you had an old soft pine floor. If it was in fair condition, cover it with parquetry or a wood carpet, if it must be washed and scrubbed, cover it with oilcloth or linoleum, or paint it.
Wood carpeting was increasingly popular in the 90’s. Some used it as a border around the fashionable new rectangular rugs. Others covered the entire floor with it. It was used in both Revival and Craftsman homes. The carpets were laid directly over the existing softwood floors and wire finishing nails were driven in, set and puttied over to match the floor. Modern homeowners have found to their regret, that old floors that had been sanded often during the years, have had the surface layer of wood and putty removed, allowing the nail heads to reappear. Tongue and groove parquet was installed differently and so presents no problem

Hardwood floors were still considered a luxury, magazines from the 1920’s had ads telling people how they could now afford the luxury of oak floors. Many floors were being painted with a deep border to complement the rug placed in the center. The 1902 Sears catalog reveals that the rectangular rugs were commonly known as “art squares”.
Oilcloth was still used, but beginning to lose ground to linoleum. There were lino patterns that imitated wooden planks and advertised for “fitting around rugs”.
Encaustic tiles were still on the market, with new colors being added. Unpatterned tiles in white or black glazes began to be manufactures These could be laid in any design wished and became increasingly popular in bathrooms.
Matting continued in use, though primarily only in bedrooms or sitting rooms of country houses.
The Japanese matting came in a variety of colors and patterns, the Chinese matting was a bit simpler as far as patterns went.Denim was also used on floors, tacked down over a padding of newspapers, then covered with rugs.

The carpets of the previous decade continued to be purchased, and many homeowners still preferred wall to wall. New advice in this case was that if your floors were old soft pine, use the same carpet throughout the entire floor, removing door sills so that the carpet would flow from room to room.
The best carpets of the 90’s were simpler in pattern, excluding the Orientals. The new fashion was to have a pattern on the wall or on the carpet, not on both. Solid color carpets began to be produced, and since the seams are more obvious on a solid color, manufacturers adopted “broad looms”. By the beginning of the 20th c. carpets were produced in 12, 15 and 18 foot widths.

In another decorating development of the 90’s , a wallpaper manufacturer contracted with 2 other companies to produce carpets and fabrics to match their wallpapers. This was considered a wonderful new concept by critics.
The fashionable ideal was to have rugs atop hardwood floors, in both the Craftsman and Revival schools of decorating. There were, of course, true Orientals and imitation ones. Braided rugs were coming into vogue and Navajo blankets on floors and walls was another suggestion. Animal skins were popular, with or without heads. Some even placed these animal skins on top of wall to wall carpets.


decorated window shades
Spring-operated roller window shades, the kind in use today, began replacing the old pulley systems.
Many styles of draperies and curtains were available, but it was difficult to curtain the windows in a room when each one could be a different size and shape, which was a common problem at the time. Another dilemma was the lack of drapery men. The style of the last decades was predominately that of Eastlake, who advocated simple straight drapes. There were few who knew how to cut and sew anything else.
Some critics advised that curtains be hung to cover the woodwork of the window, and that the window would appear higher if the drape was hung just under the cornice. Others took the opposite view, that the woodwork shouldn’t be hidden. As a result, if you look at old pictures, you’ll see anything goes.


some popular window treatments



examples of french shawl drapery

A look popular in revival styles was “French shawl drapery” at the top of a window. A swag was draped over a pole with cascades on either side, a style that can be seen today.
A new development was the use of grilles in upper sections of windows that received little sunshine. Curtains would be hung below them. The grilles were also used in doorways and became quite popular. Sometimes they would be paired with portieres below them.


portieres with grille work above

Portieres continued to be popular. In the Craftsman style they were generally made of the same fabric as the window curtains, in Revival they tended to be of a different fabric. New innovations in portieres included once made of netted cords with fringe, beads, or bamboo.
The idea of bed curtains was fading.

bead portieres


from the 1902 Sears catalog

FROM THE BOOKSTORE

There are a lot of books dealing with the decoration and life within the Victorian house. The Dover reprints are, of course a great resource.
I've read many books from my local libraries and every once in a while I'll find one that I have to buy simply because I thought it was so good and I knew I'd refer to it over and over. Here are some books that I've bought within the last couple years, so they are available in bookstores now. See if your library has copies.

Inside The Victorian Home, A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England
Judith Flanders
The best book I've read about the Victorian home and it's inhabitants. This is written primarily about the middle, and upper middle classes, but gives a fascinating view of the era,. Much of the information is applicable to the USA also.

Victorian Interior Decoration
Gail Caskey Winkler and Roger W. Moss
Covers the decoration of American interiors from 1830 to 1900. The best book of it's kind I have run across.It is set up 1830-1850, then 1850-1870. etc.It covers just about everything you could want to know about the subject.

Open House, a Guided Tour of the American Home 1637- Present
Merritt Ierley
This book answers all kinds of questions about heat, lights, indoor plumbing, bathing, building houses and the kitchen sink. I found it truly interesting.

Victorian Gothic, an Architectural and Interior Design Source Book
Linda Osband
Page after page of color photographs and sketches of rooms and furnishings and other assorted details.

The Rise and Fall of the Victorian servant
Pamela Horn
What was the life of an English Victorian servant really like? If you found the information about kitchens and other sundry day to day details interesting, you’ll probably enjoy this book.

By the way, I recently found a great source for old books, the Maine Statewide Library catalog. I can browse the catalog online and order books to be delivered to a participating library. I can order a book that's in the U of Maine Library or the library of some other town, and as soon as it's available, they send it to my closest participating library which happens to be in the town next door.
Check and see if your state has something similar.

1870-90, part II,colors, wallpapers, floors & windows

At one time there were a few basic paint colors. These were mixed on the job site to produce the shades wanted. With developments in paint technology, manufacturers were able to introduce ready made paints in new brighter, longer lasting colors. Once sample cards were introduced the homeowner could see exactly what they were getting.

COLORS
The Hall
During the 1870’s most critics agreed that the hall should be decorated with tripartite walls in subdued colors. Some preferred paper, while others argued for more durable paint in this heavy traffic area. The, as one critic putit, “invariable Sienna marble paper”, which had been popular since the 1830’s, was out. Generally, they agreed that if the space was sunny, a deeper color like Pompeiian red or browns or deeper grays. If the room was dark, delicate greens or soft grays might be in order.
In the mid 1880’s homeowners were urged to use more vibrant colors in the entry hall.
Some color schemes for entry halls form 1886:
Walls painted in old gold or terracotta with old oak stained woodwork. The ceiling painted a lighter shade of the wall color, and the frieze have a background of Pompeiian red with designs in olive, red and yellow. The floor should be stained a deep olive green.
Walls painted old gold or terra cotta with old oak woodwork. Ceiling a lighter shade of the walls and a frieze of Pompeiian red background with designs in olive, red and yellow. Floor to be stained deep olive.
Walls painted olive green with old oak woodwork. Frieze with a plum colored background and designs in dull purples, tans and sunny greens. Floor to be stained mahogany or deep olive green.

Another listed the following color combinations to be used together with a 3 to 5 foot high dado finished in paint or paper.

walls Dado/woodwork
Yellow or buff with Chocolate or olive green or dark blue toned with black
Pale salmon with dark bronze-green
Pale sage-green with dark sage-green or dull blue-green or olive brown or India red
Turquoise blue with Chocolate or maroon



Yet another book suggested a higher, two part wall treatment with a paneled wainscot 6 or 7 feet high and the rest of the wall treated as a frieze. Two of the designs suggested using stained mahogany for the woodwork. One paired it with walls painted and stippled in light red similar in color to the mahogany with the ceiling painted yellow with red lines around the perimeter, and the frieze done in a yellow pattern. The other scheme used yellow walls patterned in light brown or bronze, the latter color being carried into the ceiling for about 18” and ending with painted moldings or bands in “strong colors”. The rest of the ceiling was to be painted in a lighter version of the wall color and left plain.

Drawing rooms

The term “living room” was first used in the 1870’s. Many critics writing for middle class Americans felt that a room just for show, to impress formal visitors, and another for family use were unnecessary. However, there were others who treated drawing rooms separately from sitting rooms.

For many, drawing room or parlor colors should be soft, delicate, gay and feminine. One author advised colors be used like “peach blooms”, “tender blues”, “ethereal greens” and “gold colored satins”. Another source preferred rich tints of blue, drab, gray or pale rose. These were some very old fashioned colors popular throughout the 19th c.
Other writers felt you should consider during what time of day the room was to be used. If the room was used mainly in the evening, then one should decorate it with colors that reflected artificial light like whites, sea greens, golden yellows, etc. Another critics recommended the use of a wallpaper with gold specks or threads to reflect light.

Sunny rooms were easier to decorate. A decorating scheme from one magazine for a south facing parlor with a peacock blue carpet, olive green window shades, bronze-green woodwork: lemon yellow or old gold walls and a lighter tint of that for the ceiling, with a frieze in either bronze-green flocked paper or a dull peacock blue.
For a darker look, the same room could use bronze-green walls, a pale yellow ceiling and a frieze of deep lemon yellow flocked paper.
Another room suggestion for a summer home, was terra cotta for the parlor walls, Tuscan red for the dado, gray for the ceiling, dark brown stain on the woodwork and stenciled patterns in “suitable primary colors” for the “center pieces, borders, corner-pieces and dados”.

One author suggested that the parlor should contrast pleasingly with the dining room, since these rooms were often next to or across from each other. Several other authorities agreed, thus ending the days “when dining rooms were decorated red. Studies brown and drawing rooms white and gold”. Trends were changing. Thirty years before most families of moderate means used the same room as a dining room and a sitting room, but by the 70”s they were using it only for meals. Even the art on the walls was changing. In mid century people were subjected to oil paintings of dead fish or game staring at them from the walls during dinner. Now pictures of flowers or fruits or portraits hung on the walls.

Since the urban working half of the population was getting home later, and no longer home for lunch, the main meal of the day was often eaten by lamplight. The old traditional dark, light absorbing colors were no longer appropriate. Brighter, more cheerful colors began to make their way into the dining room during this period.

Tripartite walls were very popular in the dining room. Those who weren’t too sure which colors went well together tended to stick to varying tones of the same color.

Below are various color schemes recommended by critics of the times.

Bluish slate gray outlined in dull India red with a royal purple carpet
Citrine colored walls with the purple carpet
Wallpaper of pale azure with a delicate lemon yellow pattern and peacock blue carpet
Red walls with a crimson and deep blue Turkish carpet
Black walnut wainscot with pale yellow paper with figures in dark green and red, ceiling papered in 2 shades of blue-gray, 3” cornice painted red and black with a ½” gold molding below it.
Baseboard and chair rail painted black, brown paint in the dado area and Venetian red for the walls
Pale green walls with thin red and blue stripes outlining the woodwork
Crimson dado and frieze with light yellow wallpaper covered in a blue and black design for the field.
Frieze of light olive green with a wainscoting painted maroon and gold or black and gold and a field of sage green.

Terra cotta, yellow or olive green schemes were considered good for dining rooms. Golden oak woodwork went well with olive greens.
Mahogany or walnut furniture went well with sage, olive green and dull gray-blue. Oak or ebonized furniture went well with reds and crimsons.

The Library
Most sources of the 1870-90 period seemed to feel that a library was vital to a refined household. Following are some suggestions on how to decorate this room.

High dadoes topped with deep purple, violet or emerald green colors.
Wallpapers patterned in rich red and blue with gold and silver.
Plain or embossed leather paper for the walls in brown, stone, dark green crimson or dull red.
Papers in shades of deep red with a golden olive ceiling, bronze picture rail and woodwork a golden oak.

Bedrooms
Simply put, there was a lot of diversity as far as color recommendations went for this room. Color selection would generally be determined by the amount of sun the room received. Bedrooms tended to be much more simply decorated than the rest of the house. Things like wainscot, dadoes and chair rail were not in use here.

Wallpaper
Throughout much of the century consumers continued to prefer wallpaper and carpet done in realistic three dimensional designs, even though quite a few critics hated them.

The Centennial of 1876 allowed visitors to see the new styling favored by Eastlake and his compatriots. In addition to the new English designs, visitors saw many exhibitions from lesser known, exotic countries like Japan and Turkey. Americans bought almost all the Japanese products exhibited.

Some wallpapers of the 70's and 80's

above and below are some wallpaper made from Eastlake's designs



Designers started producing Japanese inspired wallpapers during the 70’s and 80’s, eventually, however, by the end of the period, manufacturers were down to producing papers that were Japanese only because they portrayed patterns of fans, vases and kimono-clad figures.

The floral papers that had been popular were falling by the wayside. The newer designs were flatter, as the critics wished. Flowers and foliage, when used were portrayed in a stylized manner. Of course, consumers still bought papers that the critics hated. Vertical stripes were still very popular. One critic complained, “a favorite wall-paper lately has been white or gray, plain or watered ground, with a stamped and gilded bunch of flowers, or a huge ‘fleur-de-lis’ at regular intervals…”
Whatever their choices were, Americans became major consumers of wallpaper in the last quarter of the 19th c.


Floors
Americans were still buying a lot of wall to wall carpeting well into this period, but the idea of Oriental carpets laid over wooden floors was beginning to take hold. It still took some time for this look to become widespread. Most houses still had their original softwood floors. Critics advised painting floors, laying a “wood carpet” over them or replacing the floor with parquet. The latter, however, was quite expensive, so the idea of a parquet border was presented, with a carpet in the center. “Wood carpet” could give the look of parquet, but at a lower cost. The material was thinner, about ¼” thick, and glued to a muslin backing. It could be installed over an existing floor. The price of this kind of flooring was competitive with that of a good carpet.


wood carpet and borders
Even at this point, however, some architects continued to specify softwood floors, and many homeowners kept their floors as they were. Books and magazines offer suggestions on how to decorate your old wooden floors. Once the surface was cleaned, cracks puttied and the surface smoothed, you could stencil a pattern in 2 or 3 stains to resemble inlaid woods. The less adventurous tried staining the floor in dark brown with a little red, then coating with shellac. Another alternative was to paint the floor, perhaps with a decorative border. A carpet could be laid in the center. Paint companies were offering products meant expressly for floors. The Glidden Varnish Co offered a combination varnish and stain in 12 colors for floors, baseboards and wainscoting in bathrooms, kitchens, laundries and toilet rooms. Another company produced a line of 6 colors for floors: silver gray, lead, light yellow, dark yellow, terra cotta, and maroon.

Tiles for floors were still expensive, but heartily recommended for vestibules and entry halls because they could take the tough wear and tear. In order to meet the rising demand, many factories were opened in the US in order to produce tile for the domestic market. Tile was also advised for conservatories, porches, kitchens, laundries and bathrooms.
below are some approved tile patterns for floors







Oilcloth, linoleum and a cork product called kamptulicon were all generally less expensive than tile. Eastlake recommended oilcloths for hallways, but he condemned those cloths that imitated marble or parquet. From this we can surmise that those were two popular patterns. He felt the design should consist of a simple diamond pattern in 2 colors or even better, two shades of the same color. American critics liked the use of oilcloth and also recommended simple geometric patterns. One declared that the earlier much favored black and white marble pattern was “too gray and gloomy”. He liked a combination of chocolate and buff or Indian red and buff.

Writers also liked linoleum for hallways and other rooms. Some felt it was warmer than oilcloth, better wearing, cheaper than the imported British oilcloths and had better designs. Linoleum quickly gained favor in the kitchens of America. Kamptulicon, a rubber-cork product, was soft and pleasant on the feet, but expensive, so it wasn’t used as much.

Paper carpet was another floor covering used throughout much of the century, and you could make your own. Start by layering the floor with newspapers, then add a coating of thick flour paste. On top of this add a layer of wallpaper in a “decided” pattern. This was then sized with glue, and finally varnished. Another method was to stretch course muslin and tack it down into place, then wet it with a thin paste. After this, apply lengths of wallpaper in a checked or mosaic pattern. Varnish when dry with 2 coats of shellac topped with two coats of copal varnish. If finish coats were reapplied periodically, the cloth would last for years. It is not known how many homeowners made these.

Grass and hemp matting remained popular during this period, they were the least expensive floor covering you could buy. It was often used in bedrooms, because wall to wall carpet had come to be considered dirty and unhealthy. Few houses had hardwood or parquet flooring on the upper floors. In winter, carpets would often be put down over them for extra warmth. Mattings were available in assorted patterns and dark colors, but the dye didn’t penetrate the fibers very deeply and so showed signs of wear quickly. In order to make the plain, light straw colored mats more appealing, they often had a colored woolen border added. Matting was also used on stairs and in vestibules, though some didn’t care for its use in the latter as it held the dirt and dust. Sometimes it was used in formal rooms also, with smaller rugs and mats spread artfully about upon it.

Drugget was rarely mentioned in this period, except for use in the dining room. Suggestions for this room included a drugget of “coarsely woven flannel stamped in a brilliant pattern” or burlap painted to imitate a Turkish carpet. Earlier in the century drugget was placed over carpets to protect them, but by 1870 it was sometimes the only floor covering placed over parquet or stained and varnished floorboards.

Around this time most carpet making in America had become mechanized, resulting in a less expensive product. A rug that could be periodically lifted and shaken out was much more hygienic than wall to wall carpet. Of course, the new style of carpets laid on varnished wood floors took a while to take hold. Some critics advised that homeowners sew coordinated borders onto existing wall to wall carpets to make them appear more fashionable.

There were two methods of carpeting floors during the last quarter of the century. The preferred was to center the carpet on the parquet, varnished wood or matting. The other was to use the border over wall to wall carpet.

Critics preferred the costly Oriental carpets, but most Americans purchased the domestic products. Axminster carpets were the most expensive, followed by Brussels, Wiltons and mosquettes. The latter were thinner imitations of Axminsters and cost less than the Wiltons and Brussels. The older style carpets, ingrains and Venetians were still in use, though in wealthier homes they might be confined to servants’ areas.

Flowered carpets, so popular for so long and condemned by critics for almost as long were finally on the way out. Oriental designs and simplified patterns were being purchased. The vibrant colors of past carpets, in primary colors were being replaced by more subdued tints.

carpet patterns from Eastlake's book
Front halls might be covered with a small, easily shaken out carpet. Stairways built of hardwood could be carpeted if desired. In a narrow hall, the carpet might be the same color as the walls or woodwork. Carpets in double parlors did not need to match, but should complement one another.

Windows
Eastlake and his followers preferred simpler window coverings which they believed emulated Gothic styling, but not all householders subscribed to the new fashions. Many preferred the more ornate, traditional designs, generally based on French taste. Others continued to use old fashioned, simple window coverings.

Exterior shutter blinds were now painted to contrast with the body color of the house rather than being painted the nearly universal green or stone of the past. Interior shutters with movable louvers were being stained or painted to match the woodwork of the room.

an ad for window screens
Americans were using the still often home made gauze or wire screens to keep out insects. Many were still being painted with decorative designs. By the 1880’s, however, American factories were beginning to produce window screens. The wire mesh was painted to guard against rust in green, black or drab, or with landscapes.

Window shades came in several varieties. One was made of a fine linen called Holland and came in a variety of colors. An 1885 catalog listed white, ecru, sage, brown, blue and cardinal. Critics, however, preferred white, buff or gray. Darker colors would dramatically tint the light entering a room. A red shade, for instance suggested “a descent into the Inferno at every afternoon tea.” The shades were often finished with fringe or decorative stitching.
Some homeowners liked transparent shades made from artist’s tracing cloth. The artistic family member could decorate the shade with landscapes or tracings of medieval knights and ladies.
The third type of shade was opaque and made of oilcloth and came in white or colors. Some came in marbleized or grained patters and they ran the gamut from being simply decorated to quite colorful and gaudy.

An interest in Gothic design resulted in the use of stained glass in the home. The look of stained glass could be achieved inexpensively by using colored, transparent paper or transfers (similar to modern decals). One could also paint design on the glass or make an “epiphanie” by cutting a design into heavy cardboard, then filling the spaces with tissue paper or colored cellophane. One could make imitation etched glass by bouncing a putty bag all over the window, and once the putty dried, varnish it. This technique could also be used with stencils. As a side note, the effect was probably similar to the one achieved with Glass Wax for those who remember that window cleaning product.


Portiere hung across a doorway and Eastlakes preferred method of drapery hanging
Eastlake felt that draperies should be hung at doors and windows to keep out drafts. They should hang from rings strung on sturdy 1 or 1 ½” metal rods. Because the rod was placed just above the window, something was needed to keep any wind from blowing upwards and into the room. A wooden box was to be constructed above the rod, then it was covered with a simple valence. In general the window treatments critics advised were a call back to the treatments of the 1830’s and 40’s advocated by Downing and others. There was once difference, though. Curtains were not to be looped back during the day, but allowed to hang straight down on both sides of the window. Because they were no longer to be looped, they were now shorter, just floor length. By the 70’s curtains that puddled onto the floor were considered vulgar.
The height from which the curtains were hung depended on the style of the room. During the 30’s and 40’s, poles were usually attached to the molding at the top of the window. In the 70’s rooms decorated in the Gothic manner continued the practice with an addition of an ornate frieze occupying the space above the window. Rooms decorated in a Renaissance or Louis XIV style used cornices and lambrequins at the top instead of the frieze. No matter what style was used, window treatments did not cover the frieze or molding.
The manner in which lambrequins or as they are known today, valances, were used depended on the style of the rooms furnishings. Some were fairly simple, others ornate. Some were of the same color as the draperies below, others contrasted.

Lighter curtains and roller blinds were used in addition to the heavier drapes,. Eastlake liked Swiss lace made of heavy cotton thread as a glass curtain. Lace curtains ran the gamut as far as cost. Plain muslin edged with lace or having lace panels was a cheaper alternative, and a curtain made of cheesecloth edged in a bit of lace was cheaper still.
Most critics agreed, however, that sheer curtains alone were unattractive. A lace curtain with a lace lambrequin was allowable for summer, though.

Portieres, or doorway curtains were almost universal during the last quarter of the century, while they were almost unknown prior to the 1870’s. They were usually hung at the doorways of public rooms, the parlor, library or sitting room. They were also used in the doorways of double rooms, even with sliding doors. American architect E.C.Gardner would have preferred to do away with the banging nuisance if interior doors altogether and replace them with portieres. Other critics also advised homeowners to banish their doors to attics and basements and replace them with draperies. Portieres, once introduced, remained popular for about 50 years.

Portieres from Eastlake's book


During the 1870’s and 80’s many surfaces were draped. Critics disliked the old marble mantels of earlier days. They advised hanging a lambrequin about 6 to 10” long from the mantle. Others even recommended curtains to hide the grate when not in use. These mini-portieres took the place of the earlier fireboards. Embroidered velvet, felt or satin covers covered the old marble tabletops one critic referred to as “parlor tombstones”. There was a craze for doing needlework in the 70’s and 80’s and most surfaces began to be covered with the resulting artistic endeavors.


beautifying an ugly, outdated marble mantel
The favored fabrics for bedrooms continued in much part to be the washable cottons like dimity, chintz, cretonne, muslin and plain or dotted Swiss. It was stressed at this time that bedrooms required sunlight and fresh air. The half-tester bed came into favor, because while draped, it still allowed the movement of air around the sleeper.


a half-tester bed from Eastlake's book
Most American critics preferred that the bedroom toilet table be draped, in opposition to Eastlake. They suggested things like dimity for the top and cretonne, Swiss or lace over colored muslin for the skirt.
For beds and curtains, it was felt that the same fabric be used on both. If the walls and floors were patterned the fabric should be plain, or vice versa.

THE VICTORIAN KITCHEN

Most of the books commonly seen about life in the 19th century seem to be British and therefore deal with life in Victorian England.
The following notes, are for the most part, from British books, however there are many similarities between the London kitchen and the American urban kitchen. The main difference, as far as equipment goes, seems to be the range or stove. The British went in one direction, the Americans in another, however, British style ranges were manufactured and sold in America also.

American stove, circa 1885
Below is a British style range manufactured in Philadelphia. The ad is from 1888


The British kitchen range
The open range was invented in 1780. There was a hob grate in the center, where the fire was lit. On one side was an iron oven with a hinged door, and on the other an iron tank for hot water. Fitted to the top bar of the fire grate was a hinged trivet, which could be let down for a pan or kettle to set upon. Unfortunately food cooked in the oven tended to be burnt on one side and underdone on the other, however modifications were made and passages for the circulation of warm air around the oven were introduced. Another disadvantages was that it used a huge amount of fuel and made the kitchen extremely hot. The fire box could become hot enough to melt the fire bars.

British open range, 2 variations.
Below is a picture of the later closed range


The closed range was introduced and was widely available by the 1840’s.
A metal hot-plate covered the fire box and had rings for pans and kettles to rest upon. Movable panels were on the front of the grate, so that a roast could be cooked in front of the fire if desired. Later these panels were replaced with doors. Some models had 2 ovens, one on either side of the fire-box, others had an oven on one side, a boiler on the other. Flues and dampers were used to try and control the temperature somewhat. Pots were placed on the hot metal range top, which could become red hot if desired. Later, holes were cut in the surface. They were usually plugged with hot plates, but they could be removed and a pot placed within the hole so that the direct flames would bring the pot to a boil faster.

GAS COOKERS -----Britain
Gas cookers began to be seen by the 1850’s. They were originally black cast-iron boxes with an oven. a grill and a hot plate. They did not become popular in Britain till the prepayment gas slot machine was introduced in the 1890’s, and lower income families found gas more affordable.
Coal gas was available in British towns and cities by the 1880’s.
Temperatures on gas ranges were much easier to regulate. They took
up less space, and could be installed at less expense in smaller kitchens. They were also much cleaner than the coal stoves,
and required less daily maintenance. Efficient gas ovens were
available by 1900. They were well insulated with shelves, grills
and removable enameled fittings. Thermostats began being included
in 1923.

ELECTRIC COOKERS
They were first designed in the 1890’s but slow to catch on because of the slow spread of electricity and their initial high cost. By the 1920’s, however, they were competing with gas.

SINKS
Sinks were originally made of wood or slate. Later glazed stoneware sinks became popular. They could be filled from a pump, a faucet or a bucket. The dirty water drained into a bucket or a waste pipe that often dumped out into the yard. A slop stone was a wide bottomed, shallow stone sink that was built under a faucet or pump. It was tilted slightly so that waste water would flow toward a drain hole into a bucket or pipe. The sink was shallow enough to be used for chopping meat or boning fish, etc. A bowl or wooden tub was placed in the sink for washing dishes.


The Victorian ideal kitchen was for cooking only. Food was to be stored in the storeroom and larder, much of the food preparation was to be done in the scullery, and cleaning up was done in the scullery or the pantry depending on what type of dish it was and how dirty. In actual life this was not necessarily so. Many middle class homes had only one servant and had only the kitchen for her to sleep in. Even in larger homes, with more staff, lower servants commonly slept there. Less prosperous people used to spend time relaxing in the kitchen themselves. Servants did not sleep in American kitchens, however. The American “hired girl” would never stand for anything like that.


An English kitchen maid washing dishes, late 1800's

When plumbing began being introduced into homes, it was generally only piped to the first floor or wherever the kitchen was. The scullery had running water. This is where any messy food preparation took place and the scouring pots and pans, etc. Generally, American house plans of the period do not show sculleries. I have seen them listed only on occasion and even then, they were in quite large and grand houses.
The scullery would have one or two sinks, the pantry sink would be lined with lead, so that dishes and glassware would be less likely to chip. With the arrival of proper water pressure sinks began to appear upstairs. If the house had a housemaid’s cupboard upstairs it would also have a lead lined wooden sink for washing bedroom ware. There would also be a separate slop sink to empty chamber pots into. After the arrival of indoor sanitation servants often had their own lavatory downstairs to ensure that they didn’t use the family lavatory upstairs.

The pantry was for storing dishes, glassware, etc, it had a sink where these things could be washed. In America, pantries were primarily a storage area. Some did come equipped with sinks for the washing of finer china and crystal, but these came to be known as butler’s pantries. Again, these were a feature of more elegant homes.
A larder was for the storage of fresh food and the store room was for dried goods, cans and cleaning equipment.

In England the kitchen was commonly in the basement level. In America in most country and even townhouses it was often on the first, or ground, floor. American city dwellers tended to have larger lots than those living in Britain. The butler’s pantry, where there was one, was placed between the dining room and the kitchen as a sort of buffer zone. Even the doors did not lead straight onto each other, so that you could not get a view of the kitchen from the dining room. Sometimes the kitchen connected to the dining room by use of a small hallway.

In actuality, the London kitchen was often just a dark damp basement. The scullery might be a passageway off the kitchen with a small lavatory in it. The pantry might just be a china closet, the storeroom a locked cupboard and the larder another locked cupboard in the coolest part of the basement away from the kitchen range. Generally windows were small and high in the London kitchen, sometimes there were none, just some kind of ventilation opening. The gas light would be on all day and the range would be blasting away up to 18 hours a day, as it heated all the water for the household. The basement level also contained a coal cellar.

The closed range was the first big technical improvement in British cookery since the open fire. They were invented early in the century but did not come into wide use for some decades. There were many styles of ranges, but they all shared an oven and a boiler to heat water. By the 1860’s the also had hot plates to simmer things on and keep them warm. It was wonderful in that for the first time the house could be supplied with a constant amount of hot water, but the biggest advantage was that you no longer had to worry about soot falling down the chimney into the food in the oven, it could however, still fall into the saucepans. If you look at old photos you’ll notice a difference in British and American cooking units. The British installed their ranges into the fireplace opening. Americans used freestanding stoves with a stove pipe leading into the chimney.

With all the kitchen ranges and fires for heating throughout the house, and London’s foggy climate the city was filthy inside and out.
From a Sherlock Holmes story……
”He struck a match on his boot and held it up against the wall. Across
the bare space there was scrawled in blood-red letters a single word.”
This took place in daylight. My mother lived in Manchester, England in the late 1940’s. She recounted that one day, while walking home from work she walked past her house and smack into a brick wall, all on account of the fog, which today we would call smog. She could not see her steps or even the brick wall. There was an interesting program on the History channel here in the US about the killer fog that hit London in the 1950’s. Thousands of deaths were attributed to it.

Back to London dirt…
Latches to both inner and outer doors had small plates or curtains over the keyholes to keep out dirt. Plants were placed on window sills to trap dust as it flew in. Muslin was often nailed across open windows to trap soot. Table cloths were laid just before mealtime lest they get dirty. In a large house there would be one servant who only cared for the fires and lights all day long.

An English maid preparing the fire in a stove, 1870's. During much of the 19th century many women continued to have to cook kneeling or sqatting on the kitchen floor in front of the hearth or a low stove.

All fireplaces had to be cleaned daily. The ashes had to be removed several times a day. The grate, fender and irons had to be polished and shining. The kitchen range had to be cleaned completely every day. First the fender and fire irons were removed. Then damp tea leaves were scattered over the fuel to keep the dust down while cleaning. Then the ashes and cinders were raked out. Cinders were pieces of coal that stopped giving off flames, but still were combustible. A housemaid had to sift through the ashes and pick out the cinders to be reused in the kitchen. The ashes were collected by dustmen. The flues were cleaned and
grease was scraped off the stove. The steel parts were scrubbed with powdered brick and paraffin. The iron parts were rubbed with black lead paste and polished. The oven had to be swept out. In a house with only one or two servants, they would sweep the oven and blacklead the front every day, doing the rest once a week. In a larger house this was all done every day. Also the oven would be scraped out and washed with vinegar and water. I read a book written by a woman who was a London cook in the 1930’s. She was still doing many of these things then.

THE MODERN HOUSEHOLDER‘S list for “cheap kitchen furniture” in 1872: (English list, but similar to what was used in US, except for the stove.
Open range, fender, fire irons
1 deal table (deal was a name for a cheap wood, often a low grade pine)
deal bracket to be fastened to wall and let down when wanted
wooden chair
floor canvas
coarse canvas to lay before the fire when cooking
wooden tub for washing glass and china
large earthenware pan for washing plates
small zinc basin for washing hands
2 washing-tubs
clothesline
clotheshorse
yellow bowl for mixing dough (The yellow bowl for mixing dough was a cheap stoneware bowl, the British called them yellow ware.)
wooden salt box to hang up
small coffee mill
plate rack
knife board
large brown
earthenware pan for for bread
small wooden flour kit
3 flat irons
an Italian iron and iron stand
old blanket for ironing on
2 tin candlesticks
snuffers, extinguishers
2 blacking brushes
1 scrubbing brush
1 carpet broom
1 short handled broom
cinder sifter
dustpan
sieve
bucket
patent digester
tea kettle
toasting fork
bread grater
bottle jack (a screen can be made with the clothes horse covered with sheets) A bottle Jack was a spit for roasting meat. The would have set this up in front of the fire of the open range
set of skewers
meat chopper
block-tin butter saucepan
colander
3 iron saucepans
1 iron boiling pot
1 fish kettle
1 flour dredger a sifter
1 frying pan
1 hanging gridiron
salt and pepper boxes
rolling pin and pasteboard
12 patty pans A patty pan was a small pan for making pastries or small pies.
1 larger tin pan
pair of scales
baking dish

A more extensive kitchen list might include things like
raisin seeders and cucumber slicers.

In the Victorian kitchen there was a constant war against vermin. We tend to but mice and rats in this category, but to the Victorians it was bugs...black bugs, beetles and even crickets. Beatrix Potter’s maids spent a night sitting on the kitchen table on a visit they were making to her grandmother’s home in 1886. At night the floor became “a living carpet“ of beetles. This was not too unusual. One book recommended that you keep a hedgehog to eat the insects. The fight against vermin was fought not only for hygiene but for moral grounds. A dirty house produced immoral people, not the other way around. People had a moral duty to clean their homes. They spent countless daily hours cleaning ( or having their maids do it )Blackleading the grates every day and whitening the front steps each morning made them no cleaner but it was the right and moral thing to do. It showed everyone what an upstanding citizen you were.

Victorians also liked to keep strict accounts of things, there were lists of what clothing you had and when it was cleaned, etc., inventory lists of your possessions, down to the last cup. Whom you visited and who visited you, did they stay, or just leave a card ?

A woman with several servants would check each morning that the house had been properly cleaned that day. If she had only one, she would also clean. She’d go to the kitchen and look over the leftovers and plan the days meals. She would also give out food from the locked storeroom, based on what was needed for the day’s use. Some things were handed to the cook on a weekly basis, like onions, flour, spices, oil, string, etc. Even cleaning supplies were carefully doled out. Many servants resented this kind of treatment, it implied that they were not responsible or even dishonest. One woman’s mother had the same cook for 30 years and still the cook had to go ask for a box of matches or whatever else she needed from the storeroom. In actuality, many women expected that servants would steal from them.

Shopping was often done seasonally, buying things at the time of year that they were cheapest. Housewives would stock up whenever the price of something fell. Rice could supposedly be stored for 3 years if you followed the directions.

Kitchen walls were usually plastered and whitewashed. They often had a scrubbable painted dado or wainscot covering the bottom half of the walls, made of beadboard. This was generally 3 to 4 feet high. Sometimes plain glazed tiles were used instead.

In Britain the floors were normally stone slab or unglazed tiles. Sometimes wooden duckboards were used around the table where the cook stood.. In American kitchens wooden floors were the norm, as they were not in the basement level. British architects of the Victorian era noted that hard stone or tile floors were noisy and advised that in a small kitchen, where it also served as a servants’ hall, a wooden floor would sometimes be preferred.

Kitchen floors in both England and America were covered with floor cloths or oil cloths, which made cleaning easier. After linoleum was invented in 1860 it quickly became very popular. It was used in kitchens, sculleries and passageways, anywhere there was high traffic.

VICTORIAN DINING

For those who are interested in 19th century food

Most people in the first half of the century served roasted meat or chicken only on very special occasions. the reason for this was that most of them did not have ovens. Generally they got their bread from bake houses which also roasted meals. this was common throughout the western world. For the most part, people usually ate food that was boiled in a pot or steamed, since that was the easiest way to prepare it. This was a carryover from the previous century. Many stewed dishes were eaten. Breakfasts consisted of things like leftover meat or chicken, fish, bread, maybe some porridge or eggs.

By the mid-century mark meal times were changing. This was because fewer men
were working at home. Dinner used to be a meal eaten at noontime, but since men were off at work, the main meal of the day was pushed back to evening.

A cook book from the mid Victorian era gave a whole years’ worth of menus. For one Sunday it read;
Breakfast; broiled haddock, poached eggs, cold meat, honey
Dinner; oxtail soup, boiled leg of mutton, caper sauce, mashed turnips, carrots, potatoes,
mince pies, almond pudding, welsh rabbit
Vegetables were considered to be very bad for children's diets. In 1842 a cookbook author warned that you should not overseason, healthy food was bland food, however 20 years later cookbooks were starting to recommend the use of herbs and spices. By the way, Worcestershire sauce was initially known as anchovy ketchup.
Most weekly menus were made up of leftovers. One menu plan book listed new dinners 3 times a week, the other 4 were made up of the leftover meats, potatoes, etc
Fresh fruit was considered by most people to be ‘unwholesome'. One woman recalled that eating fresh fruit was " a pleasant treat, but rather dangerous." Most fruit was stewed
or in a tart or pudding and served maybe once or twice a week.

Soon it wasn't just the new class of factory workers who were no longer home at midday, but middle-class men were also no longer working at home. They were going out to offices in the city and commuting to the new suburbs being built in England and the US. Dinner was moved to 5 or 6. Those who did not have to get up early to go to work in the morning pushed meal time back even later to separate them from the class below them. It got to be a chain, everybody copying every one else.
With the improvement of gas and oil lighting it was also cheaper to light the dining room at night.

Now, about the English tea-time.
Tea was originally a light meal served in the evening, but since people were now dining much later, they did not need a meal at night. Tea was gradually shifted to a late afternoon snack. The well to do usually had just small sandwiches or cakes, but the working classes
would have something more substantial. This all gets kind of complicated, everything bears on what class you belonged to, how much money you had, etc.
In America things were slightly different, but people here did tend to look toward the British for 'social customs'.

The other big change in meals, if you cared to be "in" and socially correct, was the way they were served. In the first half of Victoria’s reign they were served "a la francaise" later the method was "a la russe" . More about this later. Complicated people these Victorians.

Serving dinner
In the middle and upper classes during the first half of the century dinner was served in a manner called A la Francaise. Most of the food was put on the table all at once, often over dishes of hot water to keep them warm. There would be a tureen of soup in front of the mistress of the house and fish in front of the master. They would each serve what was in front of them, either to the next guest at table or preferably handed to a servant
who would pass it to the guest. After the fish and soup were done a roast joint would be put in front of the host and a fowl in front of the hostess. They were then served to family and guests. The side or corner dishes were called that because they were placed at the
sides and corners of the table. They were passed or carried around the table depending on the number of servants and the formality of the dinner. These were dishes of single portion meats like sweetbreads, cutlets or kidneys, or meat based dishes like patties or croquettes. They could also be stews, or in England curries. They were all easy to serve and required no carving. The table layout was apparently the most important thing (next to having dinner served ON TIME). No two similar dishes were to be placed anywhere near each other. If there were 2 soups, one had to be at either end of the table. If there were 4 soups...top, bottom and middle at either side of the table opposite one another. The same thing applied if there were 2 fish dishes. The meat course was expected to have one brown meat and one white. Before 1850, men were expected to help the woman next
to them to wine.

After the joint the table was cleared , this was the first "remove". A sweet dish was placed before the hostess and a savory one, often game, before the host. The side dishes were now vegetables, jellies, creams, trifles and confections. At a formal dinner after
this the table was cleared again, the 2nd remove. Cheese, butter, salad, celery, radishes and cucumbers replaced the sweet dishes. Then the table would be cleared again, the 3rd remove. This time the tablecloth would also be taken away. The dessert would then arrive. This was simply fruit and nuts. Finger bowls would be provided if they were not there during the rest of the meal. After the fruit, he hostess would rise and the ladies would join her and leave the dining room. If the household was prosperous and the men had hearty appetites then more food would arrive, like anchovy toast, deviled dishes or other spicy things.

Family dinners were usually less elaborate with only 2 removes. Remember that not everyone ate like this, it all depended on money and social status, but this was what people aspired to. Also, they did not eat everything. The hosts wanted to be sure that there was something that would please each guest at the table. A regular dinner, according to a guide to correct behavior , should last no more than one and a quarter hours, though a large dinner party could go up to 2 hours. This is where all those leftovers come from that were served on other days..

By the 1830's a new way of dining started in Paris and by the 1880's was the norm in Britain and the US. This was service "a la russe" , but before going on to service 'a la russe' I thought you might like to see a menu for a winter dinner party for 8 as published in 1872.
On the table as diners enter; hare soup.....oyster patties......cotelettes a la maintenon....
oyster sauce.....cod's head and shoulders.
first remove;
boiled turkey.......mashed potatoes.......stewed sea kale.........saddles of mutton.
second remove;
cabinet pudding........jaune mange........punch jelly.......cheese fondue......brace of partridges.
Jaune mange was a pudding made with water, wine, lemon juice, egg yolks and sugar.
You can find some recipes for cabinet pudding on line, if you care to look.

One reason for the new service a la russe's popularity was that it saved money. In the old style, you had to have a lot of food on the table. You couldn't put out a half filled dish of peas, for example, for 3 people, it just wouldn't look right. The table had to look attractive. The new system was that the table would be set and dessert (fruit & nuts in display dishes) would be on the table. When the guests were seated, food would be brought in and served around in the manner we are familiar with today. You didn't need to have all those full dishes on the table, perfectly balanced by its opposite food on the other end so that everything would be symmetrical. You could now make a display
with just the dessert dishes and flowers. You no longer had to serve sweet dishes with savory or have to offer soup and fish at the same time. Each dish now had it's own spot in line.

New cutlery was invented. You now had also a fish fork and fish knife, an oyster fork, a salad fork, a cake fork, they all looked different. This new service style took a while to catch on. What food looked like was very important. If you had a small income you rarely entertained out of your family circle. You could not insult your guests by having an informal family style dinner. For a middle or upper class dinner party the table would be laid with a white cloth and would often have a colored runner down the middle which could be covered with another lace runner. If there were flowers they would complement the runner. By the way, it was hoped that you had 4 sets of dishes, the best, the breakfast,
the everyday and the dessert set. If dinner was formal there would be 2 soups, one clear, one thick. Fish and soup would be offered a second time around, but it was bad manners to accept. Middle and upper class hostesses ran into a problem when it came time for a cheese course. Bread and cheese was what the working class ate, and if you more
than just nibbled at it, it could lower your social standing.

Everyone knew what was done or not done by their group and if you aspired to move up to the next social level there were plenty of books and magazines to show you how.

Some final notes on Victorian dining, because I could go on forever.
"1 1/2 to 1 3/4 hours to boil macaroni."
Ketchups were bottled piquant sauces, the most popular were anchovy, walnut and mushroom. Tomato ketchup was very rare, as were tomatoes.
Then common foods that are common no longer:
bullock’s hearts, fried ox feet, cow heel, sheep's head, pig's face (a breakfast or luncheon dish) , hare (the ears should be crisp), and calf's head ( put the head in boiling water., then take it out, hold it by the ear, and with the back of the knife, scrape off the hair....When perfectly clean, take the eyes out, cut off the ears, and remove the brain.)

The can opener was invented in 1858, that really started to get canned foods rolling. Dried soups started appearing in the 1840's and you could use 'gravy balls' to start soups, the equivalent of today's bouillon cubes. There were powdered eggs, too.
A device was invented that could cut sugar into cubes in 1872.
Packaged foods were very popular, but you had to watch what you bought. Milk would sometimes be sold diluted up to half and half with water. In one case in England they tested 49 bread samples and found all of them had alum added to them to bulk them up.
Potatoes and sawdust would also be found. This was common in the US too, as I found in several sources. Cocoa and chocolate would sometimes have dirt added to them. Coffee might have sawdust.
Poisonous substances were added to foods to color them. Housekeeping books told you how to test the food you bought for contaminants. There were tests you could try in the kitchen to find out if there was plaster in the bread you bought.

THE VICTORIAN HOME, perhaps not quite what you thought it was

With the Victorian era came a large rise in the middle class, a period of evangelicalism and churchgoing, an increase of factories and offices, etc. It was in other words, a time of great change.

In times of great change people tend to turn inwards toward their homes. For the first time the home became the moving force in British culture. People wanted a place of their own, a castle, a nest, a private place. The demand for housing increased tremendously and thousands of inexpensive row houses were built. This trend was not followed on the European mainland, however. There they met the need for more housing by building large blocks of apartments, or flats.

In American cities they tended on the whole, to follow British trends, probably because the books on modern living were initially mainly by British authors. I guess if the Germans had translated their style books into English and shipped them off to America, there might have been a whole different look to cities. Even in US cities, there were differences. Philadelphia was nicknamed the city of homes and churches. This was because there was more individual home ownership there than in any other American city.

I recall reading that people who came to one of the World Expositions held in the late 19th or early 20th c. were astonished at the example of a Philadelphia row house that was built there. They were surprised that the inexpensive Philadelphia working man’s home could be so sturdily built and attractive. Now in New York, for example, more people tended to, on the whole, live in apartments or flats. I also wanted to note, for those in America, that in England the row houses, or as they are known there, terraced houses, were rented. It is estimated that only 10% of people owned their own homes.

It was also during this era that the suburb was born. A place where the working man, who could afford it, could have his own quiet place away from the noise and dirt of the city he worked in. I grew up in what were, in Victorian days, the new railroad suburbs of Philadelphia.
As the tracks moved north west, away from the city center, neighborhoods of houses rose. A ride on the commuter train would take you on a little history of domestic architecture. At one stop, the neighborhood homes would be of the style of the 1870’s. A couple of stops down the track you’d see the 1880’s, etc.

Renting your home worked well for the British city dweller of the Victorian era. They moved constantly. If you made more money you HAD to move to a better neighborhood. If your neighborhood starting changing you felt the need to move again.

The Victorians were very much caught up in doing the right thing, wearing the right clothes, decorating and serving meals in the proper manner, etc.

In the Victorian home the man was God. What he said was law, on the whole, anyway. The woman had the duty of running the home under his command. The husband expected to come home to perfection. A clean house, a well prepared meal, no children underfoot. The ideal was to have baby fast asleep upstairs before Papa came home. Under these circumstances it would be surprising for hubby to remember that he was a papa at all. Keep in mind that everything I write in these articles was not the norm for everybody.For example, someday far in the future perhaps folks will say, “Oh yes, early 21st century Americans rarely ate at home or cooked. They dined primarily on ground meat sandwiches and prepackaged salads that they bought at drive through food dispensing areas.” See what I mean? By the way, most of what is written about the Victorian era pertains to the middle and upper classes.

I found this section in a history book I read interesting.
In 1860, a child was murdered in a middle-class family home. People were shocked by the brutality of the slaying but also by the fact that it was ….”almost certain that some member of a respectable household-----such as yours, reader, or ours-----which goes to church with regularity, has family prayers, and whose bills are punctually settled, has murdered an unoffending child” as the author of this book notes
that the ingredients that made up a respectable household were church, family prayer, and prompt bill-paying.

Victorians had a large array of books and magazine that would happily tell them how to properly arrange their lives, and they read them eagerly. If you made some more money or inherited it, and followed the guidebook religiously, you too could climb into the next class up the ladder.

As to the house itself
The Victorian home was divided into public and private spaces. The drawing room, parlor, dining room, front hall, etc. were all public spaces that a guest would see, and were decorated accordingly. Everything else was private and not much money was spent there. Family rooms were private. The servant’s area was separate. Cooking smells should not waft through the house. You should not see any part of the kitchen from the hallways. Interior doors should open out into the room, and not up against the wall. This was so that a servant entering a room could swiftly recede without seeing who was occupying the room or what they were doing.


The Victorians increasingly felt the need for each room to have it’s own function. For example, you sleep in the bedroom, you do not play games there, or write letters there or use it as a sitting room. Rooms in the past were multifunctional. However, just because you were supposed to use each room for only one thing to be modern and fashionable, that didn’t mean that everyone stuck to the rules.

The English row house, and its cousins in America, often had a well, or area, in front of it, that went under the main steps to the house. There would be a separate flight down. This was the tradesmen’s entrance. The generic house would be set up like this, I’m using the British lay out here.
Top floor; servant’s and children’s bedrooms
Half-landing; often a bathroom was placed here
Second floor; master bedroom, dressing room ( in larger houses),
and second bedroom
First floor; drawing room
Ground floor; dining room, morning room
Basement; kitchen, scullery, perhaps a breakfast room

Smaller houses might have three floors, kitchen and scullery in the basement, dining room and reception room on the next floor and 2 bedrooms above. Servants were lucky if they had a room at all. Often they would drag out bedding and sleep on the kitchen floor. I recently studied many plans of Philadelphia row houses and comparing them to some Baltimore and New York and London plans, found them all remarkably similar. One difference was the renaming of the English ground floor to the American first floor, and that sometimes the drawing room was on the American first floor and the dining room and parlor were on the second. By the way, in English townhouses, the scullery would be a small ell attached to the back of the house, with it’s own chimney, and the privy, outhouse, whatever you want to call it was generally attached to it. By the way, it was very common to keep pigs in your backyard in London, even if you were well off. It helped get rid of the garbage for one thing.

The Victorians were great believers in waste not want not, they saved and reused everything. Sheets were expected to last 5 to 7 years, when they were worn down the center, you cut them in half and stitched the 2 outside edges together and used them some more. Later they would be used as dust covers, after that they would be torn up into strips for bandages or given to the poor. In Britain after 1875, refuse removal
became an obligation of the city. Before that you had to handle it on your own. Anything paper could be burned in the kitchen stove, but clean paper was re-used. Some of it was cut up and used for toilet paper, which did not become commercially available till some time after the invention of the flush toilet. Paper was also recycled to make ‘spills’ which were long strips of twisted paper used to light fires.

There were many street traders who went door to door buying used items.
This was true in every major city and town. Paper was bought by paper mills and manufacturers of paper mache furniture and ornaments. Dealers bought iron, metal, wood, lead, and old bottles. Old textiles and bones were bought by the rag and bone man who sold these things to paper mills, glue, gelatin, match, toothpick and fertilizer manufacturers.
Any kitchen waste that could not be re-used or burned in the stove was dumped into a bucket. A thrifty cook had very little to throw out. The contents of the bucket was called “wash”. A washman came regularly to buy it, it was then sold as “hog-wash”, or pig swill. There was a big demand for it. Many working people in London kept pigs in their back yard to make extra money. An unscrupulous cook could tell her employer that she needed money to pay the man to take the wash away, then collect from the wash man too.

Fish heads were used to make soup, the water vegetables were cooked in was used to make gravy, as were plate scrapings and unfinished wine. Tea leaves were rinsed and scattered over carpets to help collect the dust when sweeping, then burned in the stove. Leftover tea was used to wash windows.

In the US, cities had garbage removal. In Boston, during the 1870's there were 2 collections a week in winter and 3 a week in summer. New York City had regular trash collection by the mid 1800's. Trash was deposited in garbage boxes or ash barrels, and on windy days refuse would go flying down the streets.

Before refrigeration the best they could do in a city house was to use a cool cellar or a tiled room with a north facing wall. In the countryside you had the springhouse or a storage cellar of some kind. There were many ways to try to extend the shelf life of food. It was recommended that you check your meat regularly, and powder it with ginger or pepper against flies. Charcoal was also used to help keep it fresh and remove any bad odors. Scalded milk stayed drinkable for more hours than fresh. To keep it for several days you’d add grated horse radish to it. Eggs could be boiled and packed in sawdust and kept for 3 months.

Imagine doing all this yourself without any help, or even with the aid of a maid or daughter. That's one reason for the old tradition of Monday--washing ; Tuesday -- ironing ; Wednesday something else, can't recall offhand. There was a major job to be done every day but Sunday, because these jobs took up the whole day. It's why young girls took on so many wifely tasks at such an early age.
In America, by the way, the term servant was not used much, except by the highest classes. Most referred to them as "hired help", it was more democratic.

The Victorian city dwelling woman was constantly fighting a battle against dust. This was not the kind of dust that we are used to. It was dried city mud, with particles of decaying animal and vegetable matter, horse droppings, etc. Coal dust and soot were everywhere, from the smoke pouring out of the chimneys to the coals as they were carried about the rooms from fireplace to fireplace, to the ashes that had to constantly be swept and gotten rid of. Soot was thrown out by the fires and blackened everything. People would cover surfaces and wash the covers regularly. However, over time the covers became more and more decorative and less and less washable. The covers now needed covers.
Can you see where this is heading as far as Victorian decorating goes?

It was advised that you should have 3 hairbrushes. One to start the day out with a clean brush, the second to be washed and set to dry for the following day, the third to lend to a friend if she needed it. A woman remarked that it was impossible to keep your hair clean “ our brushes look black after one using”. If your hair got that dirty in one day, with a hat on when you went outside, imagine how filthy your clothes and furniture would be.

Heating
Central heating was usually found only in larger more expensive homes till later in the century.
From an 1861 book, Sloan’s Homestead Architecture : “It will be observed that provision has been made in all the rooms on both floors, except the chambers for warming by fire-places. However much this may seem out of date to those accustomed to the modern appliances of hot-air, steam, and hot-water furnaces, our experience convinces us that many years must elapse before the old-fashioned fire-place will be dispensed within the warmer portions of this country”.
The above was written about plans for a large villa.

Most homes relied on stoves in the rooms, but there was a strong interest in any modern heating systems. It took a while for technology to come up with more efficient ways of distributing warmth through the house.

Fireplaces were expensive to use and maintain and weren’t very efficient. The Victorians knew this, but loved them anyway. The fireplace was considered the heart of the home. In the 18th century Count Rumford developed improvements to the fireplace, which caused it to throw heat out into the room instead of up the chimney. I can attest to this, having had a regular fireplace in my old house and one designed on the lines of Count Rumford’s in my present home. My family room can get quite toasty with the glass hearth doors open. Generally most fireplaces of the 18th and 19th c. kept you roasting on one side and freezing on the other. A gadget from those days was the fire screen, a device meant to shield a lady’s face from the heat of the fire, while the rest of her person stayed cozily warmed.

The wealthy had the cash and the servants to keep their fires going as much as they liked. Those on the economic rungs beneath them couldn’t afford it, but wanted all those fireplaces, rarely lit some of them and told themselves it was healthy. Many books claimed that warm rooms sapped your energy, that sleeping in a warm room could make you become nearsighted. One author suggested that the proper temperature for a bedroom was 50 degrees, but a sick person might be more comfortable in 60 degrees. Another advised the maximum temperature to remain comfortable in a heated room was 56 degrees (Fahrenheit). Many people never lit the fireplaces in their bedrooms.
It was common to find the water in your wash basin frozen.

For some unknown reason the British apparently never warmed up to American or German heating methods. The Germans had large stoves covered in ceramic tiles for a couple of centuries, which did a fine job of heating. Similar stoves were used in various parts of northern Europe. Central heating was more or less born in America. Even those Americans of the Victorian era that could not afford central heating systems
were warmer than the British, from what I’ve read.

Parlor stoves were popular and much more efficient than fireplaces, and safer. I recall that in one of Louisa May Alcott’s books a young farmer’s daughter longed to be able to use the sealed up fireplace in her bedroom. She felt that the stove in her room was so boring and practical. Her father gave in and let her use the fireplace. Shortly after that a gust of wind caused her window curtain to fly up and it caught on fire. The stove went back to its customary spot and the girl decided she could live without her romantic fire.

In Britain fireplaces had a ‘hob’ or ‘grate’ as it is known in the US. Later in the Victorian era in England the ‘register grate’ was developed. It was a one piece unit that combined a hob, a chimney register (to control airflow) a fire back and an inner surround. Simple hobs continued to be used in smaller homes and rooms up to the end of the century. Fireplaces in America rarely used the register grate and
relied on simple grates supplemented often by cast iron stoves or central heating.

At the beginning of Victoria’s reign mantelpieces were mostly neo-classical and simple in decoration. Marble was the most common material. A cheaper alternative was the slate mantelpiece which was very popular in the 1880’s. Many were painted to look like inlaid marble panels on a black background with gold decoration.
Wood continued to be used for older classical designs as desired by the builder. Sometimes a circular cast iron register grate determined the circular line of the mantelpiece which enclosed it. By the late 1850’s and early 60’s mantelpieces of cast iron with register grates incorporated into them were mass produced. Many Victorian fireplaces came complete with a matching fender or marble curb. Since these fireplaces were smaller than in days of yore they needed them. Bedroom fireplaces could be even smaller.

During the 1800’s, fireplaces were increasingly replaced in the cold climates of the US by efficient stoves or central heating systems. The thermostat, by the way, was patented in 1885 by the Honeywell Co.
Hot-air systems grew more and more commonplace in the 1840’s and 50’s. A furnace was installed in the home of President Martin Van Buren in 1854. It remained in use until 1937. Today the original ductwork is still in use with a modern furnace.
The early central heating generally did not serve the entire house. Usually just the rooms on the ground floor were heated. Sometimes a duct would be built into the stairwell to waft some heat to the second floor. In some cases only the rooms on the north side of the house were heated, the rest were served by fireplaces or stoves. Even the heated rooms would often have fireplaces to supplement the heat. In addition, their flues helped hot air through the room from the registers.
By mid-century, however, central heating was still rather expensive.

Steam heat began to be used in America mainly after 1850. It was expensive to install, so it was mostly used by the well to do. Hot water heat began to be used late in the 19th c and used radiators virtually identical to the steam ones. There were several electric heaters patented in the 1850’s, but they were impractical and too expensive.

Lighting
Early Victorians relied mainly on oil lamps or candles, however, by 1816 gas lighting was common in London. By 1823 53 British cities had gas companies. By the late 1840’s it was available even in some villages. In 1862 London alone was consuming as much gas as the whole of Germany. In the US, by 1855 there were 297 companies selling gas to more than a quarter-million customers.

As much as the population embraced the brightness of gas lights, they also had a bad side. The gas depleted the air, it was dirty, smelly, and destroyed objects that the product came into contact with. Pictures began being hung with cords instead of wires because the gas corroded the wires very quickly. The heights of ceilings rose because the smoke from gas lights and the sulfurous fumes tarnished metal and discolored paint. The aspidistra became the exceedingly popular plant of the Victorians because it was one of the few plants that could survive the gas laden atmosphere. The gas could visibly weaken cotton fibers within one year of manufacture. For this reason many shops began to put the lights that illuminated
their windows on the outside.

In some public places gas was a mixed blessing. Going to the theater often gave people headaches because of oxygen depletion. It also raised the temperature. It could reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit at the seats in the top balcony.(38 degrees Celsius). Theaters began to turn to electric lighting as soon as it became available.

Many homeowners limited the placement of their gas lights to places that they found difficult to do without it, hallways (because drafts would blow out candles and lamps), nurseries (because of the danger of lamps and candles being knocked over by children), kitchens (simply because of the greater need for bright light) and sometimes bedrooms, so that a lamp could be lit to find a match in order to
light a lamp or candle.

Gas quickly dropped in price. By 1880 it was cheaper than candles. For this reason, many of the grander homes would be lit only by candles. Wealthy homeowners wanted to show that they could afford it. However, when electricity arrived on the scene, it was so expensive that the wealthy switched to it immediately.

In all, Victorian households used a mixture of lighting methods. There was oil, which
was rather expensive and could be dangerous. Kerosene, which was distilled from coal. It had a low flash point and sometimes the whole lamp could explode. By the 1860’s however, this was not as much of a problem, due to advances in technology. There were sperm oil lamps, but they were too dangerous to move around. Paraffin was a new product, but it was smelly. Also, insurance companies required higher premiums if you used it. As for gas… there were wall sconce jets and gasoliers (ceiling lights). Neither of these did a good job of illumination for reading or sewing, etc. so for these tasks people employed oil lamps which could be carried to the table or gas lamps which were connected to the gas supply by long rubber tubes.

Improvements in glass production which enabled the making of large plate-glass windows together with the new gas lighting made a big difference in shopping. The windows would be illuminated all evening. There was a downside to evening shopping, though. One man in desperate need of a suit, found what he thought was a nice gray one with a subtle lighter striping, just the thing. However, the next morning he discovered to his horror that the suit was a bright green with garish yellow stripes.

The use of gas lights continued into the 20th c., however, until electric light was available everywhere. During the latter part of the Victorian era houses often had a mixture of oil, gas and even some electric lights.

What was considered at the time to be terribly bright, dazzlingly white, bright as day or an artificial sun, to us would seem quite dim.
When light bulbs were introduced in the 1890’s they were about 25 watts, the equivalent to the light of one gas jet.
The light from a modern 60 watt light bulb is roughly equivalent to the light from 74 candles. A 15 watt bulb equals roughly 9 candles.

THE VICTORIAN BEDROOM

Generally young children slept in the same room as their parents.
This could go on till the age of 10 or 11 in some cases. Some upper middle and upper class married couples had separate bedrooms. This was the genteel thing to do, if there was not enough room, then the husband may have had his own dressing room, even if it meant he had to use the closet under the stairs. The mode of sleeping apart never gained wide usage in America. Brothers and sisters shared bedrooms until it was decided that they were too old to properly do so.

The prevailing Victorian ideal was a single use for each room. In earlier years, rooms were multifunctional. Beds could be found in just about any room in a house, and you could entertain a guest in your bedroom.
In the book “He Knew He Was Right” the narrator said “It was one of the theories of her life that different rooms should be used only for the purposes for which they were intended. She never allowed pens and ink up into the bed-rooms, and had she ever heard that any guest in her house was reading in bed, she would have made an instant personal attack upon that guest.” A bit extreme, but it well illustrates the idea.

Furniture that was no longer good enough for the formal rooms downstairs made its way into the bedrooms. A woman described her room in the 1850’s and 1860’s, especially the carpet “ a threadbare monstrosity, with great sprawling green leaves and red blotches.” ( red and green were done to death in the first half of the Victorian period) The carpet had started in the drawing room, and when it got old, was cut and moved to the bedroom. The same woman described what happened to the dining room carpet. After 20 years it was cut and moved to the children’s school room. When it got too old for that, it got demoted to the girl’s bedroom. After that it might get recut and placed in a servants room, and finally be cut again and put in the kitchen. All this before vacuum cleaners. Imagine how dirty it was. The only cleaning in 40 years was the sweep of a broom or an occasional beating.

Bedroom furniture started showing up around the middle of the century. This was when some care started to be given to the décor in these rooms. A bedroom might contain a central table, a wardrobe, a toilet table, chairs, a small bookcase and a chiffonier, which in England was a small, low cupboard with a sideboard top. (In America the name chiffonier applies to a chest of drawers ).The nightstand did not yet exist.
The bed might be four postered, with curtains. There would also be a wash-stand, a tall mirror and maybe a couch or chaise lounge. If you could not afford a wardrobe, books showed you how to devise a closet in the space next to the chimney, or in a corner, with a curtain across it. Clothes were often stored in boxes and trays. Closets did exist in some homes even in the 1700’s, but there were more that had none than does that did. In the mid 1800’s clothes closets were usually about 14 to 18 inches deep. Clothes were hung from pegs or folded. Hangers were not in general use till the 20th century. They were initially called ‘shoulders’. A small house and yards and yards of dress fabric meant that they were forever looking for places to store things. Books were constantly showing how to make benches and ottomans with hidden storage areas. Even coats were folded and put into cupboards.


Toilet ware came in a wide range of cost and varieties. A typical washstand had towel rails on both sides and sometimes a tile backsplash.If there was no backsplash, a piece of cloth would be hung on the wall behind the stand to protect the wall from splashes. There would be a basin, a jug, soap dish, water bottle and glass, a sponge-dish, a toothbrush dish, and a nail brush dish. A lidded chamber pot often matched the above items. A hip bath might also be in the bedroom. They did not have bedside tables. Nurses who came to care for a sick person were to bring a table to set by the bed for the medicines.

During the second half of the century the Victorians started
learning how diseases were transmitted and became obsessed with the subject of hygiene. Bed curtains started coming down, or at least were made much lighter. Not everyone agreed on the subject of bed curtains. Some declared them unhealthy, others, as late as 1869 felt that the drafts were more dangerous than the dirty bed hangings.

Gas lights were not used upstairs as a rule. They used too much oxygen, one could get asphyxiated. Candles were used instead. In the 1890’s a glorious new invention was advertised. It was luminous paint and people started putting it everywhere, so they could get around and find the blasted matches to light a candle.

Apart from the kitchen the most worrisome area to be bug infested was the bed. The best mattresses were filled with horsehair, next step down was cow’s hair, then wool. A straw mattress was often put down under a hair one to protect it from the iron bedstead. Chain-spring mattresses were available in the second half of the century, but they were
expensive, and they still needed a hair mattress over them. A square of sheeting was often tied over the springs to prevent them from chewing up the mattress, which was then covered in sheeting to protect it from soot and dirt. If the bed had no springs, a feather bed could be added on top of the mattress. These were expensive and hard to maintain. An under blanket was usually put over the hair mattress.

All this needed to be turned and shaken every day, because the fibers tended to mat and clump. Your linens would consist of an under sheet tucked into the lowest mattress to protect it from soot, a bottom sheet, a top sheet, blanket (in winter 3-4 of them), a bolster, and pillows. They would be covered in Holland sheeting then with pillowcases. One good housekeeping writer recommended that blankets be washed every other summer, and sheets once a month, unless 2 people shared the bed, then wash every 2 weeks.

Not all sheets were washed at once. The bottom sheet would be taken off and replaced with the top sheet and a clean top sheet put on. The main bedding cleaning was twice a year, spring and fall. The mattresses and pillows would be taken out and aired and every few years taken completely apart, washed, and feathers sifted to get rid of dust. This kind of work could only be accomplished if you had enough room and help. Many could not manage it.

A good housewife was expected to check the bedding for fleas and vermin every week. If you found them it meant a major war had to be waged. The bed would have to be taken apart and the pieces washed or soaked with chloride of lime and water. The room had to thoroughly cleaned and
disinfected. All cracks had to be repaired and sealed. If the infestation was out of control the bed would be put in an empty room which was sealed airtight and then sulfur was burned to disinfect the bed and surrounding area.
People mistrusted laundries because they weren’t sure of what might be in their things when they were returned.
They felt the same way about buying used furniture.

GREEK REVIVAL,& 19th c heating, plumbing, etc.

GREEK REVIVAL
From…
A HOME FOR EVERYMAN,
by Joyce K. Bibber

The Greek Revival style remained popular in Maine for over 100 years. Although this book was written about homes in Maine, must of it is applicable to Greek Revival or other Victorian era homes throughout the United States.

GREEK REVIVAL
Floors during the first half of 19th c. were usually of soft wood boards of medium width, not very narrow, nor very wide. Wooden floors were not expected to be showy. Sometimes they were painted, but often they had no finish at all. They were covered with carpets or oilcloths whenever possible. Hardwood floors did not become common till the second half of the century. While some could have been used in local
Greek revival homes, it is more likely that any found now would be from a later renovation.

Baseboards were also called washboards or mopboards. They were meant to protect the plaster walls from water used in mopping. In back rooms they might be just plain boards 5-6” wide, but in public rooms they would be wider and topped with molding. The exact height depended on the ceiling height of the room, but a 10” board under a 2”-3” molding would not be uncommon. The molding could be attached to the baseboard
itself, or separate. Sometimes the molding was so wide, even in some smaller homes, that it went up to the window and could serve as the apron under the window sills.
Some Greek revival rooms had chair rail, though most in Maine did not.


Cornices were generally no longer made of wood, but of molded plaster when they were used. They had become no longer necessary. It is unknown if the new wallpaper borders or the better quality of the plastering contributed to it’s no longer being used in many cases. The cornice, when used, was often applied to the ceiling rather than the tops of the walls. Before the Greek revival it was not often seen except in grander homes.

Greek revival homes generally had white exteriors. Interior woodwork was also often painted white or off white. Even Andrew Jackson Downing, who despised the over usage of white felt that a parlor in a townhouse could have white woodwork with a touch of gilt. From the fact that he stressed that varnished hardwoods or grained finished softwoods to imitate hardwoods should be used ,it can be assumed that during his period woodwork was often painted white. Graining had been around and was often used in the colonial period, and was also used in many Greek revival homes, from the parlor to the kitchen. It all depended on the whim of the homeowner. As a rule, expensive hardwoods were left unpainted, but other woods were painted or decorated in some manner.

A Greek revival house in Yarmouth, Maine retained it’s original parlor paint till recent years. The walls, mantels, doors and windows were white. The window sashes, however, were burgundy. A similar idea has been seen in some old paintings. It is possible that the darker color was used to downplay the muntins and make the window appear larger. A painter’s ad of 1838 offered “imitations of wood or marble” for chimney pieces and doors. Some doors of the period though painted, show graining on the panels.


HEATING

In the 1820’s most American homes were built with fireplaces in nearly every room . The one in the kitchen would be the largest, with often a brick bake oven beside it. By the 1860’s they were replaced by cast iron stoves, the one in the kitchen having an oven inside it. They heated faster, and required less fuel. It was in this era that quick breads like biscuits, began to become more commonly used.
Hot water for laundering might come from a copper boiler which had coils that went through the cook stove, or it might be heated in a pot on the stove. Another method was the use of a “set kettle”. This was a large metal pot set into a brick structure, with it’s own firebox with a door for stoking, and another door for ash removal below that.

SET KETTLE

Although stoves for heating were well known and used in Europe for centuries, they did not become popular in England, and the English colonists did not install them in their homes in America. However, in colonies with large German or Scandinavian settlers they were used.
There were many foundries in Pennsylvania that were producing iron stoves before the revolution.

Ben Franklin was familiar with these stoves, though he preferred an open fire. He invented a compromise which was an iron free standing fireplace which radiated heat from the back while the fire blazed in the front. This was the 1742 Franklin stove. Franklin’s heaters, however, apparently did not catch on in the English colonies any more than did the German stoves. Another Massachusetts born native was Benjamin Thompson, a “Tory” who later was created Count Rumford. He made a lot of improvements to the construction of fireplaces and also published descriptions of a fuel-saving metal roaster that would be set into the brickwork, with an individual firebox. He devised a brick range that was actually a series of boilers each having it’s own firebox under it. A tremendous amount of fuel could be saved by using
this device rather than a then conventional fireplace. It’s possible that the “set kettle” mentioned previously may be a variation of Rumford’s idea. He had meant for his kettles to be used for cooking, making soups, boiling water for the savory or sweet puddings that were common in his era. In Maine these set kettles were used for
heating water for laundry, for the most part. They were built fairly low, so as to be easy to fill or empty by pail. The term set kettle is a fairly recent name, and they may have been just called boilers in their era. There were no instructions in builders books for them, but the term ‘boilers’ was widely used. This suggests that they were widely known and that there was no need to publish instructions on their construction.


Stoves for “kitchen, parlor, shop and cabin” were advertised for sale
in Portland, Maine in 1804. Stoves appealed initially to lower and
middle classes because of the great savings reaped in fuel costs,
and by the fact that they required less care and maintenance than
fireplaces. There were hundreds of design for cast iron cook stoves
in the first decades of the 19th c. Many were of regional design,
unseen in other parts of the country. Ovens could be located behind,
above or to the side of the firebox. Some stoves had more than one
firebox. Some models had “rotary” tops, which brought different pots
to the fire as needed. There were stand alone models and others
designed to fit into the fireplace itself. Some were designed to be
built in specially designated niches.

Even with the great popularity of stoves in kitchens and for home
heating, there were house plans published in the 1850’s that featured
brick ovens and kitchen fireplaces. There was opposition to stoves
from some people. There were those who just liked to see the flames.
Others hated the smell of hot iron. Ben Franklin had written that he
suspected that the bad smell from stoves was due to the fact that
people did not clean up spills from cooking. In any event, it was
thought at the time that bad smells carried disease, so therefore
some believed that iron stoves were disease spreaders.


Some larger homes could have central heating at this time. Steam and
hot water furnaces were in use in America by 1850, but they were
primarily in large buildings because they were still a bit too
troublesome and expensive for the average homeowner. The hot air
furnace was also available, and was apparently the central heating
system used more often in Maine. The first coal furnace in Portland,
Maine was installed around 1833. In that year appeared ads in local
papers that offered to install furnaces “as practiced in New York
and Philadelphia”. The advertiser also said he did all kind of
masonry work, which leads one to conclude that perhaps the system
consisted of stove like units that were set inside brick chambers.
In 1835 a Portland dealer listed the names of 21 customers who
would recommend his work, and there were at least 2 more dealers who
were his competitors. By 1837 houses that had piped hot air were
being offered for sale.


Gas Lighting

Maine lagged behind the rest of the country in the widespread use
of gas. Baltimore had a gas company in 1816. New York and Boston
started theirs in the 1820’s, but they were primarily for street lights.
There were problems with installing gas lights in homes, but they
were resolved by the 1840’s. At that point other gas companies began
to operate across the country. The Portland gas co. was organized
in 1849, and by 1860 gas companies existed in many Maine towns.


Plumbing

During the colonial era and through the Federal period water
continued to be hand carried from wells or springs, but by 1860 more
and more houses were equipped with running water, hot and cold.
Some houses were planned with “bathing rooms” and water closets.
There are indications that some Maine houses had some kind of indoor plumbing before 1820. Houses that were built on land which was lower than a spring could have water piped in by a gravity fed aqueduct. A traveler noted in 1796 that a certain householder had “a cock in his kitchen and in his chamber” to turn on the water.
Hand pumps were for sale, but as yet there has been no proof that
any were installed indoors in the early 19th c. In the 1820’s brick
cellar cisterns were used to store rainwater, which could then be
piped into the kitchen. I’ve seen colonial era house plans for
Philadelphia that showed a large cistern in the cellar.

In this period there were those that thought bathing was healthful,
and those who thought otherwise. Some felt that all-over bathing
could cure practically everything, and others who felt that a warm
bath could be debilitating. ”No prudent person will, we trust, have
recourse to a hot bath without medical advice”.
Portland had 5 public bath houses during the first 5 decades of
the century, but the last one closed by 1850. It may be that by
then bathing at home may have become more common. By the 1840’s
everything from pipes to tubs and shower baths were offered for sale.
In one shower the water sprayed from not only the top, but the sides,
and was described as looking like a book case or wardrobe when closed.
Upright copper water heaters were used in the 1840’s and 50’s, and
were generally heated with pipes that ran through the firebox of the
kitchen stove. Water for showers and baths was still usually carried
by bucket, though some showers had hand operated bellows pumps that
filled a tank on top. I’ve also seen an illustration for a shower
sold in the Philadelphia papers, probably in the 1870’s that showed
a shower with a see-saw type foot pump that the bather tread to pump
water.
Porcelain sinks were offered by Portland dealers in the Greek
revival period, so they could have been installed in homes that
had the needed pipes and other plumbing arrangements.

Andrew Jackson Downing praised the “W.C.” in his 1842 book. He included
it in 3 of the 10 plans in his book, but showed in a separate area
away from the bathroom. Edward Shaw’s plan book showed baths, 2 of
which included a w.c. in the bathroom itself in 1843. On the other
hand, Samuel Sloan’s 1852 house plan book showed bathrooms and w.c.’s
only in the largest homes, and never together. Lafever’s
MODERN BUILDER’S GUIDE (1846) had one bathing room which opened
off the dining room.

LIFE IN A MAINE HAMLET 1894-1904

The following information is from a book
A MAINE HAMLET by Lura Beam
The author related her life as a girl in Maine during the years 1894-1904. Her father was a sea captain and could spend a year or more away from home, so her mother often sent her to stay with her grandparents.
Much of the following could apply to earlier times and other regions of the country also.


4 am breakfast
Oatmeal with heavy cream, fried ham and eggs, fried potatoes, biscuits,strawberry jam.
A typical winter breakfast could be…..oatmeal with cream, eggs, blueberry muffins, applesauce and coffee. Dinner might be…….fried ham, mashed turnips, baked potatoes, tomato chow-chow, apple pie and tea. Supper could be…..fish cakes, cole slaw,
biscuits, ginger cookies, strawberry preserves and tea.
Variations could include….roast or salt pork, salt fish, venison, clams, kippers, chicken (on Sundays) , stuffed baked fish, vegetable stews, baked beans and baked peas. Sweets included mince, apple, pumpkin, squash,custard, berry and lemon pies.; gingerbread, ; chocolate, banana or whipped cream cakes; sugar and molasses doughnuts; hermits with raisins and nuts; jellies and sweet and sour relishes.
Occasionally in winter dinner would be a dish from her grandparent’s childhood from 1830’s & 40’s…Indian corn boiled in milk or cornmeal mush served with cream.
Toast was unusual except in times of sickness. Cornbread and brown bread were made weekly. Oranges, pears, bananas and candy were eaten as evening snacks. Butter was abundant.
Milk would have been plentiful, but the farm children hated it and it was usually given to the hogs and chickens. I had an elderly neighbor who recalled carrying pails of milk home as a child. She hated drinking milk. She didn’t care for the taste or for the flies and other insects that got into it on the walk home.
Lamb roast beef, turkey, sweetbreads and kidneys were not served and veal was unusual. The meat that the farmer brought from town when he could afford it was steak, cut thin, and served well done with brown gravy.
People did not eat a lot of meat. In August they might have a meal of potatoes, assorted vegetables prepared in various ways, pie and lots of hot bread. Fish was abundant because of the closeness of the sea.
In winter the only fresh fruit were apples, but stewed fruits were served at most meals.
Meals were served punctually, using white or red and white checked cloths, silver, glass and heavy white china. Table manners were strictly enforced. Children had no incentive to hurry through dinner, since they had to remain at table til the adults were through.
Only children drank water. Adults in this family drank tea, having aquired a taste for it during the Civil War when coffee was scarce.

The mother would cook 3 meals a day, since the family always came home for the noon meal. She would bake hot breads 2 or 3 times a day, cookies, cakes and pies every other day.
Please note that the kind of cakes we are accustomed to today, layer cakes with frosting, were not often baked. Most cakes then were more in the line of coffee or fruitcakes, or plain cakes topped or filled with fruits or preserves or custards or whipped cream.

Mother peeled vegetables and stewed sauces daily. In cold weather she fried doughnuts, sugar, molasses or cinnamon, -weekly. Most of her cookware was of iron. In summer she went down to the cellar several times a day to get food. The rest of the year it was stored in various cool portions of the house.

How well you ate in winter depended on how skilled the housewife was at canning, preserving, drying, pickling, and jelly making. Butter and eggs had to be prepared and stored away for winter, as cows went dry and hens stopped laying. Butter was made twice a week in summer. Soft soap and yeast were made at intervals.Dyeing of cloth was a part of remaking clothing into new ones, quilts and other household furnishings.

Washing and ironing was heavy tedious work. Blankets, rugs and quilts had to be washed by hand, clothes were covered in frills that were difficult to iron. The irons were really made of iron and heated on the stove, several had to be kept going at once. The ideal was to have the washing on the line by 8 am.

At this time many women still made all the families’ clothes, sheets and pillowcases.
It was during the winter that they did much of their sewing and knitting. The younger wives of this era didn’t care as much for a lot of the home made household contrivances. They tended to primarily sew mainly their children’s clothes or just the mending.

Herbs were gathered and prepared not just for cooking, but to be used as medicines. The housewife had to know what cured which symptoms. There were herbs that were injested,
and others that were used in poultices or flannel bags, or ointments, etc.

Families were getting smaller, and since there was no longer an older child to care for each younger one, the mother took on more child care herself.. She would teach her children to sing, memorize poetry, she’d build the parlor fire so the child could practice his or her organ or piano lessons.

Free time between seasons was spent “clearing up” .The lady of the house would clean out the house room by room and “get at the wood chamber” .
The man would spend time clearing rocks out of fields.

In summer dust in the roads could be 8” deep, spring mud in spots could be knee deep.
* * * * *
The houses ….., parlor, often a sitting room, dining room, kitchen, 3 or 4 bedrooms, un unfinished attic and woodshed, sometimes a summer kitchen. Barn, sheds,wagon houses, privy, poultry houses were all attached to the house.

Furnishings were abundant and a mixture of old and new.
A brand new upholstered chair would sit side by side with an old pine settle
or chest.
The average home had a pump in the house or dooryard. A rain barrel stood by the back door of each house. Each wash day water would be dipped out of it, carried to the stove to heat, then carried to the washtubs. In this village of 200 odd people there were about six houses that had no drinking water except that which was brought from the spring. These families would keep the tea kettle and stove tanks full and hold in reserve 2 -12 quart pails.
The author’s grandparents had a well for a while, but it caved in and after that the grandfather would bring water to the house up the hill from a spring. Rainwater was saved and used for washing.
The head of the family provided wood for his home.He either owned wood lots and cut on his own land, or traded labor to neighbors for the privilege of cutting on theirs. The stoves used an enormous amount of wood. The ones in the kitchen and sitting room would burn all day in winter. Those in parlor and bedrooms would burn at intervals, and
one in the cellar would be fired up in the coldest weather.There would be a wood bin the size of a trunk by each stove, and it had to be filled each morning and evening.. The stack of wood piled in the woodshed for winter could be as large as a typical ranch style house of today.

Hand made rugs or storebought carpets covered the floor.Rugs would often be laid down over the latter. Kitchens often had a large braided rug in the winter.
Sofas popularly had silk or velvet patchwork pillows.The chairs, plush or cane, had crocheted tidies with ribbons drawn through them. Surfaces of tables, etc. ,were covered with vases, shells, dried grasses, pottery, stereopticons, albums, books and pictures.
If walls had pictures they would be hung in profusion.

Lura Beam’s grandparents’ house contained….
SITTING ROOM
Rockers, table with cloth,sofa, Franklin stove, a hanging bookcase, seashells, religious motif pictures, rag rugs, and a hand drawn oilcloth rug.
PARLOR
Gray carpet, hooked rugs in flower and geometric designs, walnut and haircloth furniture, lace curtains, an organ, marble-topped tables, Victorian lamps, a mirror set between 2 windows, and sea grasses in silvered glass vases.
UPSTAIRS BEDROOMS
Low slanting ceilings, white walls, double size white beds, rag carpets, white curtains and counterpanes, a bureau, a commode, and several chairs. Parents and guests would have feather beds, children straw tick mattresses.
DOWNSTAIRS MASTER BEDROOM
Maple fourposter, bureau and chiffonier (1850 period )
There were stoves in all the rooms.
KITCHEN
Faced east, painted white. All of the rooms in this house were painted white.
Windsor chairs, a hard sofa covered in chintz, a clock, a huge woodbox and stove, an iron teakettle on at all times.
PANTRY
The size of a two car garage, served as storeroom and food preparation area. Flour and white sugar barrells and a smaller brown sugar firkin were closed off behind a door. Gray stoneware jugs with blue designs held molasses and vinegar under the shelves.Wall cupboards held the best dishes(blue Stafordshire, goblets, pressed glass preserve dishes) and everyday heavy white earthenware. Milk was kept in yellow earthenware dishes
on shelves set aside for milk alone. Cream was held in stoneware crocks for the weekly churning. In summer everything that had to do with milk was moved down to the cellar.
WOODSHED
Was attached to house behind kitchen. Wood piled to ceiling, enough to fill a good sized living room of today. Piles of kindling on the floor.Meal, corn, oats, feed for animals in barrels and chests. Kerosene and tools on shelves. In summer washing was done here. In winter, sausages, head cheese, smoked hams and dried herbs were hung from the ceiling. Root vegetables were stored in the cellar. Above the woodshed was the family storage area for old cradles, outgrown toys, baggage, etc.
GARDEN
Roses, old lilacs, bleeding heart, lad’s love, sweet-William, phlox, petunias, pinks, pansies, ragged-ladies.Syringa, weigela, pink moss-roses, hollyhocks, sweet peas, marigolds, nasturtiums, mignonette, dahlias, tansies.

* * * *

Both sexes were held in line by codes and taboos, which were heavier for women.
She could not go to Town Meeting to vote, and since this was a rough masculine affair, it was felt that she shouldn’t even go there to serve lunch. Within town she could walk for
miles to go berry picking or calling, but if the family had a horse she should never walk to town. That would cast a reflection upon her husband who should be able to keep a horse and drive her. She should not work in the fields, unless there was an emergency weather situation.
A man had to be concerned with his image as a provider. Any noticeable self-indulgence before marriage would get him “talked about”. This would damage his ability to get a good job, and his standing in the community. Any misdeeds of his own combined with shortcomings of his ancestors would never be lived down.

Marriage and children was expected, but the village had enough widows and single folk that people knew that life alone was possible. Single women were admired for the amount
of work they did. They were usually better educated and dressed than the average housewife. Gossip knew why they were single, demands of elderly parents,the limited chances to meet eligible men. The single men in town were said to be “cut on the bias”.
One was a famous walker, one was a tenor and another followed the horse races.

People felt that theirchildren had a better time than previous generations did, with more rights, freedoms, better clothes, and schooling. Their grandmothers had worn “back boards” to keep their figures straight. Their grandfathers slept in icy attics with snow drifting in through the chinks.
Times were changing, as seen by the names they were given. Their grandparents and those before them had English or biblical names, Ruth, Mary, Hannah, Abigail, Keziah; John, William, Ezra, Zephaniah, etc. Newer names were romantic and came from books or flowers, Lily, Blanche, Flora, Ivy, Teresa ; Vernal, Leslie, Percy, Austin, Seymour.

Children were not whipped as they were before, it was always threatened but usually not carried out. Generally a spanking was all they got. The child dreaded hearing Mom say “ I shall tell your father”. Showing off would by punishable by sitting still for a half hour. Destroying clothes or lack of punctuality meant being confined to the yard for several days. A lie sent you up to bed in broad daylight, with only bread and water for supper.

Life was supposed to be full of repressions and inhibitions. Children were repressed because it was felt to be good for them. Occasionally some people were proud of the fact that they had broken a child’s spirit. A girl ground down to total meekness might be admired as being refined.
A lot of the repression was rigorous because it involved safe conduct and caution. Fire and sharp instruments had to be handled on a daily basis. With wood fires going every day, and oil lamps burning several at a time, the village had only 1 fire in 10 years. An oil stove had exploded and caused the fire.

Once they outgrew their baby toys, children were given toys geared to their sex. Boys had stuffed animals when small, then things like wagons, tops , bats and balls. A girl could not have a rocking horse that she had to sit astride. She could have stuffed animals,
but not a toy lion or tiger, they were for boys only. They would both have hoops, sleds, skates and fishing rods and kites.

Boys had few toys, girls had many more. They had dolls, dish sets, toy stoves with cookware, doll furniture with linens to care for, everything a girl needed to learn to fulfill her role in life.

Some girls were never allowed to play with boys. Girls were told they shouldn’t play roughly or climb around. On sleds they had to sit up , no belly whopping. A saying of the day, “whistling girls and crowing hens, always come to some bad end”.

There were 2 school districts in the village, set up so that no child would have to walk more than 4 miles a day. The school year was 20 weeks. One term started in early April and lasted to about July 3rd. The other was from Sep. 1 to Nov. 15th. The only
holiday was Memorial Day.


The men of the family had to be waited on, and must never suffer to be delayed, as everything they were doing was considered important. However, a mother or family that showed a partiality for boys was considered abnormal. It was the norm that boys
and girls received equal clothes, gifts and opportunities.

The entire family worked together, parents, grandparents and children. The old continued to work and took an active part in the life of the community. There was little need for hired help in the village, and the people resisted the idea of being a servant. If the mother
was sick, a widow, spinster or neighbor’s daughter would come over to help. She would live as a member of the household and get @ $2 a week. If the same person went to work in town, she would be careful to be “help” only for an invalid or old couple, and would not take the position unless she dined with the family. Not eating with the family meant that you had dropped in status to “hired girl”.

In winter, after the holidays and the cold weather was established, pleasures came from a break in routine. Recreation for adults was going in to town. A woman went once a week if she felt like it and had the proper clothes. When the sidewalks were icy she wore
“creepers” or spikes on her overshoes. After she had done her shopping she usually had no where else to go and would slowly walk to meet her husband at the post office or sleigh. Many women never went to town at all in winter. A man who had nothing pressing to do might go 2-3 times a week. He might go in to buy the groceries or the newspaper, but mostly he’d prefer to sit in the store and socialize. During the other 9 monthe of the year he had no time for it.

Families used big spyglasses to see what was going on around the neighborhood . A family member might have one trained on the road down the hill and check every team that came along. When the right team was spotted the cook would put on the potatoes for dinner, and guage the serving time. Neighbors had codes. Hanging a red cloth out the
window might mean that a sick person was no better, or a visitor was coming. Some nosy pokes had the glass trained on everything at all times.
On stormy days no one ventured past the barn, nothing went on outside at all, it was dark by four o‘clock .Sleeping, keeping warm and eating were the pleasures of the family then.
In winter people might sleep as long as 9 hous a night. The fires in the stoves would burn down to ashes around midnight. After that they would just lay under the blankets in unheated houses.

LIFE IN LONDON, 1849

The following section doesn't deal with decorating, but rather with life during the Victorian period.
The information in this segment is primarily from a book, "London 1849,a Victorian murder story" by Michael Alpert, Prof. Emeritus of U of Westminster. He was writing a study of an infamous murder of the period, and included a lot of background information

London was foul, noisy and stinking. Its narrow streets squelched with mud and dung….Ladies delicately lifted their skirts to cross the road and gave a coin to the ragged boys employed as crossing-sweepers, who brushed away just some of the dung and dust.

A description of a Manchester slum, which could be as easily applied to London, from novelist Mrs.Gaskell’s description in MARY BARTON, 1848...
“[ The street] was unpaved; and down the middle a gutter forced its way, every now and then forming pools in the holes with which the street abounded. Never was the old Edinburgh cry of ‘Gardez l’eau!’ more necessary than in this street. As they passed, women from their doors tossed household slops of EVERY description into the gutter; they ran into the next pool, which overflowed and stagnated. Heaps of ashes were the stepping stones, on which the passer-by, who cared in the least for cleanliness, took care not to put his foot.”

The ‘slops of EVERY description’ (every was in italics in the original) and the ‘heaps of ashes’ are both euphemisms for excrement.
**************
The time when people ate their evening meal was a marker of their social class. In the 18th c., 5:30 had been the time the upper class dined, but by mid 19th c. this had moved several hours later, to about 7:30. The “middle” middle class dined at 6:00, the lower middle class at 5:30. “Dinner” stayed at noontime for the working class. At night the men didn’t finish their work day til 8:00 or later. They had “tea” around 4:00, and when they got home, they’d have supper which could come as late as 11:00.

For most families the most important expenditure was food, and bread was the largest item in the weekly food bill.
The price of tea was kept high til 1833 because of the East India Company’s monopoly of the tea trade. Taxes on tea were also high, so in the 1840’s tea consumption remained low. Most people drank a very weak and watery brew. In 1853 the duty on tea was reduced and new sources were developing in India and Ceylon, therefore the price of it began to drop and consumption began to rise.
Milk wasn’t drunk very much, there was no way to keep it fresh and prices were high until the development of a large rail system which enabled farmers to ship large amounts of fresh milk to the city on a daily basis. People used to put a great deal of sugar in their tea, as sugar prices had dropped a great deal. A laborer’s family would consume a pound of sugar every week. A middle class family that was able to afford a servant and had 2 or 3 children would consume about 4 ½ pounds of suger a week, almost a pound per person.

The poor had few cooking facilities, barely any pots, dishes, etc. Many had no hearth to cook upon and no utensils at all. They got food whenever they could afford it. Many ate from shops and stalls, the fast food of the day.
The wife of a laborer who was making 15 shillings a week, if she was economical could buy for her husband, herself and their 3 children:
5 4lb loaves of bread
5 pounds of meat
7 pints of porter (beer)
40 pounds of potatoes
3 ounces of tea
1 pound of sugar
1 pound of butter
56 pounds of coal
The tiny bit that was left went for rent for their room, soap and candles. There was nothing left for clothing, shoes, etc.
A better paid workman could have meat every day. He could add cheese and bacon to his diet, unless he was in the building trades and it was winter and he was off work. Then meat would vanish from the table and be replaced by bread and potatoes.
At the bottom of the heap were those who lived on potatoes alone.
Food and drink was far from pure or fresh. Unscrupulous food purveyors adulterated their foods with sawdust, brick dust, chalk,alum, ashes, and powdered bones. They added toxic ingredients to beer to make it seem fresher or more flavorful. Gin could contain sulphuric acid and arsenic. Foods were colored with copper or red lead.
There were few hotel dining rooms open to the public around 1849. The word “restaurant” was still considered a foreign word and most likely pronounced in the French manner.
Of eateries, at the bottom were the “greasy spoon” places frequented by working men. Men who wore suits to work ate in “dining rooms’ at partitioned off tables, in booths. At a higher leve were unmarried men and retired officers who could dine at their “club” where they could eat cheaply and well.
In most places food wasn’t very good and service was generally quite poor, but people didn’t dare complain. Many people depended on credit to get by, and couldn’t afford to antagonize their local shopkeepers.
It was unusual for a lady to dine out alone. It wasn’t til later in the century when department stores started offering refreshment rooms and J.Lyons and the A.B.C. which provided lunches for the new class of female typists and office workers that ladies began to eat out.
*********************
Almost all sales people, or assistants, in shops were men. Prices were not listed. In the smarter shops bargaining was not allowed. You were not permitted to inspect goods at your leisure. Even in America, you'd tell the assistant what you wished to purchase and he would bring it out for you to see. It's been remarked that the London shop assistants behaved rather as if they were doing you a great favor by showing you a pair of gloves or some lace cuffs and then accepting your payment for same.
The wealthy had their clothes made for them. When they tired of them, they'd hand them down to their servants who would then wear them or sell them.The clothes continued down the line til eventually they arrived, in tatters on the backs of the poorest of the poor.It would not be unusual to see a barefoot slum dweller wearing layers of remnants of silk ballgowns.
By the 1840's women were wearing wider skirts than they did in the Regency period, however the crinoline was not yet in use.Women wore layers of petticoats to fill out the skirts to the required shape. A respecable woman would never be seen without stays or corsets. It's said that the undergarments known as drawers were invented when women started wearing hoop skirts, because on occasion a gust of wind could come up and blow women over and their skirts in the air, however they were in use before the advent of the hoopskirt. No lady went out without her bonnet. One of the reasons for this was that the poke bonnet hid her face, so that it could be seen only face-on, therefore making her less apt to receive unwanted attention from strange men. This seems to have been quite a danger in those days. Prostitutes wandered the streets of even the nicest shopping areas, waiting for customers. There were men who would annoy even respectable young women to solicit sex. The Pantheon, an arcaded bazaar of fashionable shops, used female shop assistants, unusual for the time. These young women had to leard how to handle the bolder men who made unseemly suggestions to them. "Beadles", the security cops of the time were stationed at both entrances of the arcade to keep the undesireable elements out.
Men by the 1840's had begun wearing dark colored, somber clothing. This was in part due to the soot filled air which dirtied everything. Policemen, stationmasters, other men in authority and even cabbies and grocers wore top hats, some of which were made of papier mache. By the way, in the Victorian era there was even papier mache furniture which could be quite expensive.
Wide black neckcloths hid the dirt that accumulated on a white shirt by the end of the week.
If a man could not afford to have his suits made by a tailor, he'd either buy his clothes froma second hand shop, or go to a fairly new inovation, a ready made suit shop.
Elias Moses and Son was the most widely advertised outfitter in London. He offered trousers, vests, jackets and ladies riding habits in many sizes and would alter them to fit. Moses had fixed price tags, which was considered highly vulgar by those who could afford to have their clothes made for them. His shop assistants were trained to be polite to the customers and his store was well lit and nicely decorated. This was quite a change for those who had previously had to shop for clothes in the second hand market. By 1860, Moses claimed that 80% of the population were buying ready made clothes.
In the 1840's facial hair, except for a military man's mustache, was considered to be a sign of mental imbalance, eccentricity or imbecility. Men went clean shaven til the Crimean War of 1854-56 which obliged British military men to grow beards. At this point, facial hair suddenly became fashionable.
In 1849 a French tailor spilled some turpentine on a dirty tablecloth and found that it had removed some oth the stain. Dry cleaning was born and men were no longer obliged to stick to black or near black. Gray and brown began to be worn.

***************
In 1841 the average life expectancy in England and Wales was 41, but in London it was only 37. In 1839 half the burials in London were for children under the age of 10.
London air was foul and sooty and the very soil it stood on was decayed. Old sewers were blocked or broken. They leaked into wells and water systems, and through the walls of cellars of even the wealthiest homes. Where there were no sewers excrement and urine were thrown into the street. Drains, sewers and gutters emptied into the only source of drinking water the pooor had.
Huge numbers of animals were driven down the streets of London to slaughter houses which were often only a few blocks from fashionable shopping areas. Dung, blood, entrails and hides covered with swarming flies were in the streets of the meat markets.
Every year in the 1840's thousands of bodis were buried in London's overcrowded burial grounds. Each layer of bodies took 7 years to decompose, but the rate of dying was greater than the rate of decomposition. In cold weather the clay soil of the London graveyard didn't freeze beacause it was full of the grease of putrefying flesh. Graves weren't filled in til the piled up coffins were within a foot or two of the soil surface. When the gravedigger started digging a new grave he often inadvertedly broke an old coffin with his shovel or pick. Remains of broken coffins were to be seen scattered across the grounds of cemeteries.
Cholera epidemics killed thousand through the years.In the 1850's medical men began realizing that the disease was transmitted through dirty drinking water, and even though steps began to be taken to clean up the sewage disposal system and water sources, it wasn't til 1902 that the problem of a clean affordable water system was solved.
***********************

People rented their homes. A small builder would build a row of homes and number them 1,2,3 etc.,then sell the houses to landlords, who in turn rented them out. A person might pay rent on the same house for 30 years. The writer, Thomas Carlyle and his wife Jane paid rent on their house for 31 years. In consideration for all the improvements they made on the house during this time, their landlord never raised the rent.
A woman had a hard time running a London house in 1849 without help.City kitchens were usually in the basement. If the house had an "area" in front of it, then the kitchen would get at least some light from the below street level windows. A wealthier home would have water piped to upper stories, but many homes with running water only had it in the basement level.
Bathrooms were still rare in 1849.There were public baths and wash houses. In 1849 there were about 300 baths a day taken at the George Street Baths.
Homes would have a privy or "necessary" at the end of the back garden. Excrement fell into a wooden box and wascovered with earth by a hopper or a shovel. "Night-soil men" came at night and emptied the boxes and soil the contents for fertilizer.
In 1849 ranges or "kitcheners" were just coming into use in homes. They were much more fuel efficient than cooking on a hearth, but landlords wouldn't install them without raising the rent, so many continued to make do with a hearth. A kitchen of this sort would often have a roasting spit hanging in it, and a trivet to support several pots. In winter, with the grime and fog a London kitchen would get greasy and grimy. The floor would have been damp.
London houses were heated with coal. The coal man would tip a load of coal, spreading black dust all over housewives clean laundry and washed front steps. Rooms were smoky from coal dust that came down the chimneys in downdrafts. Improperly attached chimney pots would come crashing to the ground in high winds.
Gas lighting was rare in homes before the 1850’s. Many people used whale oil or other oils in their lamps, and perhaps tallow candles in bedrooms. The poorest used rushes dipped in bacon fat for lighting.
*********************
The lower middle class consisted of small manufacturers, shopkeepers, innkeepers, master tailors, clerks, teachers, lower ranks of professional people, railway and government officials, etc. They were “in trade” or were paid for their services, as opposed to those who lived on their inheritance or investments.
Below the middle classes were the working men. The 1844 Factory Act cut the hours that their children were allowed to work down to 6 ½ hours a day, and womens’ to 12. In 1847 another act cut womens’ allowable working hours to 10, but this law was often ignored.

The infamous workhouses were for the poorest. Many were fatherless children, lunatics and impoverished elderly. If a servant lived to old age, and his employer didn’t see fit to care for him or her, they took refuge in the workhouse. Life in even the best and cleanest of them, run by well meaning folk was still harsh.
********************
In 1834, of 130,00 couples who married, 1/3 of the grooms and ½ of the brides could not sign their names on the register. In 1851, the numbers weren’t much better. This didn’t include the many who didn’t bother to get married.

In 1851 a “religious census” was taken on Easter Sunday. The result shocked everyone. ¼ of church goers that day went to Church of England services, ¼ went to churches of other denominations and half didn’t go at all. Evangelism arose to rechristianize English society.
****************
In the 1840’s some families spent 20% of their income on beer and other alcohol, but this was just what was spent on consumption at home.In London an outlet for alcohol could be found, on average, every 100 yards. The pub was a warm and cheerful place when your home was dark and cold. In 1849 annual beer consumption in England and Wales was 19.4 gallons a head, or about 3 pints a week per each man, woman and child. Of course, some drank much more, because the population at the time also included a great many teetotalers.
************************
In 1840 a huge change occurred when the cost of sending a letter dropped . Before that it cost over a shilling to send a letter, a folded single sheet of paper, sealed with was, from London to Edinburgh. If you wanted to put your letter in an envelope, you paid an extra charge., as you did for each extra sheet of paper, but now you cpuld send a letter for a penny Six deliveries of mail came to the door each day, later that rose to 12. Because of the huge new influx of mail, London was divided into 12 postal districts. Before, when a postman came with a letter, he had to stand at the door and await payment. If you didn’t have the money, you didn’t get the letter. In 1849 it was advised that people cut a slit in their front doors, so that the postman could just drop your mail through the slot and be on his way. In 1853 it usually took 5 days for a letter to arrive in London from Spain. To send a letter you went to the post office, though when the penny service started a “bellman” would walk the busy parts of town ringing a bell and holding a bag with a slit in it in which you could post letters. There were no letter boxes in London til 1855.
*******************
The term “police”, as in referring to men who kept the public order, was hardly known in England before the end of the 18th c. The force begun by Sir Robert Peel in 1829 was known dor some time as “the new police”. The very word was unpopular, reminding people of the authoritarian forces in foreign countries. Many suspected Peel’s police to be a standing secret army. It took about 20 years for them to be accepted and valued.

VICTORIAN DECORATING 1870-1890, part I and introduction

By 1870 the first refrigerated railroad cars had appeared. By 1884 they were carrying meat, fish, fruit and vegetables across the continent. The foods were then brought home to the “ice box”, a term coined in 1860.
The departments store was born. Aaron Montgomery Ward started his mail order business in 1872. Post Civil war American industry created surpluses of goods which gave the average consumer a better choice of goods.
By the 1870’s there were fast, reliable, horse drawn trolleys. Cities began to grow outwards. The middle class began to move away from the cities centers to new communities that were set up along the new trolley lines, in the same way as they later moved out along the new commuter railroad lines.
In 1872 Charles Eastlake’s book, “Hints on Household Taste” was printed in America. Eastlake attained a level of influence previously achieved by Andrew Jackson Downing. Other British designers, architects, and critics began to greatly influence American interior design.
Eastlake loathed the ornate and polished furniture that was in use at the time. He urged his readers to purchase simple furniture without excessive ornamentation. Many of his designs had a medieval quality which was praised by William Morris and other British designers of the new Arts and Crafts movement.
In 1876 nearly 10 million Americans, about 25% of the population at the time, traveled to Philadelphia for the Centennial Exposition. There they saw all the newest and latest in technology, art and design. This event wrought great changes in the American home.
In 1879 Edison created a successful, practical lighting system. This too, greatly affected decorating choices made for the home.
And by the 1880’s some American writers on interior decoration began dwelling on the idea of the bathroom being a pleasurable space and not just a necessity.


Charles Eastlake dismissed the previously popular wall treatments, favoring the idea of a 3 foot high wainscoting around the principle rooms.
By using wainscoting, he introduced a new 3 part horizontal wall treatment which remained in style for 2 decades. This consisted of a dado or wainscoting on the bottom, a frieze or cornice on the top and a section called the field in between. He was the one who popularized this treatment and its imitations in all rooms of the house.
The top of the wainscoting was usually 36” to 42” above the floor, but English designer Christopher Dresser suggested that the most pleasing proportion be used for each case. Depending on the proportions of a room wainscoting could be up to 60” high or even be level with the tops of the doors.


In keeping with the new horizontal lines of rooms, pictures began to be hung differently. They were now being placed at eye level, around 5’ 6” high in a single row around the room rather than “skyed”, or placed high up, one above another in a row reaching upward as they were in the past..
IT also started becoming the custom to hang them from hooks and cords from a picture rail just under the frieze, therefore avoiding damage to the wall and making it easier to reposition them. Most seemed to prefer that the cords coordinated to the wall color.

There were many ways to achieve this new 3 part wall. The most expensive way was to use real wooden panels as wainscoting, but most households couldn’t afford this. Even then, this treatment usually only appeared in entry halls and dining rooms.. By the 1880’s, though ready made wainscoting was being offered for sale. It was made of plain vertical boards ¼” to 7/8” thick, glued to a heavy cloth. Sometimes two kinds of wood would be used to give a custom look. This was finished off with a wooden cap which made installation easy.
Another method to achieve the tripartite or three sectioned wall was to attach a molding (chair rail) to the wall about 36” to 42” high and paint or paper above and below it.
One could also achieve the fashionable look with wallpaper that imitated the dado, field and frieze patterns.


Sets of wallpapers for the dado, field and frieze.

Lincrusta was a paper that was used to this effect, and it became very popular in the 1880’s. It was invented by Fred Walton in 1877, who also created linoleum in 1863. Lincrusta was very durable and easy to shape into corners and curves. It was also paintable. These points made it very popular.
Anaglypta was a thick embossed paper product similar to Lincrusta but not as durable. It was patented in England in 1887by Thomas Palmer, manager of the Lincrusta-Walton company. It was suitable for walls, friezes and ceiling decoration and was painted or glazed to suit the homeowner. There were many other heavy embossed papers around at the time too.

By the 1880’s ceilings were commonly 8 to 14 feet high, and being more and more decorated. This remained the fashionable trend for decades. White ceilings were now considered “crude” and “harsh” and they clashed with the fashionable dark wall colors. By the 1880’s white ceilings were to be used only if the rest of the room was predominately white.
Some suggested tinting the ceiling a few shades lighter than the wall, then applying some ornamentation.
One technique was “pencil striping”, in which strips of color were applied to the ceiling or wall in varying widths from 1/8” wide and up, along the cornice. Another painted decorating technique used was stenciling.


Two examples of decorated ceilings done with paint and stencils

Center medallions, cornices and corner moldings were made of wood, plaster or papier mache.
Tin ceilings also provided the desired effects, and they were lighter, cheaper and more durable than plaster. They were shipped from the factory in “lusterless” white and could then be painted in colors to suit the homeowner.
The easiest way to decorate the ceiling was with wallpaper, which is what most people did. Ceiling papers, however, did not use the same patterns that wallpapers did.

No matter what materials were used for the walls and ceilings, the rule was fairly standard----- ceiling the lightest, then the walls, then the darker shade for the dado and the darkest for the woodwork. Critics recommended staining hardwood trim and painting softwood trim to match the overall scheme of the room.
At this point the traditional white paint for woodwork went out of favor as did graining. By 1893 few housepainters had the skill to even do a graining finish without resorting to stencils or special rollers.


1908, an illustration for a set of graining tools.

At this point in time, unless the room was painted in light colors, that woodwork which was to be painted was usually done in vibrant hues. One decorating critic recommended black, maroon, chocolate brown, orange-green, dull Indian red, dark blue or bronze green. There were also suggestions to use several values of one color to paint the woodwork or several different colors altogether. They also proposed using painted, stenciled or wallpaper decorations on door panels, but this later idea was in style for only a short time and was outdated by the late 80’s.


An example of painted door panels, used to illustrate books in 1882 and 1887.

Fashionable colors for the 1870 to 90 period differed greatly from those of the past because of new technology .

VICTORIAN DECORATING 1830-50

A book on homes and decorating from 1844 reveals that some of the most frequently used tints were grey, pea, sea and olive greens and fawn. These were readily mixed from a narrow range of pigments on the job site using colors such as Prussian blue, yellow ochre and burnt umber.
Later ready mixed paints became available but there was still a shortage of colorfast pigments. Bright reds, purples, yellows blues and blue-greens tended to fade quickly. The normal Victorian range included black, white and cream, dark reds, browns and ochres of all shades and a wide variety of greens.
Other early Victorian interior colors til @ 1850 tended to be light and soft. Pearl, white, delicate pinks and lavenders were popular. Later deeper colors and complex patterns came into vogue. Throughout the period the dining room, study and drawing room tended to be more masculine. Bedrooms and parlors tended to be more feminine with softer colors and textures.

For entries and stair halls, cool and sober colors were suggested, such as grey (charcoal & white), stone ( a brownish-grayish mix ), or drab (raw umber mixed with white). These colors could also serve as bases for marbleizing.
Another wall treatment that was popular was to score the plaster while wet to resemble cut stone blocks, then marbleize the wall to look like stone. Wall papers in this pattern were also very popular.
Parlors and drawing rooms should be gay and elegant, advised decorating books and magazines. Green was very popular, with sea green, pea green and olive green being the most widely used. A soft grayish rose color, pearl grey and pale apple green were recommended colors, and it was customary for woodwork and moldings to be painted a darker shade of the wall color for contrast. White and gilt were confined to town house drawing rooms.
There were 2 schools of thought on how to decorate the dining room. One group preferred sober colors, another stronger , contrasting colors. Libraries should have sober, grave colors such as fawn, a light yellowish brown, or other brown or grey shades. Bedrooms, on the whole, should be painted or papered in light colors, but a bright room could be done in crimson, claret or dark green.
New walls had to dry for one year before being painted in oil paints, then the average was 5 coats of paint. Turpentine was added to the final coat to cut down the gloss. Whitewash was usually applied on the walls for the first year, and some people preferred this finish, and kept to it. It was cheaper, and it was matte, or flat. Coloring agents were added, so the term whitewash is a bit misleading. The drawback to it was that it was not durable. It was advised to wash it off before repainting or papering, therefore there is little evidence to show what colors were preferred when using it.

Color choices changed over the years partly because of changes in lighting. Gas lights were brighter than oil or candles, electric lights changed the room once again. Early in the 19th century vivid bright colors were used, since they became very muted in the dim light of evening. Toward the end of the century, paler hues began to be used more often used because of the brighter light cast by gas or electric lamps.
Walls, ceilings and woodwork were painted in 3 separate values of a color. The ceiling would be the lightest, then the walls darker and the woodwork either lighter or darker than the walls. In other words, perhaps pale green on the ceiling, light green on the wall and darker green on the woodwork.

By 1840 thanks to technology, wallpaper had become the popular way to decorate walls. Prior to this only the wealthy had wallpaper, as it was handmade and quite expensive.


Critics disliked this sort of wallpaper pattern in the 2nd quarter of the 19th c. They complained so much about the usage of this style of paper, that it is quite likely it was extremely popular.




Two versions of the same scenic paper produced by the firm of Jean Zuber. The top was "Views of North America" 1834. The second version was named "War of Independence" and issued a few years later.

Most writers of the 1840’s advised that the better rooms of the house be papered, especially the parlor and best bedroom. Wallpaper was applied in the French fashion, papered baseboard to cornice, with a narrow border for decoration. The dominant color in the paper determined the color of the ceiling and woodwork. Critics felt that papers should be architectural ,with columns, friezes, panels,etc.,, or landscapes. Also popular were historical papers with groups of figures or portraits, papers representing the previously mentioned cut stone (ashlar papers), or those imitating fabrics, like damask. Landscape papers were very popular across the country and seen in many hotels. Prices varied by the number of rolls in a set and by the colors used. Monocromatic scenes were much cheaper. If you could afford wallpaper, you could afford scenic paper. They were usually hung above chair rails or over architectural papers, that might imitate a stone balustered wall, etc. Wallpapers with depictions of statues were also popular. They were often hung in the front halls of middle class homes so that they would give the air of a statuary gallery. Another popular paper, especially in bedrooms and parlors was one with small repeating patterns of diamonds or stripes, often with geometric designs, fruits, flowers or ribbons worked into them. Some architectural authorities like Downing also liked flocked or “velvet” papers. They were generally the most expensive and did not wear well. They were on the whole confined only to parlors.
Borders were widely used. They covered mistakes in cutting as well as being decorative. In the 1840’s they were generally narrow, @ 3” wide. The most common were florals, trailing vines, or architectural. Fabric swag designs were also popular.

This is a reproduction of a marbleized style of wallpaper.



This is a version of an ashlar paper.



Two popular styles of wallpaper border from the first half of the 1800's.
Paper was rarely used on the ceiling in this period. Ceilings were generally decorated with a plaster or papier-mache center medalion from which hung a chandelier. The decoration was often based on leaves or a flower. Most critics of the period advised the use of a cornice to separate the walls and ceiling. If there was no cornice, then the wallpaper border would be used alone.
Graining and marbleizing appeared often on doors and woodwork. If you were having the house painted in oil paint, then the added cost for graining was slight. A coat of varnish was added to the decorative finish to protect it. This also made it smooth and therefore easier to dust and wash. Because of this, graining appeared often on doors, window sashes and baseboards, areas that were exposed to the most dirt.
Stencils and tromp loi were also popular.

Most American floors during the first half of the 1800’s were of softwood boards, often laid in random widths, and never stained and varnished. If they were not completely covered with some kind of floor covering, they had to be scrubbed with a stiff brush and sand, and sometimes bleached with lye. Painting floors was something the homeowners could do themselves and was a bit better than leaving them bare. This was a fairly common thing to do.
Floors were often painted in patterns to simulate rugs. The next step up was a painted floor cloth. These could be rather costly, but a homeowner could make their own and save quite a bit of money, and many did. Generally they were placed in hallways and parlors. There was a varnished paper floor covering advertised for sale in the 1820’s, but it’s not known if it ever became popular. Floor tiles came into use by the 1850’s, but on the whole, those that survived tended to be the less expensive solid colored ones. One of the most universally used floor coverings was matting. The coarse ones were made from coconut fiber, straw, and corn husks. Finer ones were made from sheepskin or thick wool. Some households used it to cover woolen carpets during the summer. Others used it as their only floor covering. Still others used it under carpets as padding, or as an edging if the carpet was not wall to wall. It came in @ 3 foot wide strips, which were cut and them seamed together.
Another popular floor covering was drugget. It was used to cover and protect carpets, or used as the sole floor covering or underneath rugs as protection and to cover any unattractive floorboards around the perimeter. It was so popular that it became the generic term for any covering used to protect another carpet, including baize, or heavy linen. They were also used as runners, with decorative borders stiched along their lengths. Some factories produced patterned druggets. They were also painted, and one article proposed that housewives make them from cloth remnants stiched together not unlike a patchwork quilt. Another article had an interesting idea. The author suggested that the home owner cover the large central section of the floor with a drugget, and then lay strips of carpet around the edges of the room, to suggest that there was an expensive carpet covered by the drugget.
There were many kinds of carpeting, but the machine made kind, and therefore the least expensive and most widely available, was a flat-woven carpet that had no pile. The machines of the day were only capable of weaving strips of fabric no wider than 36”. The carpet we use today is therefore known as “broadloom”, and not in wide use at the time. The strips could be used as runners, or cut into doormats, or stiched to what ever width was desired.


Most homeowners of the 1830’s and 40’s did not use elaborate curtains. English and American writers recommended “blinds”. This however, can be confusing to people today, as there were many different kinds of blinds. Shutter-blinds , or folding Venetian blinds, or Venetian shutters, were shutters with louvers that could be opened and closed. Venetian blinds were the wooden slats held together with tapes, that we now generally refer to as blinds. They were in use in America since the mid 18th c. They were often topped with cornices of wood or pierced tin. They were also used outdoors, but installed within frames to prevent them from blowing in the wind. Awnings were also described as blinds. Some were of linen or canvas, others were made of wooden slats.
Wire blinds were a version of the modern insect screen. Woven wire, or wire gauze was stretched on a wooden frame and placed on the window casing. Since the wire could rust, it was proposed that they be decoratively painted with landscapes, etc.


This is an example of a painted window screen
Another, more commonly used method of keeping out insects was the short blind. These were curtains placed over the lower half of open windows to keep people from being able to see into the house. They were hemmed top and bottom and gathered onto brass rods that were affixed to hooks on either side of the window.
Roller blinds were probably the most common window covering of the 19th c. There were spring operated blinds as early as the 1830’s, the ones we use today are spring operated. Much more common, however, were pulley operated blinds, since factory made spring rollers were not produced in America til 1858. Any kind of fabric could be used, and books gave instructions on how to make them. Many were decorated with paintings, the most popular seems to have been landscapes. Some homeowners used paper instead of fabric. “Curtain” papers were in production. Wallpaper was also used.


This is a painted window shade, circa 1840. It has a border around it, though in earlier years it was more customary to have the scene painted from edge to edge. Shades were also painted with floral designs.

Curtains were much simpler in design than the heavy ones generally associated with the Victorian era. A simple piece of fabric, with rings sown to it could be threaded onto a string which was nailed to both sides of a window frame. A frill or valance could be added to cover the rings at the top of the window.



Two examples of simple curtains that were widely used.



Here are two examples of curtains and valances. The one on the right would be identified as "Gothic", the one on the left, "Grecian". The shape of the valance is the only identifying difference.
A Venetian curtain was another popular window curtain. It was similar to today’s roman shade. Swags were also popular. A fully draped window consisted of a cornice, a drapery or valance, and one or more curtains. In the 1840’s a cornice was generally a painted, gilded or stained pole or narrow panel that was screwed to the molding at the top of the window. The drapery or valence hung below this, attached by rings, hooks or tacks, and over the curtains. The curtains were also not as full as those we use today, they used less width of fabric in ratio to the width of the window. Curtains were measured to fall to the floor when looped back. When they were closed, the extra fabric would “puddle” on the floor in order to help keep out drafts. Most curtains were drawn by hand, though there was a pulley system by 1800 called a “French rod” , but it was expensive and even as late as 1845 was not often used. By the way, pinch pleats did not come along til late in the century.
The boxed wood cornice served 2 uses. On one hand it covered the curtain rings or the rope pulleys. On the second hand it also was important in excluding drafts.
In the 19th c. a valance was a piece of fabric that hung in vertical folds from a rod or cornice, very similar to what we think of as a valance today. A drapery was a piece of fabric that was draped over a pole roughly horizontal to the floor. In today’s decorating terms a window scarf or a modern swag or festoon would fall under draperies. Many critics did not care for the draperies, citing them as being expensive, time consuming to make and care for and a depository of dust and vermin. An interesting note in the shift of fabric usage …In 1833 it was recommended that window fabrics should be identical to the color and fabrics used elsewhere in the room, such as upholstery or bed hangings. If there was no other fabric in the room, then they should match the woodwork, red, brown or scarlet with mahogany, for instance, and lighter ones with oak. By 1844 people were reading that window fabrics should only harmonize with other fabrics in the room.


A sketch done in 1841 showing Venetian blinds, folded back interior shutters, valance, sheer glass or undercurtains and draperies.

In England and America the best bedsteads at the time were either four poster, tents, or “French”. Most people, however, slept in simple unadorned beds. Curtaining beds took an enormous amount of fabric. A fully draped four poster used over 50 yards of fabric, a tent bed 43 yards. Hangings for a four poster included a head cloth, a valance, tester (canopy) and side panels which could be drawn at night. There could be more than one valance. Fully draped four posters or French beds would be quite expensive, and therefore not the norm for your average homeowner.



These are the three most popular "best" bedsteads of the 1830's through 1850. They are the "four post bedstead", the "French" bedstead, shown in the center, and the "tent" bedstead on the right. These beds, however were not in wide use in America or Britain. Most people slept in simple uncurtained beds.

VICTORIAN DECORATING 1850-70

From
VICTORIAN INTERIOR DECORATING
by Gail Caskey Winkler-Roger Moss

HISTORIC BACKGROUND

After the Civil War gas and kerosene began to be used much more for lighting.The drawback to gas at the time, though, was that since it was derived from coal, it needed a generating plant and a system of delivery. Because of this it was confined to urban areas, or to wealthy people who could afford their own generating plant.

The use of kerosene grew much more quickly. It became plentiful with the opening of the Pennsylvania oil fields in 1859, and it was portable. Many homes that had gas at the time also used kerosene.

Advances in plumbing in the home were somewhat slower. In 1856 New York City had a population of 629,904 and had 1,361 bathtubs and 10,384 toilets.. American designers encouraged the public to invest in these conveniences . Readers of THE AMERICAN WOMAN’S HOME, in 1869 were told “ water-closets….cost no more than an out-door building, and save from the most disagreeable house-labor.”

People were reading magazines like the one above in great numbers. Due to the fall in postage rates. In 1830 it cost 15 cents to mail an issue of GODEY’S LADY’S BOOK, but by 1852 the postage rate to send an issue had dropped to 1 ½ cents.

In 1840 4/5 of all children did not go past the primary grades in school, and less than ¾ of 1% went to college. There wasn’t much funding for public schools, but this began to change once the states began allowing non property owners the right to vote. The new voters began to see education as an upward path for their children. As a result of all this more and more Americans were reading books, magazines and newspapers.

By mid-century there were a great many magazines and manuals that included tips on home decorating, design and better living. They were full of ads showing all the latest and most modern of furnishings and conveniences. During the first half of the century advertising was comparatively rare. Demand for goods far exceeded supply, but this changed with increased production and distribution of goods.

The average yearly wage during the period from 1860 to 1880 was $590, but there was a wide range in wages. An unskilled laborer might make $1 a day, a foreman $2. Bookeepers made $600-800 a year, an accountant would make $1,300. One historian suggested that “middle class” income ranged from $800 to $5,000 a year in 1860.

Andrew Jackson Downing was the premier designer of homes and gardens at the time. His books were widely bought and referred to by anyone who was building a house or laying out a garden. He greatly influenced other architects and designers of the time in the US.

One of the was Calvert Vaux, who actively encouraged women to become architects. He said that anyone who had the ability to lay out complicated needlework could design a house.

DECORATING THE HOME

By mid-century interior and exterior color preferences were changing. THE ARCHITECT, in 1849 noted in an article that the color of a room could affect the eyes, minds and behaviors of the people within it.

“Cheerfulness and amiability could hardly be compatible with a dark blue ceiling and dingy brown walls, yet it is very common in country houses to see sitting rooms and bed-chambers so colored that they impart a sensation of oppressed solemnity to the feelings,” while, “pure white walls, so common in our city houses,…are painfully distressing to the eye, and must have an injurious effect upon the sight,” in addition to being “cheerless” and “liable to stains”.

The author recommended colors like brownstone, sage,slate,violet, lilac, peach blossom, salmon, bronze green and orange.

Gervase Wheeler, an English architect who had also practiced in America also pleaded against stark white walls. He felt the only appropriate use for white was for painting woodwork, which would show up nicely against a colored wall.

Because of the new shift toward an interest in color, people were referring to books and articles that taught them the new color rules. Some critics were complaining that people were going overboard in bright color decisions and rooms were getting too gaudy.

One of the color rules of the time was “harmony by analogy”. This meant using the colors that were next to each other on the color wheel. Examples of this would be pairing crimson and purple, or yellow and gold, crimson and rich brown, orange and terracotta, etc.

The second way was called “harmony by contrast”, which paired colors that were opposite each other on the color wheel, such as scarlet and blue, black and white, orange and blue, yellow and black, etc. This latter method was the more popular during the 1850-70 period.

An architect in THE AMERICAN COTTAGE BUILDER, in 1854 advised the use of only contrasting colors: crimson and green, red and bluish-green, orange and blue,yellowish green and violet, for example. Red and green was the combination that was soon most often. If you look at old paintings, you'll see it repeated over and over again.

An 1862 article suggested that maybe harmonizing colors be used in bedrooms or small rooms, while contrasting colors be used in drawing rooms and dining rooms.

In the decades past it had been fashionable to use a variety of shades of the same color in a room, but by the 1860’s this was out of style. GODEY’S LADY’S BOOK, in 1859, regretted this fact because this technique was “ not only in good taste, but saves trouble, as the different apartments may then be generally designated as ‘the blue’, the green’, ‘the red room’, instead of ‘my room,’the southwest chamber’, ‘the room your grandmother had last summer’, etc.

The only room that did continue to be often decorated in this way was the bedroom.

****************

By the 1850’s American wallpaper manufacturers were using all the latest technical advances developed by the English. By 1857 only 5% of the wallpaper sold in the US was imported. New chemical dyes began to be used, resulting in brighter colors and more hues, but there were problems. In 1860 GODEY’S LADY’S BOOK warned readers against using apple green wallpapers in bedrooms as it could give off poisonous fumes.

The wallpapers of the 1830’s and 40’s however were still popular sellers. In 1857 GODEY’S listed the most popular pages as, statuary, French scenics and imitations of wood, such as mahogany, oak, chestnut, etc.

Many critics were groaning about the public chose to put on their walls. Most homeowners seemed to prefer papers with bright colors and interesting patterns, flowers and curves, even though critics were trying to steer them toward more subdued effects.

An 1852 issue of GODEY’S offered hints on decorating with wallpapers. Large scale patterns should be saved for large rooms, diagonal trellis patterns and stripes would appear to heighten low rooms,wavy stripes were deemed to be graceful. Small geometric patters would hide soil in high traffic rooms such as sitting rooms, halls and stairs. Papers based on “Elizabethan” designs , like quatrefoils, were declared good. They also recommended marble papers in gray or yellow for hallways. They cut be cut into blocks to resemble stone and then varnished to be made waterproof.

Ten years later, another issue offered tips that show how tastes had changed. Except for dining rooms, where rich darker colors were still generally seen, most rooms had papers printed on lighter backgrounds and with more subtle colors. By 1866 smaller abstract designs in more subdued tones were becoming more popular.

There were several ways of using wallpaper in the 1850-70 period. One could paper the wall from baseboard to cornice, using a fairly narrow border at top and bottom. For most of this period, the border color would contrast with the background color of the wallpaper. A yellow paper, for example, would have a border paper which was done in blue or violet.

Fresco papers, which still remained popular, had ornate columns, fanciful flowers and even landscapes in cartouches. They were often applied to parts of the wall, with the rest of the wall painted or covered in solid color paper.

By mid-century moldings, or paper resembling moldings, were applied to walls to create panels that could be papered or covered in rich fabrics. This was a very popular treatment in the 1850’s, but it had started falling out of favor by the mid 1860’s.

*******************

During this period critics began to recommend the use of actual hardwood wainscoating. Chair rails began to be reintroduced, they had not been used much during the first half of the century. However during this period most people did not have hardwoods or wainscoating. Where wood was used it was still most popularily painted or faux grained.

*************************

Architects still specified softwood floors during this period, often pine laid in planks or tongue and grooved. Hardwood parquet is rarely mentioned.

Painted floors were still popular, and seen often in kitchens,halls and bedrooms. The paint sealed the floor, making it easier to clean. The floors wouldn’t absorb grease or stain. The decorative painting of floors continued for years, especially on the frontier.

There’s a description of floor painting in an 1859 short story printed in GODEY‘S.

“Tomorrow, you must drive down to Dayton, Albert, purchase some pearl-colored paint, enough to put two coats on the floor, and some green, enough for a border. Take a sheet of tin, mark three large leaves in a group upon it, and take it to the tinman. Tell him to cut out the leaves like a stencil letter; you can, by putting it down and painting over it, make a handsome border of green leaves for your carpet.”

*************

Floorcloths were usually referred to as oilcloths. Both American and English products were available, but critics agreed that though the English product was twice as expensive it also wore twice as well. Another important point was that the importers of the English product would cut them to any size, so one cloth could cover the whole floor.

A Philadelphia auction catalogue recorded the contents of a house that were up for sale in 1856. The house had 73 square yards of oilcloth in the parlor and 32 square yards in the dining room.

By the 1850’s floor cloths were most often used in areas that hard hard wear, like hallways and kitchens. Recommended for kitchens were plain, solid colors like dark red, blue, brown, olive or ochre. Oilcloths were more often seen in English kitchens than American ones, but articles recommended using them as they were easier to keep clean and kept the room warmer by covering the cracks in the floorboards where drafts could seep through.

THE AMERICAN WOMAN’S HOME gave directions on how to make your own cheap kitchen oilcloth in 1869. It said to get some cheap canvas cloth and cut it to the size and shape of your kitchen, then have it stretched and nailed to the side of the barn. Brush on a thin coat of paste and when that’s dry, paint it with yellow paint and let it dry for two weeks. If the paint was dry then, add another coat, let dry two weeks more and after that a third coat. Having done that let it hang there and dry for two months and you’ll have a kitchen cloth that will last for years. They said the longer you let it dry before using it the better, better yet would be to give it a final coat of varnish.

***************

The use of tiles for floors increased in the 1850’s to 70’s, and they were recommended for use in hallways, vestibules and conservatories. They were still quite expensive, however, and not widely used til later in the century.

*********************

Grass matting was still in use as a seasonal or year-round floor covering. For seasonal use THE LADY’S HOUSE BOOK suggested , “in the middle and eastern section of America, it is best not to put down the matting, and arrange the rooms for summer, before the middle of June: and it should be taken up and replaced with carpets before the middle of September.”

Matting covered the gaps between floorboards, a common problem at the time, and households that couldn’t afford carpet made to with the matting for less money. It was popular in middle class parlors and bedrooms for many years. The mats were often bound with colorful edging and when in use in parlors would often have a colorful rug placed on top of them in the seating area.

**********

Drugget was also still listed in estate inventories during this time, but it was raely mentioned. It was advised by some that it be used as padding under better carpets, which would be better than the then usual practice of laying carpets over straw, which never remained smooth. It was also recommended that it be used in eating rooms to protect the carpet from crumbs or spilled grease. The use of “crumb cloths” however declined during the second half of the century. Many people also laid a strip of drugget up the middle of a staircase to protect the carpeting.

*******************

Carpet production in America increased by 45% between 1850 and 1860. Prices fell and more and more American homes began to be carpeted. In THE ECONOMIC COTTAGE BUILDER, the author wrote, “ as it is customary in this country to carpet every room in the house, flooring need not be laid with a view to appearance. It is cheap to lay down an undressed floor, covering the joints with slips of brown paper, and then spreading old newspapers, instead of straw, under the carpet.” As carpets became more affordable, the cheaper carpeting used in previous years such as the Venetian began to be relegated to back stairs and passageways.

There were many different kinds of domestic and imported carpets available to the American public at this time, each kind of carpet had a preferable use.

In 1855 GODEY’S described proper floor coverings for various rooms in the house. All this of course, depended on what the homeowner could afford.

For the vestibule or floor of the stair hall , for example, marble or tiles were preferred. If tiles were used they should be covered by runner of velvet, tapestry or Venetian carpet. If the floor was of softwood it should be completely covered by oilcloth. Stairs should have velvet or tapestry carpet with flat stair rods from 1” to 3” wide in brass or silver.

Critics frequently condemned carpets having bright floral patterns, by wich we can gather today that a great many people bought them anyway. Critics preferred they be of more somber shades, or use only 2 colors or perhaps be of Turkish or Persian design. An Axminster carpet displayed at the New York Exposition of 1853-54 was condemned as being too realistic.

****************

The most commonly mentioned window treatment in the years between 1850-70 was the window shutter. Americans tended to want to exclude light from their rooms, a tendency that went back to the 18th century. Foreign visitors would even remark on it. This was partially to keep rooms cooler in the warmer climate of America as opposed to cooler Europe.

By 1850 there were two kinds of useful exterior shutters. Panel shutters were used on ground floor or basement windows to be used as a protection against housebreakers. Second and third story windows were equipped with louvered shutters, the slats of which were either fixed, or later movable. These latter ones were called “Venetian shutter blinds”.

By mid century critics were advocating interior shutters, because the exterior ones were difficult to manuever and not very attractive on the newer styled pointed or arched windows. To keep these shutters out of the way when not in use architects could provide the option of sliding shutters, which slid into a pocket within the wall, or folding shutters that fit into boxes along the interior trim of the window.

The shutters with interior movable louvers were referred to as “pivot blinds” or “Venetian rolling blinds”. Generally the interior shutters would be louvered, but some homeowners preferred solid panel ones.

Outdoor shutters were often painted green, but any color could be seen on the indoor ones. Generally they were painted to match the room’s woodwork or wall. These shutters gradually replaced the hanging Venetian blinds used in the 18th and early 19th centuries.

****

Flying insects were always a problem. It was recommended to homeowners in areas with hot summers to have doorways outfitted with two doors, a solid paneled one and one with slats to admit a current of air. In the South it was even advised that you have double interior doors.

It was advised that windows be fitted with lightweight wooden frames covered with wire, gauze or linen netting to keep insects out of the house. Netting used at windows or over beds were often referred to as “mosquito bars”. It was not an uncommon practice at meal time to have a child, a servant, or a slave if in the antebellum south, wave away flies from the dinner table with fans or feathers.

People still used “short blinds” to cover the lower halves of windows. They were generally made of muslin, with a casing in the top through which was run apiece of string of fabric tape which was tied around two nails at either side of the window frame. GODEY’S LADY’S BOOK advised that blinds made with wire gauze, or netting were a better product and longer lasting. Although these blinds, or as we know them, screens, were known in this period, they were still not in wide use.

****

1859 roller shade. Instructions on how to make this shade were in a popular magazine, Godey's Ladies Book
While architects praised interior wooden shutters, women writers seemed to prefer fabric roller blinds, usually called “window shades”, by the 1850’s They didn’t require constant dusting “with a small brush or turkey wing” and were easier to maintain. Paper shades were preferably for kitchens and bedrooms, fabric ones for other rooms. Homeowners often made their own roller shades using linen or any other fabric they preferred. “Window curtain paper” was advertised as late as 1859.

Commercially manufactured shades were available in America by the 1850’s. In 1858 GODEY’S listed the following colors as the most desireable for shades; buff, stone, pearl, rose and ashes of rose ( a grayish pink). The window shades of this era were decorated with borders and centers instead of the landscapes of the decades before.

A window treatment showing a hand painted wndow shade
*****

The rich, heavy draping of windows that we associate with the Victorian era was not as common as we would think. Decorating critics of the era kept trying to encourage people into using curtains and draperies. Books and magazines devoted much to the subject of correct and fashionable window covererings, but evidence tends to show that most middle class homeowners continued to use simple window dressing.

The following information pertains to the fashionably dressed window, as the critics saw it, and those who were willing to spend the money for it.

By 1850 a fully equipped window might include a shade, a valance or lambrequin, an “under curtain” next to the glass and a pair of heavy curtains. For a pair of windows, it was fashionable to place a large mirror between them, placed on a pier, and a brass or gilded cornice above that matched the flanking windows. Earlier, a mirror above a pier table was generally placed in the same position. The valance known as a lambrequin was an important part of mid-century window design. It could be made of a different fabric than the curtains. They could be adorned with cording, tassels, fringe, etc.

Undercurtains, or “glass curtains” were meant to hang next to the window. They would generally be of lace or muslin, and could be “tamboured” or embroidered. They would be shirred onto a rod and left to hang down, or were looped back during the day. If they were meant to be looped, they would be cut long, so that they would touch the floor when looped, and therefore would puddle when closed at night.

The heavier curtains were hung from tenterhooks behind the cornice or from a pole behind the lambrequin. Iron or brass rings were common, but many preferred rings of gutta-percha, a sort of early plastic, as they didn’t rattle when the curtains were drawn. A pulley system was available for draperies placed upon very high windows.

The available fibers of the time were cotton, wool, linen or flax and silk. Many different fabrics were concocted from these fibers. Silk brocades, damasks, satins, plushes, etc. were used only by the wealthy. Middle class homeowners could have satin that was made of a wool and silk blend called “satin laine”. This fabric was often recommended for parlors, dining rooms and libraries.

Since most homeowners couldn’t afford draperies made of silk there were woolens that were mainly for use in formal rooms and cottons for bedrooms. Chintzes and calicoes were the most popular bedroom choices.

Also critics suggested that in bedrooms the window curtains, bedspreads and upholstered furniture be done in the same fabric. This technique, however was not acceptable for parlors and dining rooms.

A fully draped parlor window, from cornice down to drapery pins could cost hundreds of dollars, and cost more than many of the carpets. A middle class home with an income of $1,000 a year would not be able to afford all that.

GODEY’S LADY’S BOOK described a summer drapery treatment; “the cornice is of a lighter style, the long curtains of delicate French lace embroidery, and the lambrequin….with its heavy garniture of fringe, cords, tassels and gimp” formed the only truly ornate note.

It seems that a similar sort of window treatment appeared in many homes year round., and can be seen in paintings of middle class homes of the period.


*********************
*********************
You can see illustrations of Victorian rooms, and rooms from other periods in my PICASA albums
Also, there are pictures of Victorian rooms in some of the albums on my FLICKR site. Check the Willowbrook Village album. You may also find some in the Strawberry Banke album. For those interested in the early 1800's, there pictures from Sturbridge Village, albums 1. 2 and 3.