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The Great Years of British Design: 1500-1900
From: The Victoria and Albert Museum
| By:
Dinah Winch |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
The British Galleries 1500-1900 of the Victoria and Albert Museum were opened in November 2001. They tell the history of design and art in Britain from the Tudor period to the Victorian era. The V&A was founded in 1852 to stimulate British designers and manufacturers, as well as the wider public, by giving them access to great works of art and examples of the very finest design. Many of the objects on display in the British Galleries are therefore exceptional examples of high design, rather than objects for everyday use.
Below, V&A curator Dinah Winch gives an overview of the period of British design covered in the British Galleries, 1500-1900. Clips from three short videos made for the galleries can be seen below: they demonstrate the techniques of enamelling and bookbinding, and the influence of the furniture designs of Thomas Chippendale. |
 n 1500, Britain as a nation did not exist. England, Wales and Scotland were separate countries, and none of them was considered to be a place of particular artistic importance. It was the great European cities like Venice and Florence, Antwerp and Paris, rather than London or Edinburgh that dominated western art. |
The union of England and Wales occurred in 1536 and in 1707 Scotland was united with England to form the nation of Great Britain. By Queen Victoria's reign, Britain was a centre of manufacturing and artistic creativity. London was rivalled only by Paris as an international centre of art and culture and British artists, designers and makers were admired and copied throughout the world. |
How did this transformation happen? Between 1536 and 1707 England, Wales and Scotland were unified under one parliament in London. In the sixteenth century the economies of these countries were largely rural and the production of goods was relatively small-scale. Over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the expansion of agriculture and industry, the British economy grew and was transformed by new machinery and innovation in manufacturing techniques. This process went hand in hand with improvements in transport and the growth of towns and cities. The population increased dramatically, from no more than 3 million in 1500 to 37 million in 1900. |
Britain was also profoundly influenced by global trade with the outside world. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries its main trading partners were European, but over the centuries there was a gradual increase in commerce with the rest of the world. In 1492 Columbus landed in the Americas and in 1498 Vasco da Gama reached India by sea. The world was transformed for Europeans by these discoveries and new materials, objects and designs had a profound influence on British art and design. Even goods made in Britain were dependent on raw materials such as gold, precious stones, silk and dyestuffs imported from the Americas, Asia and Africa. Britain evolved from a country importing a large proportion of the high design goods it consumed in 1500 to one that by the nineteenth century not only produced most of its own but also exported them. By the 1850s Britain made close to half the manufactured goods that were traded around the world. The search for profit, resources and new markets for goods was the driving force behind the expansion of the British Empire. |
Throughout the period there were also great changes in the structure of British society, particularly with the growth of the middle classes. In 1771 Tobias Smollett in his novel Humphrey Clinker commented disapprovingly on how the trappings of wealth and elegant living that had once been the preserve of the nobility were spreading down through the social ranks. He observed that: |
every trader in any degree of credit, every broker and every attorney, maintains a couple of foot-men, he has his own town-house, and his country house.... His wife and daughters appear in the richest stuffs, bespangled with diamonds. They frequent the court, the opera, the theatre, and the masquerade. They hold assemblies at their own houses; they make sumptuous entertainments. |
This process continued into the nineteenth century. As more people could afford to buy luxury goods, the domestic market expanded and manufacturers made objects for every taste and pocket. Though society remained profoundly unequal, all social classes, except the very poorest, enjoyed access to a wider array of material goods. |
The Book 1500-1600
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| The art of bookbinding. | |
Johann Gutenberg's invention of printing with moveable type (separately cast metal letters) in Germany in the 1450s revolutionised European book production. William Caxton probably learnt the technique in Germany and brought it to his native England, where he opened a workshop in Westminster, London, in 1476. At first the trade remained dependent on foreign supplies of type and illustration woodblocks. Scholarly books in Latin continued to be imported, but official publications, literature and religious texts were printed in English. Books were usually sold unbound, or in simple paper or vellum covers, and the owner then had them bound. Bookbinding was a skilled craft and beautifully finished volumes were a sign of taste and status. |
Thomas Chippendale, entrepreneur
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| Is this a real Chippendale chair? | |
Thomas Chippendale is the best known British furniture designer of the eighteenth century. He came from a Yorkshire family of joiners and cabinet-makers and in his twenties moved to London where he opened a workshop in St Martin's Lane in 1753. The following year he published The Gentleman and Cabinet-maker's Director, a book of furniture designs that became highly influential. Chippendale is most famous for furniture in the Roccoco style, but other designs in the book include Gothic and Chinoiserie elements, which were often combined with Rococo style in the 1750s and 1760s. |
At this time cabinet-makers were taking over from upholsterers in controlling the furnishing of houses. Chippendale not only designed and made furniture but was sometimes commissioned to decorate entire rooms, providing wallpaper and carpets as well as furniture. |
The Director was so popular that a second edition was quickly published in 1755 and a revised edition in 1762. This later edition contained Neo-classical designs, showing the growing influence of the new classicism. The Director was also sold in North America and Europe, ensuring that Chippendale's influence was international, and the designs have continued to be reprinted to this day. |
Developments in the metal trades 1740 -1840
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| Enamelling boxes. | |
New techniques and materials in the metal trades enabled the production of increasing numbers of small decorative goods. Birmingham developed such a reputation for making novelty objects that it was dubbed 'the toyshop of Europe'. These objects were not toys for children, for in the eighteenth century 'toy' simply meant a trinket or small box. |
Little boxes for snuff or sweets were usually made of copper, enamelled in bright colours. Copper had traditionally been made into sheets by laboriously hammering the metal, but now the growing use of steel rollers accelerated production. The best enamel had previously been imported, but in the mid-eighteenth century good quality enamels in fine colours were increasingly being produced in Britain. These improvements in manufacturing techniques made novelty boxes cheaper to produce and therefore available to a wider, less wealthy market. |
Greater middle-class prosperity encouraged demand for these items, and snuffboxes especially were made in great numbers because of the popularity of snuff-taking. Gentility was judged, to some extent, by owning the right items and using them correctly. An elegant snuff box was an essential accessory for a fashionable gentleman |
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