Interior design

Contrary to popular legend, the log cabin was not the earliest shelter of the first English settlers. The turfed-over dugout hut of mud-chinked saplings, not unlike the Indian wickiup with the addition of a clay-daubed wooden chimney at one end, was probably the first home of the settlers in both Jamestown and Plymouth.

These primitive dwellings were speedily replaced by frame structures, copying the traditional small house of southeast England. At first a single room was flanked by a massive chimney (where brick quickly replaced wood and clay), but a second room was soon added on the opposite side of the chimney. The attic, later expanded into an overhanging second story, was reached by narrow winding stairs between the central entranceway and the chimney stack.

This development in New England is well represented by such vestiges as the Capen House, Topsfield, Massachusetts (1683) or the Old Iron Works (ironmaster’s) House, Saugus, Massachusetts (1636). The interior clearly reflects the structure, with its massive exposed oak corner posts, beams, and joists and its huge open fireplace, which served as the cooking and heating centre of the household. Inside walls were usually of undecorated lath and plaster, covering the studs and their clay or brick filling. Windows were small and originally of casement type, with small leaded panes in a wood frame. Small windows with low ceilings conserved heat in the severe winters. Floors of wide riven boards of pine, smoothed and sanded, replaced the beaten clay of the first shelters.

The furniture, with few exceptions, was simple and sparse. It was decorated with simple carved and turned ornament and touches of earth colours.

By the end of the 17th century, homespun textiles were supplemented by imported woven materials in the houses of the more affluent; these were used for curtains, table covers, bed hangings, and seat pads. Richly coloured damasks and velvets, enhanced by the unpainted wood and plaster surfaces, were found in Puritan New England and, probably to a greater extent, among the less austere New York Dutch and the comparatively wealthy tobacco planters of Virginia.

In houses south of New England, brick and stone tended to replace wood as a building material, though there were many smaller timber structures that have largely disappeared. In the Hudson River region, the traditional cottage of the Flemish and Huguenot settlers, long and low with steep pitched roof and extended eaves, became the typical farmhouse. At the same time, the narrow Dutch town house of brick with its stepped gable ends gave New Amsterdam, even after the English occupation, an appearance completely different from that of the English settlements to the north and south.

In the Dutch houses, windows tended to be larger and ceilings higher. The early fireplace, with its tiled border, surmounted with a deep hood, was flush with the wall instead of deeply recessed. Dutch features such as the horizontally divided door, the monumental cupboard, or kas, the built-in bed, and tiling and dishes of delftware gave the early New York interior an individuality that withstood English influence until well into the following century.

Similar national characteristics must have distinguished the early Swedish settlement on the Delaware, where, later in the century, the log cabin of the pioneer may have first appeared. The Swedish contribution was only temporary, for the settlement was absorbed by both the Dutch and the English. The early settlements of the English in east New Jersey were founded by migrants from New England who at first designed typical central-chimney houses but before the end of the century largely abandoned them for the Flemish type of house in the neighbouring Hudson River region. The first settlers in Pennsylvania, arriving in Philadelphia at the end of the century, built the type of town dwelling devised for the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire of 1666.

In Virginia and the South, scant evidence remains of the early 17th-century house. Bacon’s Castle in Surry County, Virginia, with its projecting two-story porch in front and rear stair tower, built in brick about 1665, is all that remains of a colonial version of the small English Jacobean manor, though there must have been several other examples. From surviving evidence and deduction it is believed that panelled walls, carefully designed beamed ceilings, and ornamental plasterwork in colour were employed in larger Virginia houses. Yet, while the milder climate made loftier ceilings and larger rooms possible, it is unlikely that the ordinary early dwelling differed from its Northern contemporary except in its greater use of brick and in placing chimneys at the ends instead of at the centre of the structure.

Among the wealthy the principal articles of furniture were undoubtedly English imports; the more humble settler probably had to make do with articles of the simplest sort, but since few articles survive from this period, little is known about it. Certainly the scattered or rural character of the Southern settlements and their concentration on tobacco planting failed to encourage the early development of skilled crafts found in villages and towns of the Northern communities. By 1720 the design innovations of Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher Wren, as reflected in the Queen Anne style with its strong mingling of Dutch and Flemish elements, had already crossed the Atlantic. Wren’s influence is increasingly evident in the tendency to employ symmetrical design around an accented central feature and, particularly in the interiors, in the greater insistence on classic arrangement in the positions of openings and of panelling. Panelling, usually of pine in the north, was generally painted. Relatively deep and strong tones—red, blue, green, brown, and yellow—were used either singly or in combination, producing an effective background for the walnut furniture of the period.

Additional colour was introduced by more elaborate use of woven and embroidered textiles, in upholstery as well as draperies. Though woven carpets for floor coverings were rare even at midcentury, frequently their effect was achieved by stretched canvas painted with allover repeat patterns.

Throughout the colonies, furniture became more plentiful and varied. Chairs without arms took the place of stools, the cabriole (curved leg) largely replaced the turned leg, and small drop-leaf tables replaced the fixed-frame type. Bedroom furniture became differentiated with the development of the high chest (highboy) and the dressing table (lowboy), and later the case-top desk or secretary became the principal ornament of the living room. Tall mirrors with crested tops replaced the small, square, Jacobean style looking glasses of the 17th century, and portraits and prints came into more general use, sharing the wall space with bracketed candle holders or sconces. Artificial light still came mainly from small wick and grease lamps, but tallow and wax candles held in sconces, in adjustable metal and wood floor stands, or in candlesticks of brass or pewter (and occasionally in brass chandeliers) were used by the wealthier.

Though domestic comfort was improving, north of Virginia the large formal house or mansion remained a rarity until about 1750. In the South the wealth of the slaveholding planter made it possible for him to copy the early Georgian type of manor house in England. Great houses of two or three stories with side dependencies (outbuildings) became numerous. Stratford in Westmoreland County and Westover in Charles City County, Virginia, built about 1735 by the Lee and Byrd families, are early examples of the type. The elaborately panelled rooms of these mansions were furnished according to the latest London fashion. Probably only later in the century were these English pieces mingled with those from the cabinetmakers of Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. Between 1750 and the Revolution this Georgian phase reached its highest development. Though generally smaller and lacking the forecourt and dependencies of the southern mansion, the larger houses of the north, such as the Wentworth house in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, mark perhaps the most distinctive achievements of colonial design and decoration by their apt translations into wood of brick and stone Georgian forms.

In the Middle Atlantic colonies, particularly in Philadelphia (which by 1760 had assumed urban leadership in the colonies), a type of domestic design midway between that of New England and Virginia had developed. There the English Rococo decorative style publicized by Thomas Chippendale received its most competent and original interpretation. This is well seen in Philadelphia interiors such as those of the Powel House (1765) and Mount Pleasant (1762) and in the work of cabinetmakers such as Thomas Affleck and Benjamin Randolph. By this time mahogany, with its fine grain, so receptive to carving and high finish, had largely replaced walnut as the principal cabinet wood. Inspired by this material and the challenge of London design, these Philadelphia craftsmen and their northern contemporaries, particularly John Goddard and Job Townsend of Newport, Rhode Island, brought their art to the highest level of perfection.

Powel HouseRemodeled (1769–71) Georgian room from the Powel House, Philadelphia, 1765–66; preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1918, 18.87.1-.4, www.metmuseum.org

During the third quarter of the 18th century, the panelled interior reached its most elaborate form in the colonies. North of Virginia a fully panelled room was exceptional; wood panelling was reserved for the chimney breast and its flanking recesses or cupboards. In Virginia and the South, full panelling remained the rule. (At colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, surviving houses have been carefully restored and furnished, giving a complete picture of the comfortable panelled rooms dating from the middle decades of the 18th century.) In both North and South, however, the mantel and its overmantel were emphasized as a decorative unit, and the Baroque broken pediment became the usual crowning feature of both overmantel and doorway. Painted woodwork remained popular, but with softer and lighter tones, tending toward white and gray. Plaster wall surfaces were also painted. Block-printed and painted wallpapers were frequently used in the main rooms of these houses, and there are indications that fabric wall hangings were used also.

Plaster ceilings completely concealed the floor beams by the second quarter of the century, and after 1750 these were frequently decorated with ornament in low relief in the French or Rococo manner and hung with many-branched chandeliers of crystal. Floors of hardwood, occasionally parquetry, were more frequently covered with patterned rugs of European or Oriental origin.

During the 18th century imports of printed cottons or chintz in the Indian taste, and silk brocades and damasks, largely replaced the linen and woolen weaves of earlier days. Upholstered furniture, wing chairs and sofas, and elaborate draperies increased still further the richness of the fashionable interior.

As in Europe, the growth of tea and coffee drinking encouraged production of suitable silverware and the import of English and Oriental porcelains, which required corner and wall storage cupboards. Demand was also created for a variety of small movable tables and stands for tea and coffee services.

During this century the German settlers in Pennsylvania added their traditional styles of design to the dominantly English tradition of the colony, the effects being more evident in folk arts than in formal decoration. It was to this style and its development after the Revolution that the first American decorative glass of Henry William Stiegel and Frederick Amelung must be credited, as well as most of the decoration on early American pottery. 19th and early 20th centuries in Europe

Neoclassicism predominated in France till the rise of Napoleon, when to Roman styles were added Egyptian motifs from his Egyptian campaign of 1798. This was known in France as the Empire style, after the First Empire of France (1804–14), and in England as Regency, for the period (1811–20) when George III was too deranged to rule. Furniture design, for the most part light and graceful during the early part of the Neoclassical period in France, had become more consciously luxurious as the Revolution was approached. During the Empire period it became massive, imposing, dark, and pompous. The usual vocabulary of classical ornament is to be found in both Empire and Regency, with some modifications from earlier times. The cabriole leg of the Rococo style became straight, and curves tended to disappear in all furniture. Symmetry of ornament replaced the asymmetrical curves. In England, in the latter part of the 18th century, porcelain became less and less fashionable, and its place was taken by the cream-coloured earthenware (creamware) of Josiah Wedgwood, and by his jasper and basaltes stonewares, all admirably adapted to the new style. Greek vase-shapes and classical ornament were commonly used in the decoration of Wedgwood wares of all kinds. In England, the work of Thomas Hope, a wealthy amateur architect, gained much attention through the publication of his Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (1807). He enlarged and decorated his London home in Duchess Street, Portland Place, and also his country house, Deepdene, in Dorking, Surrey, with somewhat heavy and pedantic design that was at variance with the general trend of the time but influenced later work.

In Germany the solid bulk of the Biedermeier style, with its thick curtains, draperies, antimacassars, and padded upholstery, gave evidence of material prosperity. Many of these features were to become commonplace in Victorian England, but in the meantime, the Regency style was prevalent and contributed many masterpieces of design. Brighton Pavilion (begun 1815) was built by John Nash for the Prince Regent. Much lacquered and bamboo furniture was used, blending with Chinese wallpapers, fanciful treatments of palm trees as columns, and the most extravagant of crystal chandeliers. In general, however, the Regency style strove for elegance without extravagance; innumerable smaller houses were built and decorated with fine wrought-iron balustrades on curving stone staircases, pleasing carved wood or marble mantelpieces of modest sizes, and plain or panelled walls of light colouring, on which the use of wallpaper was becoming more common.

By the latter part of the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution was slowly developing, particularly in England, and machinery was increasingly producing many objects of interior decoration, modifying their form to suit the new methods and reducing the price to make them available to new markets, a situation envisaged by Wedgwood. The less affluent of the middle classes became the largest section of consumers, and manufacture was increasingly directed toward catering to their tastes. In the early years of the 19th century a new concept was beginning to take shape—the notion of eclecticism, which propounded that any style was as good as another. This led to the idea that styles could legitimately be mixed together. In this way Horace Walpole’s nightmare of a garden-seat—Gothic at one end and Chinese at the other—became, in principle, an accomplished fact: one firm, for instance, made a classical urn on a Gothic base.

In the early decades of the 19th century, in addition to the Empire and Regency styles, there was a Greek style of marked simplicity, and an Italian style described as ‘picturesque with Palladian detail’ (a contradiction in terms), as well as an “Elizabethan” style, a “Tudor” style, a “Baronial” style (under the influence of Sir Walter Scott), an “Abbotsford” style (also resulting from Scott’s influence, based on his house of that name), and a revived Gothic style, far removed from Walpole’s modest and amusing essay. The revived Gothic was at first inspired by James Wyatt’s pseudo-cathedral built for the author William Beckford at Fonthill Abbey, with interiors of cathedral-like amplitude and about a 300-foot (90-metre) tower.

This Gothic Revival produced a small number of houses in which the pointed arch together with fan vaulting and crocketed (carved with foliated ornament) or deeply undercut moldings were used with some taste and discretion. Toddington Manor, Gloucestershire (1829), by the architect Charles Barry (who, with A.W.N. Pugin, designed the Houses of Parliament), and Hughenden Manor, the house of British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, exemplify a style used later in the century with greater ostentation and coarseness of detail.

In the principal European countries, interior decoration grew increasingly heavy and elaborate. Ornament came to be considered synonymous with beauty, and pattern covered every possible surface. The products of industrial manufacture were mostly very crude, and their use resulted in loss of refinement; for example, aniline dyes, which are harsh in colour, were first made in 1856 and soon replaced the softer, more harmonious colours. Architects decked out their buildings according to whim in a variety of styles.

In less ambitious schemes of decoration brightly coloured wallpapers with bold patterns were widely used, and the white plaster ceilings were relieved by modelled cornices and often also by some central feature, frequently in a coarsened Rococo design, which made a background for the elaborate light fitting. Rooms became crowded with furniture, and fireplaces were often mounted with elaborate overmantels, fitted with mirror panels and a multitude of shelves and brackets for the display of knickknacks. Both furniture and fittings were draped in dark-coloured plush with heavy fringes. Varnished pitch-pine dadoes, stained-glass windows, and encaustic-tiled floors were also popular.

By the 1830s there was a revival of Rococo, to be seen in the porcelain of the period and the chairs of John Belter of New York, and there was something called the “Louis XIV” style, which that monarch would have found difficulty in recognizing. Throughout this period there was a limited amount of pseudo-Chinese decoration, principally on pottery and porcelain and papier-mâché. After 1853, when Commodore Matthew C. Perry of the U.S. Navy reopened Japan to Western trade and influence, a new kind of Japanese art began to be exported, such as the vases of unprecedented ugliness decorated in Tokyo and called Satsuma, or enormous, grossly over-decorated vases from Seto in Owari (presently Aichi Prefecture), none of which would have found a buyer in the Japanese home-market.

The 19th century was an age of eclecticism. Decorators introduced the custom of having a different style for each room—“Gothic,” “Elizabethan,” or “Old English” for the dining-room; “Queen Anne,” “Chippendale,” or “Louis XVI” for the drawing-room; with pseudo-Elizabethan furniture for the library. Design reached its nadir with the Great Exhibition of 1851, in London, the low-water mark in the history of European taste in interior decoration, from which there was no conceivable direction except upward.

In France, where there was a sounder tradition and Gothic had not been influential for centuries, 19th century taste was not quite so debased as in England. A light and amusing version of Gothic known as the Troubadour style made its appearance in the 1830s, perhaps an international tribute to the contemporary fame of Sir Walter Scott. Rococo was revived as the Pompadour style, and there was a neo-Renaissance period, with furniture designs based on 16th-century Italian work. On the whole, the furniture of the second empire (1852–70) was very acceptable in design, although these pieces were based largely on the 18th century; these styles harmonized well with the contemporaneous music of Jacques Offenbach and the brilliance of the court of Napoleon III.

In England there were a few people who recognized the depths to which taste had fallen. The designer and writer William Morris advocated a return to fine craftsmanship in furniture, textiles, and wallpaper, and started his own firm in 1861. Under the influence of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, artists who advocated a return to medieval principles, his furniture designs were based on actual surviving specimens instead of on Gothic architecture of the most florid periods. Morris’s productions were well-made and well-proportioned, often with painted decoration in the old style. He helped to organize the Arts and Crafts Society with the object of improving design. His influence was limited, however, because, like his contemporaries, he looked backward for inspiration and in doing so refused to accept the possibilities of machine production.

The 1870s and 1880s saw a fashion for reproductions of 18th-century furniture, especially the designs of Chippendale, Hepplewhite, and Sheraton, in which a few minor crudities, of a kind thought to be inseparable from hand-work, were added to machine-production. Much of the “18th century” furniture that decorates today’s interiors is no older than this vogue. A fashion arose in the 1880s for Japanese fans and screens and blue and white porcelain, in conjunction with bamboo and lacquer furniture, a taste to some extent influenced by the paintings of James Whistler.

The influence of Whistler, Morris, and others may be seen in the Art Nouveau style of decoration, which was developed in the 1890s by the Belgian architect and designer Henry van de Velde and the British designer Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo. This was a style in interior decoration which went under various names at the time—Art Nouveau in England, Modern Style in France, the Jugendstil in Germany, and the Stile Liberty in Italy, in reference to the influence of the London firm of Liberty & Co. in promoting the style. Art Nouveau was most reminiscent of Gothic, with overtones of the Japanese art imported during the last quarter of the 19th century. Its ornament is markedly asymmetrical, and principally floral, particular use being made of the lily. It is strongly curvilinear, and there is hardly a straight line to be seen. It often derives its effect from an incongruous juxtaposition of decorative motifs. In furniture, for instance, the asymmetry of Rococo is to be found in its ornament, but in Art Nouveau the whole piece of furniture in some cases is asymmetrical, one side being higher than the other. Although the style created much interest at the Paris Exhibition of 1900, it never became very widely established but was one of several leavening agents in the sphere of design. Nonetheless, its influence extended beyond World War I into the 1920s, when the Art Deco style from Paris became current (see below 20th century). Its influence can also be found in such relatively modern designs as the Barcelona chair of Mies van der Rohe of 1929.

Reaction against overcrowded, fussy interiors gathered strength. Plain interior walls in white or very light colours, natural woods, and simple doors and fireplaces were among the changes introduced by the more advanced designers in an attempt to create an original style suited to the changed circumstances of life in the first part of the 20th century. Late 18th to early 20th centuries in the U.S Classic movement after the Revolution, 1785–1835

Even after the American Revolution, English decorative influence predominated in the United States, in spite of greatly increased contacts with French thought and ideas. Although many leaders like Thomas Jefferson wished to see a complete break with English traditions, the Georgian forms of colonial days persisted in common usage till 1800 or after. By 1785, however, the reaction in Europe against the rather heavy classic style called free Palladianism and its Rococo and Baroque elaborations began to affect design in the United States.

Jefferson, largely under French influence, became the leader of one aspect of the new movement in the South that combined practical planning with a literal classicism based on the direct study of ancient monuments. While Jefferson’s interest in strict classic form was felt particularly in architecture, the decorative phase of the movement, both North and South, was dominated by the freer and more personal interpretation of classic motifs based on the work of the Adam brothers in England, before and during the American Revolution. This was the principal influence in the designs of the Boston architect Charles Bulfinch and his followers and was popularized about 1800 in the builders’ pattern books of William Pain and Asher Benjamin.

The houses of Boston, Salem, and Portsmouth that were built around 1800–10 by or under the influence of Bulfinch and Samuel McIntire, an architect of Salem, are the best examples of the changes wrought by the fine scale and delicate precision of their Adam-inspired designs, producing what has become known as the early Federal style. In the houses of the time, the circle, the ellipse, and the octagon were introduced as occasional variations in the plan, and the flying or freestanding staircase became a characteristic of the entrance hall.

In interior decoration, wood panelling was practically abandoned or was restricted to the area below the chair rail—i.e., the wall molding at the height of the chair back. Decorative emphasis was concentrated on the mantel and overmantel, the doors and window frames, and the cornice, all usually of wood and enriched with delicate repeat ornament (either carved or applied). Rich colour in draperies and upholstery was set off by wall surfaces and decoration in light tones, grayed tints, or white. Block-printed wallpapers with classical motifs were frequently used, as were stencilled decorations in the simpler homes.

In general, geometric forms and the urn, swag, patera, and wreath were employed. The taste for lightness and attenuation verging on dryness was reflected in the furniture. The designs of the English furniture manufacturers George Hepplewhite and Thomas Sheraton, influenced by Louis XVI and Directoire forms, found American versions around the turn of the century in the work of Samuel McIntire of Salem, John Seymour of Boston, Duncan Phyfe of New York, Henry Connelly of Philadelphia, and the cabinet shops of Baltimore and Charleston. At first, light woods and finishes and decorative inlays were preferred, but by 1820 French Empire influence substituted dark reddish mahogany, carved and gilded ornament, and heavy, often ill-proportioned forms considered more in keeping with classic taste.

After 1820 the early Federal style waned, and Jeffersonian classicism was modified by the introduction of Greek and even Egyptian detail, constituting the so-called Greek Revival. Accompanied by furnishings and draperies in the heavier Sheraton-Empire taste, the classic pattern established in the 1820s became the basic style in building and decorative design. Stimulated by the Greek struggle for national independence, it lasted until about 1850 and constituted for the time a national style without parallel in Europe. In its later decorative aspect, however, the Greek Revival became a fashion rather than a style. As such it marks not only the end of the 18th-century Neoclassicism but the beginning of the Romantic movement. The Romantic movement and the battle of the styles, 1835–1925

The ordered symbolism of the Roman classic style had been envisaged by Jefferson as a proper expression of the American national ideal; but by 1835 its restraints had grown tedious. Social and economic changes already initiated by the Industrial Revolution encouraged reaction. This found more or less romantic and emotional expression in a series of style revivals ill-adapted to actual conditions.

The Greek Revival was diluted almost immediately by the antiquarian Romanticism of the “Gothic,” “Tuscan,” and “country cottage” fashions. These offered opportunity to the undercurrent of practical utilitarianism, repressed or thwarted by the classic formula, and also gave a fertile field for the novel or exotic in decorative taste fostered by a wealth-induced appetite for comfort and display. By the middle of the century the last vestiges of order in early Victorian Romanticism had disappeared under a plethora of decorative motifs and objects easily and inexpensively produced by machine. Colour became confusedly drab or brilliant and generally out of character, as a result of the introduction of uncontrolled chemical dyes and the magic of the Jacquard loom, which permitted the weaving of intricate patterns. Increased travel and ease of communications made American styles hardly distinguishable from those of Europe.

This decorative salad of classic and medieval motifs was supplanted by the revival of the 18th-century forms which temporarily triumphed in the “second Rococo” of the 1850s, when rosewood and walnut took the place of mahogany. This was succeeded by fashions based on the 17th century and the later Renaissance, until the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876 brought to America the “craft” medievalism and a new series of more literal style revivals including that of colonial times. These in turn absorbed the exotic Eastern influence of the Aesthetic movement of the later 19th century.

In the first quarter of the 20th century this confusion culminated in antiquarianism for the wealthy and, for most people, period reproductions provided by the wholesale decorator and manufacturer. These 90 years of enormous technical and financial development are too confused and complex for further analysis here. Almost from the beginning, however, a body of criticism and rational experiment was developing both in Europe and America that was to find effective expression in the early 1920s amid the social and economic upheavals following World War I. 20th century

The principle behind a great deal of 20th century interior decoration was first expounded in Chicago in 1896 in a magazine entitled the House Beautiful. This journal opposed both the perpetuation of vulgar display and the excess of ornament that had characterized most of the 19th century. Other American magazines like The Ladies Home Journal soon followed House Beautiful’s lead and published articles on modern decorating. In Europe a group of architects and designers whose thesis was that “form follows function” started the Bauhaus, a school of design founded in 1919 at Weimar, Germany. With such pioneers of modern art and design as Walter Gropius, Paul Klee, László Moholy-Nagy, and others on its staff, it sought to teach the combining of art with craft, and to combat the dehumanizing effect of the machine.

The struggle between the desire to cling to tradition and the necessity of accepting a society based on mechanized industry came into the open between World War I and World War II. The aim of the Bauhaus group was to adapt industrial techniques to meet the needs of a society impoverished spiritually and materially by war. Their work was the culmination of the numerous reform movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; cathartic and analytical in its methods, on one hand it shocked the conservative into immoderate fury and on the other converted its radical adherents into equally uncompromising iconoclasts. Many of the “functionalist” ideas they employed were inspired by the subtle simplicities of the Japanese tradition and by the innovations and writings of the Chicago architect Louis H. Sullivan. Functionalism demanded a complete break with the ornamental motifs of the past and a quickened response to form, proportion, line, and texture. It also aimed at a scientific study of human behaviour, correlating psychological responses to physical stimuli of all kinds. The acceptance of its thesis ran parallel to the growth of interest in abstract art, and, although the uncompromising application of so intellectual a program proved immediately impracticable, its bold challenge to convention resulted in notable changes in interior design.

The style that emerged from the Bauhaus, called the International Style, was felt by many to be lacking in human warmth. Its boxlike forms, its hard and glassy surfaces, its use of metal tubing and plywood, and its lack of colour and of ornament were received with mixed feelings. The French architect Le Corbusier adhered to similar principles. His famous dictum that the house is a machine brought the retort that most people do not like living in machines. Functionalist thinking, however, led to an increasing use of the materials the machine is capable of producing, such as plastics, synthetic fibres, acrylic paints, and so forth, but these materials were still too often used to simulate other materials.

German Functionalism was slow to establish itself in Europe and hardly affected American design until its leaders found refuge in the United States from Nazi oppression. There the movement was brought to public attention in the mid-1930s by the need for new stimuli in the trough of economic depression, by the educational campaigns of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and by the reestablishment of the Bauhaus teachings in the Institute of Design of the Armour Institute (now part of the Illinois Institute of Technology) in Chicago.

In the decade following the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, held at Paris in 1925, progressive Western design was influenced principally by the less radical productions of the French luxury crafts, based on a modified Art Nouveau, and by the Swedish success in combining and developing craft traditions in cooperation with industry. These influences, which developed the Art Deco style, were, however, confined to relatively small and semiprofessional coteries, while the market as a whole continued to concentrate on traditional forms, producing and adapting them at various levels of quality and taste. By 1935 the Functionalist movement, led by the disciples of the Bauhaus program, had gained a substantial following among the younger architects and designers. During World War II, development virtually ceased in most European countries, and subsequently attention turned again to the Scandinavian countries, particularly Sweden, where strict consideration of function led to simple furnishing schemes which relied on natural wood grains, clear colouring, and texture for their effect. Pattern was subdued and, where used, uncomplicated in outline.

Meanwhile, in the United States, during and after World War II, the Functionalists, still with the help of the museums and the more progressive schools and periodicals, had gained the interest of a considerable proportion of both the wealthier members of society and the manufacturers who catered to them.

The most obvious changes resulting from the Functionalist movement were mechanization, redistribution of interior space, and elimination of formal barriers between indoors and outdoors. These developments, most prevalent in the United States but disseminated throughout much of the world, were accompanied by radical changes in decoration and the design and use of furniture and fittings. Equipment for heating and lighting, sanitation, and food preparation, all derived from inventions of the 19th century, were brought to a high degree of mechanized efficiency, taking full advantage of advanced production methods. Since convenience and economy became principal considerations, utility units were fitted into living space instead of being hidden in otherwise unused areas, as in the traditional room arrangement. By insisting on simplicity of form, colour, and texture, they were made to obtrude as little as possible. In particular, the appearance of the kitchen was studied carefully, especially in smaller houses.

Under the influence of electric power, liquid fuels, flexible controls of temperature, ventilation, and lighting, and countless labour-saving devices, the mid-20th-century house began to fulfill Le Corbusier’s dream of an efficient “machine for living.”

Reconsideration and correlation of the space needed in living areas broke down traditional room divisions. The new interior, with its invitation to movement, both actual and implied, was in harmony with the times. Decoration became concerned with function, and, because a living area served more than one purpose, it was frequently irregular in plan and impossible to treat as a unit in the traditional formal manner. Changes of colour, texture, and materials consequently became the chief resources of decorative design, taking the place of ornament. Earlier attempts at the functional mode suffered from too much anxiety over simplicity and unity and thus became monotonous and cold.

The demands of space made it necessary to keep movable pieces of furniture to a minimum and encouraged the use of built-in units. An earlier overemphasis on straight lines and angles was countered by greater use of curved and molded forms in furniture design. As the average house became smaller and more efficient in its use of enclosed space and as the desire for outdoor living grew, there was a tendency to replace at least one of the enclosing walls of both livingroom and bedroom with glass. With a well-arranged plan, this gave each room an everchanging mural and better light, and it also extended the apparent size of the interior. The illusion of bringing the outside indoors gave a feeling of freedom, but it also created practical and psychological problems (see photograph).

Despite the reaction that developed against it, the functional modern movement had served an important purpose. Although it produced no recognizable themes of ornament, it did eliminate the horror vacui that afflicted the Victorians and Elizabethans alike. It cleared the way for a fresh look at the art of interior decoration as a whole, and for the fresh inspiration that came in the 1950s from Scandinavia and Denmark, which retained the human qualities that much of the work of the Bauhaus was felt to lack. At the same time there was a revival of interest in true Japanese art in interior decoration, which has a certain affinity with Scandinavian. In the 1960s patterns began to return—abstract patterns such as those to be found in Op art. Elegant materials, easily washable, became available for upholstery, and easy cleaning made it practical for them to be produced in pastel shades and light colours.

That large numbers of people had found it difficult to live with modern austerity became apparent with the immense growth after World War II of the trade in old furnishings of all kinds, with ever-increasing prices. A parallel vogue resulted in an increase in the manufacture of reproductions of all kinds, especially furniture, made partly by machine and partly by hand, leading to the revival of some of the old handcrafts. Interior design in the East

East Asian motifs of decoration bear no relationship to those of the West, although many of them are familiar from objets d’art and decoration exported during the last five centuries. No such conflict of styles as those to be observed in the West has existed.

The motifs of Eastern art are many and varied, such as the dragon (a ubiquitous and beneficent creature), the so-called Chinese phoenix, or fenghuang, and creatures of all kinds, actual and legendary. Flowers and foliage are part of an elaborate flower-symbolism, and there are many abstract motifs, all of which are part of a complex and rich symbolism, which can usually be interpreted if the key is known. The Chinese language contains many identical words, which have completely different meanings that are identified in speech by intonation; the word fu, for example, can mean either a bat or happiness. Therefore, a decoration of bats symbolizes happiness. This is not true in the Japanese language, but the Japanese have taken over many Chinese motifs, such as the bat (kōmori). The purpose for which a Chinese object decorated with a dragon was originally intended may often be deduced from the number of claws to the foot—five for the emperor, four for princes of the blood, and three for officials. The pine, willow, and bamboo in conjunction are termed the “three friends,” and represent Buddha, Confucius, and Laozi.

Scrolls of painting or calligraphy are characteristic of interior design in the East. They are changed from time to time to give freshness to the decorative scheme and also to emphasize their quality. Similarly, a vase with a single branch of peach blossom or other flowers may be set out with care. Cabinets and storage chests are of great importance and are often made of camphor wood. An important feature in the houses of north China and Korea is the kang, or heated brick platform, on which the family sleeps or sits in the cold northern winter. China

Possessing the oldest Eastern civilization, China has powerfully influenced the others. Forms and motifs of decoration, which began as early as the Shang dynasty (c. 16th century–1046 bce), or even before that in the legendary Xia dynasty, persist throughout Chinese history. Early forms of bronze altar vessels, for example, are found in porcelain in the 18th and 19th centuries, slightly altered in profile but still recognizable.

Materials are very different from those of the West. The Chinese have always been masters of the ceramic art, and their skill spread northward to Korea, northeastward to Japan, and south to the countries of Southeast Asia. Nearly all the more important techniques—majolica excepted—came from China. The Tang dynasty (618–907) was renowned for fine earthenware; the Song dynasty (960–1279) for superb stoneware; and from the Yuan dynasty (1206–1368) onward the Chinese have led the world in the manufacture of porcelain, the secret of which reached Europe only after the porcelain had been imported for several centuries. Bronze was employed for vessels rather than figure sculpture. Originally purely religious in connotation, bronze vessels were given as gifts of emperors to their favoured subjects by the Zhou dynasty (1111–255 bce) and from that time on were commonly employed for secular purposes. During the Tang dynasty, handsome mirrors as well as such useful and decorative things as toilet-boxes were commonly made.

China was known for its silk in the West in ancient Roman times. Fragments of silk were found in Xinjiang dating to the 1st century bce with motifs of design not much different from those of the 20th and 21st centuries. The Chinese have always been noted for superb silk embroideries, which are highly detailed in a manner requiring a multitude of tiny stitches. Painted silks have been produced in large quantities. Velvet weaving, usually in long strips as chair covers, was an art probably learned from the West, but the art of tapestry (kesi) may date to the Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce). Carpet-knotting of the highest quality, no doubt learned from Persia, cannot be proved to date before the 17th century, but it may have started at a much earlier date. Rare carpets are knotted with silk and gold, but those with a woolen pile are of fine quality. Pillar-carpets, woven to encircle pillars, are a distinctively Chinese type. Motifs of decoration are those common to other materials.

Jade (nephrite and jadeite) is carved in China into objects with many different purposes. In early times, like bronze, it was mainly used for religious purposes, but it later came to be employed for a variety of secular objects, principally those intended to furnish the scholar’s table, such as brush-pots, ink-slabs, water-droppers, table-screens, and paper-weights. In the 18th century especially, bowls and covers, handsomely carved and pierced with a variety of motifs and patterns, were made for interior decoration as incense burners. See also Chinese jade.

Lacquer, the solidified sap of a tree (Rhus vernicifera), has been widely employed for a variety of decorative purposes on a foundation of wood or, less often, hempen fabric. Lacquer is employed as a form of paint, or applied in thick layers that can be carved with knives. It is also used to decorate structural timbers in the interior. The finest lacquer came from Japan in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Enameling on metal is an art that the Chinese learned from Europe, but, in the 18th century especially, some very large bronze vessels in a variety of ornamental forms were covered with enamel by utilizing the cloisonné technique. Painted enamels came from Guangdong (Canton) in the 18th century and resemble in style contemporary porcelain enameling from the same place.

Until the mid-20th century, paintings were usually on silk, and most were in the form of scrolls to be hung on the wall. A long and narrow form is customary for scroll paintings. The best of Chinese painting is superb in quality, but criteria of judgment are much different from those applicable to Western art. Style is to a considerable extent affected by calligraphy, and the quality and type of brushstroke play an essential part. Subjects are usually the poetic delineation of landscape, floral and foliate sprays, and, less often, pavilions. Chinese painting is often pervaded by a subtle and gentle humour hardly seen in Western art. Calligraphy plays an important part in the art of the East; scrolls decorated with an admired calligraphy are hung on walls. Calligraphy often plays a part in the decoration of bronzes and porcelain, and inscriptions on paintings are not uncommon.

The East Asian house is usually constructed of wood and tiles. The ridge-tile in China, made of glazed stoneware, is often very handsome. Architecture has never been the principal medium for the expression of the Chinese artistic impulse; for centuries conservatism and respect for tradition were paramount and stylistic innovation practically unknown. Except in urban areas, the basic structure of the Chinese house has remained almost unchanged at least since the Shang dynasty. In all types of buildings the roof is the most important feature, and by the Tang dynasty the characteristic upturned eaves and heavy glazed and coloured tile covering had developed. The roof is chiefly supported by timber posts on stone or bronze bases, and the walls of the building serve merely as screens in brick or timber. Floors are often of beaten earth packed tightly into a timber border. Usually, a family house was composed of a series of buildings or pavilions enclosing a garden courtyard and surrounded by a wall. The courtyard played an immensely important part because of the ever-present ideal that humanity should live in harmony with nature: a small pool with a lotus plant, a tree, and large rocks symbolized the whole natural landscape, and it was on these features that the most care was lavished.

The supporting pillars and brackets of important buildings were carved and painted, many of the designs being similar to those made familiar by Chinese pottery and porcelain. The yellow dragon symbolizes the power of the spirit, the tiger the forces of animal life. Windows were latticed with strips of wood in varying patterns over which translucent white paper was stretched. In addition to the lattice-work patterns, the windows themselves took on great variety of outline, for instance that of a diamond, fan, leaf, or flower. Doorways too were fancifully shaped in the form of the moon, lotus petal, pear, or vase, for structural support was not required from the light panel-type walls. Some walls may have been removable altogether, as they were subsequently in the Japanese house; others were of painted wood, hung with tapestries or paintings on silk and other materials.

A description of a Ming (1368–1644) home of the leisured class mentions ceilings with cloisons (compartments) in yellow reed work, papered walls and pillars, black polished flagstones, and silk hangings. Richly coloured rugs, chair covers, and cushions contrasted with dark furniture, which was arranged according to the strict ideas of asymmetrical balance.

Ming cabinetsPair of rosewood (huanghuali) cabinets, China, late Ming dynasty, c. 17th century; in the Honolulu Academy of Arts.Photograph by pic-a-flik54. Honolulu Academy of Arts, purchase, 1971, (4040.1a, 4040.1b)

Little is known of early Chinese furniture, apart from what may be gathered from paintings and similar sources. Low stools and tables were early in use, and chairs, dressing tables, altar tables, and canopied beds were common by the Xi (Western) Han dynasty (206 bce–25 ce). Designs and materials underwent very little change in the intervening years. Rosewood has always been widely employed, and in the palaces elaborate pieces were encrusted with gold and silver, jade, ivory, and mother-of-pearl. The Chinese interior was more extensively furnished with chairs, tables, couches, beds, and cabinets of cupboards and drawers than was the custom elsewhere in the East. As in Europe, the chair with arms was thought to be a seat of honour. The woods employed are native to the country and were hardly ever exported to the West, though Chinese rosewood is fairly well known in the West because most exported furniture was in this wood. Carved lacquer furniture, like the throne of Qianlong in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, was reserved for the emperor and high officials, and the massive incised lacquer screens, known in the West as Coromandel screens, were occasionally exported. Furniture of bamboo, principally intended for garden use, has hardly survived, but barrel-shaped seats of porcelain for the same purpose are not uncommon. Carved decoration on furniture is nearly always extremely simple in design and limited to some form of interlacing fret.

horseshoe armchairChinese horseshoe armchair, huanghuali (a type of rosewood), Qing dynasty, late 16th–early 17th century; in the Honolulu Academy of Arts.Photograph by airforceJK. Honolulu Academy of Arts, purchase 1973 (4169.1) Japan

Interior decoration in Japan was much influenced by Chinese ideas, especially between the 8th and 12th centuries, but it developed along lighter, more austere and elegant lines. It has altered little since medieval days. The most important differences in modern design are that the matting has been extended to cover the whole of the wooden floor, and sliding doors have replaced single-leaf screens or curtains. Two sides of a Japanese house frequently have no permanent walls, and interior partitions are of paper on a wood frame which admits a soft, diffused light. These partitions are usually moveable, allowing the interior to be rearranged.

The Japanese interior is a carefully thought-out arrangement. Wall decoration hardly exists, and the walls provide a neutral background for the rest. Since the Japanese invariably cover their floors with rice-straw mats and sit on them instead of on chairs, tables are low and are also used as an armrest. Tiers of shelves are common, usually covered with lacquer, and painted decoratively. They occur in a variety of forms, and the asymmetrical quality of Japanese art may be seen in these pieces of furniture, the number and position of the shelves differing on either side, and set at different heights.

In contrast to Western practice, the Japanese do not decorate their rooms with several works of art, but have a special place in the room, a focal point, at which one work of quality is displayed, and this is changed from time to time. Both the Chinese and the Japanese venerate the work of former times, and the Japanese possess the oldest art collection in the world, in the Shōsō Repository at Nara, which was formed in the 9th century ce.

At that time, doors were pivoted in the Chinese manner, and instead of the sliding shōji, windows were made of wooden latticing that pushed outward, as may still be seen in shrines and temples. There was a curtained dais for the most important person and separate mats on the wooden floor for others. Then, as now, there was a connecting corridor outside the rooms. The Seiryo-den, or ordinary residence of the sovereign in the Kyōto Imperial Palace, belonged to this period and was reconstructed in the 19th century on the model of the original. A present-day family could live quite comfortably in its simple suite of rooms with walls and standing screens decorated with pictures in the Chinese classic manner.

Late in the 15th century the interior began to assume its present form as a result of a slow blending of the older court style with the more austere type of house favoured by the military caste, which was much influenced by Zen Buddhist architecture. Toward the end of the 16th century came the rise of the tea masters. These connoisseurs of the “way of tea,” which involves the construction of the tearoom and its garden and correct deportment in them, established hereditary families and schools who remained the aesthetic advisers on most aspects of domestic architecture, interior decoration, and garden planning. They aimed to achieve beauty with frugality, asymmetry, and economy of movement, and much of the simple grace of Japanese interiors is due to them.

In a modern Japanese house built in traditional style, decoration is almost entirely structural, and the residences of all classes are equally neat and free from vulgarity. Their harmony and delicacy derive from an endless variation of detail in a setting that is completely standardized. Ordinary rooms are reckoned in terms of multiples of the floor-mat unit, 6 × 3 feet (1.8 metres × 0.9 metre); the sliding doors 5 feet 8 inches (1.7 metres) high by 3 feet (0.9 metre) wide; the supporting pillars 4–5 inches (10–13 cm) square, set at 6-foot (1.8-metre) intervals; and the ceiling boards 1–1.5 feet (30–45 cm) wide. All woodwork is unpainted and rarely lacquered, but there is great variety in the fusuma, or sliding doors, which divide the rooms and which are covered with paper of many patterns or decorated with paintings or calligraphy. Thus, the whole side of a room may present a landscape either in black and white or in colours, often on a silver or gold background. A change of these fusuma will alter completely the appearance of a room, and their removal will convert two or more rooms into one. All rooms can be used as bedrooms, since the bedding is stored in spacious cupboards. The reception rooms provide more scope for decoration than the others, for one end of the room is occupied by a tokonoma, an alcove with a canopy above it supported by a pillar of fine or uncommon wood, in which is hung the picture or set of pictures that, with the flower arrangement that usually accompanies it, is the only ornament. Both are changed frequently according to the season or mood. Next to the tokonoma, there is often a built-in writing table. Beside this is usually a chigai-dana, an asymmetric arrangement of cupboards and shelves somewhat like a sideboard. Between the top of the fusuma and the ceiling is often a ramma, an openwork frieze carved with patterns or landscapes in wood or bamboo. A framed tablet with a poem or painting on it sometimes may be placed there. Other walls are of plain plaster in subdued shades, mostly of gray or brown. The ceilings are usually of thin boards, slightly overlapping, upheld by bars about an inch (3 cm) square, the whole suspended from the roof or floor beams. In large apartments, as in shrines and temples, the coved and coffered “Chinese ceiling,” with lacquered woodwork and pictures and patterns in the coffers, is sometimes found. Fancy varieties made of bamboo and reeds and plaited wood are not uncommon. Bamboo has many uses in the Japanese house as pillars and window bars and ceiling material, when split and flattened, it may take the place of boards. Windows are of many shapes—round, square, bell-shaped, jar-shaped, gourd-shaped, diamond-shaped, fan-shaped, and purely asymmetric—and make centres of interest in a blank wall.

The furniture in a traditional Japanese house is sparse, perhaps consisting of a cabinet of blackwood or lacquer, a low writing table or a screen, either twofold or sixfold (the latter generally in pairs), decorated with landscapes on a gold or silver background and mounted in brocade. A single-leaf screen sometimes stands in the entrance hall. Among the well-to-do, other valuables such as scroll pictures, charcoal braziers, articles of pottery, spare fusuma, books, and curios are kept in a detached fireproof storehouse and produced only occasionally to ensure a constant variety in the rooms. It is a principle that rooms that are only occasionally occupied may be more showy and fanciful than ordinary living rooms, and these are most often met with in hotels and restaurants and other places of entertainment. Just as much care is taken with the interiors of the bathroom as with the other rooms, and the doors and windows and walls of these are usually of excellent workmanship. India

Words of Indian origin such as calico, chintz, and madras indicate the importance of Indian textiles in the history of Western interior design. Yet the Indians themselves have never been very conscious of this role, their own domestic interiors being of the utmost simplicity, with hardly more than a carpet or a prayer mat to offset stone floors and plain white walls. The impermanence of the materials used for the majority of dwellings may have been a contributory factor. In more palatial buildings, however, and commonly in both Hindu and Buddhist temples, walls were painted, a practice that, according to literary references, may go back to the Maurya period (c. 321–185 bce). Paintings that survive in cave temples of the Gupta period (320–600 ce) usually depict groups of active mythical or human figures and are characterized by their sinuous lines. A late example occurs in the unfinished early 17th-century murals of the Mattancheri palace, in Kochi, Kerala. Inlay of semiprecious stones, carved and bracketed pillars and capitals, and openwork marble panels also adorned the palaces of local rulers. See also South Asian arts: Visual arts.

Reproduction of early 18th-century chintz bedspread and hangings from India; in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London George Savage The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Citation Information

Article Title: Interior design

Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica

Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

Date Published: 17 January 2019

URL: https://www.britannica.com/art/interior-design

Access Date: August 20, 2019

Additional Reading General works

Arnold Friedmann, John F. Pile, and Forrest Wilson, Interior Design: An Introduction to Architectural Interiors (1970), an introduction to the field of interior architecture written for students of design; Sherrill Whiton, Elements of Interior Design and Decoration, 3rd ed. (1963), a scholarly text; Ray and Sarah Faulkner, Inside Today’s Home, 3rd ed. (1968), a thorough and well-illustrated book on the interior design of homes; Diana Rowntree, Interior Design (1964), a brief and personal view of interior design written primarily for British readers; Edgar Kaufman, What Is Modern Interior Design? (1953, reprinted 1969), a very brief but perceptive treatise. A later monograph on home decorating is Mary Gilliat, The Decorating Book (1981), with special photography by Michael Dunne. Special types of interiors

Michael Saphier, Office Planning and Design (1968), a clear overview of the field of business and office interiors; Betty Alswang and Ambur Hiken, The Personal House (1961), a photographic collection of very personal interiors primarily designed by the artist-occupants, rather than professional interior designers. The photographs and comments contained in the following works make them significant sources for the study and understanding of special interiors: William Wilson Atkin and Joan Adler, Interiors Book of Restaurants (1960); Henry End, Interiors Book of Hotels and Motor Hotels (1963); John F. Pile, Interiors Second Book of Offices (1969); Morris Ketchum, Shops and Stores, rev. ed. (1957); George Nelson (ed.), Living Spaces (1952); Mary Gilliatt and Michael Boys, English Style in Interior Decoration (1967). Special subjects

Johannes Itten, Kunst der Farbe (1961; Eng. trans., The Art of Color, 1961); Faber Birren, Color for Interiors, Historical and Modern (1963); Leslie Larson, Lighting and Its Design (1964); John F. Pile (ed.), Drawings of Architectural Interiors (1967); Mario G. Salvadori and Robert Heller, Structure in Architecture (1963), a very readable introduction to structural principles understandable to laymen, but written on a professional level; Mario Dal Fabbro, Modern Furniture, 2nd ed. (1958). Edward Lucie-Smith, The Story of Craft: The Craftsman’s Role in Society (1981), explores the unifying and the distinctive features of craft and fine arts. Historical developments

George Savage, A Concise History of Interior Decoration (1966), is an English-language work that summarizes the history of the subject. Information about the earliest furniture may be found in Hollis S. Baker, Furniture in the Ancient World (1966); and the Natural History (various editions) of Pliny the Elder, which contains much information in the final volumes on the Roman scene. Books about the Middle Ages are not numerous, but the Guide to the Early Christian and Byzantine Antiquities of the British Museum (1921), is a useful work. There are many books dealing with various aspects of the Renaissance, such as Peter and Linda Murray, The Art of the Renaissance (1963); Frida Schottmuller, Furniture and Interior Decoration of the Italian Renaissance (1921); Pierre Du Colombier, Le Style Henri IV–Louis XIII (1941); Germain Bazin, Classique, baroque et rococo (1964; Eng. trans., Baroque and Rococo, 1964); and Victor Tapie, Baroque et classicisme (1957; Eng. trans., The Age of Grandeur, 1960). Pierre Verlet, Le Mobilier royal français (1945; Eng. trans., French Royal Furniture, 1963) and Les Meubles français du XVIII siecle (1956; Eng. trans., French Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1967), are important works by a great authority dealing with 18th-century developments. George Savage, French Decorative Art, 1638–1793 (1969), discusses most of the objects in general use for interior decoration. Fiske Kimball, The Creation of the Rococo (1943), is an important examination of the sources of this style; Terisio Pignatti, Il Rococo (1967; Eng. trans., The Age of Rococo 1967; Eng. trans., The Age of Rococo, 1969), is a scholarly picture book based on an exhibition so titled. Adrien Fauchier-Magnan, Les Petites Cours d’Allemagne au XVIII Siecle (1947; Eng. trans., Small German Courts in the Eighteenth Century, 1958), is valuable for information about the pervasion of French art and culture. The Wallace Collection (London) catalog of Furniture by F.J.B. Watson (1956), and the catalog of Sculpture by James G. Mann (1931), are scholarly works essential to the study of their subject; see also F.J.B. Watson, Louis XVI Furniture (1960).

On English decoration the works of Margaret Jourdain: English Decoration and Furniture of the Early Renaissance (1924), Regency Furniture, 1795–1820 (1934), and The Work of William Kent (1948), are all worth consulting. Percy Macquoid and Ralph Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture from the Middle Ages to the Georgian Period, 2nd ed. rev., 3 vol. (1954), is a scholarly and important work. Thomas A. Strange, English Furniture, Decoration, Woodwork, and Allied Arts (1900; reprinted 1950), reproduces many pages from 18th-century English design books, including Chippendale’s Director; and Hugh Honour, Neo-Classicism (1968), discusses the style in its international implications, as well as dealing with that of the brothers Adam. Susan Lasdun, Victorians at Home (1981), discusses domestic interior in the period from 1820 to 1900.

For the Gothic revival there is no better source than Sir Kenneth Clark, The Gothic Revival (1928, reprinted 1970). J. Mordaunt Crook, William Burges and the High Victorian Dream (1981), is a study of the life of a protagonist of the Gothic revival style in design. Joseph Downs, American Furniture (1952), is a standard work. George Savage, The Dictionary of Antiques (1970), discusses former objects of interior decoration and their style from the Renaissance onwards. Art Nouveau has been the subject of a number of books. Among the best are Mario Amaya, Art nouveau (1966); Marton Battersey, The World of Art Nouveau (1968); and Stephen Tschodi Madsen, Source of Art Nouveau (1956).

There are no works discussing Oriental interior decoration only, and information must, for the most part, be gleaned from books discussing specific types of objects, such as painting, porcelain, furniture, and bronze. By far the best source is Chinese Art, 4 vol. (1960–65), an international symposium by several well-known Orientalists that discusses almost everything of importance to the subject. A useful general survey is Leigh Ashton (ed.), Chinese Art, by several well-known authorities (1935), which summarizes in one volume the salient facts about works in many differing materials. For Japanese art, Marcus B. Huish, Japan and Its Art (1889), is an excellent general work, but few books that can be recommended for the present purpose have been published in English.

On Islāmic art, an excellent work is David Talbot Rice, Islamic Art (1965); a more detailed survey is Maurice S. Dimand, A Handbook of Muhammadan Art, 3rd ed. rev. (1958). A.U. Pope and Phyllis Ackerman, A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present, 14 vol. (1938–67), should be consulted for this aspect. Franz Boas, Primitive Art, new ed. (1955), discusses the principles behind the decoration of a wide variety of art of this kind, with special attention to the North Pacific Coast of North America. Eric Larrabee and Massimo Vignelli, Knoll Design (1981), is a history of modern commercial interior design.