The Dining Room

Author: Charles L. Eastlake Year: 2006 (Intimus reprint; original excerpt 1868) Source type: chapter Raw file: raw/chapters/eastlake-2006-dining-room.md

Reprint note: An excerpt from Charles L. Eastlake's Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery and Other Details (Longmans, Green, and Co, London, 1868; excerpt pp. 63–6), reprinted as "The Dining Room" in Intimus: Interior Design Reader (sic — Intimus: Interior Design Theory Reader), eds. Mark Taylor and Julieanna Preston (John Wiley & Sons, 2006), pp. 101–103, under the editors' headnote. The raw file carries OCR corruptions ("Intumus"; "Juleanna Preston" for Julieanna) and an elision marker "(… p 66)" before the citation block. Pagination below follows the Intimus pages (101–103) shown in the raw file's page markers.

Summary

The earliest voice in the wiki's decorating tradition (1868, eight years before Dresser's Studies in Design excerpt and forty-five before de Wolfe): a barbed design-reform polemic that opens from the titular room but aims at the whole house. Eastlake attacks "the modern upholsterer" for propagating, as "wholesome doctrine to a credulous public," the fallacy "that all conditions of decorative art must necessarily vary with the situation in which that art is employed" — the convention that the dining room must be oaken, the drawing room walnut, each room furnished after a code "best known to himself." He accepts variation grounded in use (dining-room furniture solid because of use; boudoir furniture light because of size) but refuses variation of style with room: "though the shape of a cheffonier may differ from that of a buffet, there can be no reason whatever why the style of design in these respective articles of furniture should vary." The disease is upholsterer-governed convention and cyclical fashion (rosewood → mahogany → walnut, "so the fashion of taste goes on changing from age to age"); its symptom is the "absurd conventionality" of submitting to arbitrary rules "under a vague impression that if we differ from our neighbours we shall be violating good taste"; its worst historical case is the multi-style mansion ("Gothic halls, Elizabethan chambers, Louis Quatorze drawing-rooms… all under one roof"), which was "the practical evidence that a healthy and genuine taste was altogether wanting." The remedy is stylistic unity: "Choose what style of furniture we may, it should surely be adopted throughout the house we live in." The Intimus editors frame the excerpt's historical function: Eastlake's "barbed attack upon upholsterers and the degradation of decorative art paves the way for the professional decorator as the arbiter of taste," and "in an effort to homogenise the interior, Eastlake sets a clear agenda by questioning conventional arrangements that seek room-to-room difference in both form and style."

Key Claims

The upholsterer's fallacy: "all conditions of decorative art must necessarily vary with the situation in which that art is employed" is a trade-propagated error "delivered by him as wholesome doctrine to a credulous public" (p. 101) — the room-to-room furnishing code is a commercial invention, not a principle.
Use-based variation is legitimate; style-based variation is not: the dining-room table and sideboard may rightly be "made after a more solid fashion… on account of the use to which they are put" (p. 101), and a boudoir needs smaller furniture than a sideboard — but "though the shape of a cheffonier may differ from that of a buffet, there can be no reason whatever why the style of design in these respective articles of furniture should vary" (p. 102).
The room-codes are arbitrary and historically contingent: the drawing room's walnut suite (piano, music-stools, sofa, fire-screen) "a few years ago" was rosewood, and "in the early part of this century it was de rigueur that they should be mahogany; so the fashion of taste goes on changing from age to age" (p. 101) — furniture fashion is cyclical, trade-driven and without rational ground.
Public credulity is the trade's resource: if "the West End upholsterers took it into their heads that staircases should be hung with moire antique, and that the drawing-room fender ought in summer time to be planted with mignonette, there are people who would repose implicit confidence in such advice" (pp. 101–102).
The upstairs/downstairs split is incoherent on its own terms: "If the chaste and deftly associated colours which characterize the Oriental loom are right, and content us downstairs, why should we lapse into the vulgarity of garlands and bouquets for the design of our drawing-room carpet?" (p. 102) — what is judged right below is judged vulgar above, and both cannot be right.
Room-to-room difference produces two extremes, both wrong: "We pass from one principle of design for the ground floor, to another and completely distinct one when we have ascended two flights of stairs. We leave a solid, gloomy, and often cumbersome class of furniture below, to find a flimsy and extravagant one above… Judged by the standard of any recognised principles in decorative art, they would probably both be considered wrong. But it is obvious that they cannot both be right" (p. 102).
Submission to furnishing convention is socially, not aesthetically, grounded: "The truth is, there is an absurd conventionality about such points as these, to which most of us submit, under a vague impression that if we differ from our neighbours we shall be violating good taste" (p. 102) — conformity mistaken for taste (the proto-Bourdieusian passage; see taste, fashion).
The multi-style mansion is the disease in its extreme form: "a fashionable conceit prevailed of fitting up separate apartments in large mansions each after a style of its own. Thus we had Gothic halls, Elizabethan chambers, Louis Quatorze drawing-rooms, &c., &c., all under one roof. It is scarcely possible to imagine any system of house-furnishing more absurd and mischievous in its effect upon uneducated taste than this. Indeed, it was the practical evidence that a healthy and genuine taste was altogether wanting" (p. 102).
The unifying prescription: "Choose what style of furniture we may, it should surely be adopted throughout the house we live in" (p. 102) — the founding statement of the interior's homogenization agenda.
Editorial headnote: Eastlake "sought a simpler cleaner style of furniture that could also be reflected in the decoration of the interior," inspiring "a style to be named after him"; his "barbed attack upon upholsterers and the degradation of decorative art paves the way for the professional decorator as the arbiter of taste" (editorial headnote) — the decorator's profession is carved out of the discredited upholsterer's authority (see upholsterer, interior-design).

Connections

Concepts: upholsterer · stylistic-unity · dining-room · drawing-room · fashion · design-reform · taste · the-decorative · style · suitability · simplicity · domestic-interior · separate-spheres · gender-and-the-interior · interior-design

Authors: eastlake-charles-l · taylor-mark-preston-julieanna (editors) · dresser-christopher (the next voice in the reform sequence) · de-wolfe-elsie (the anti-period counterpoint) · beecher-catharine-e & stowe-harriet-beecher (the American domestic-science contemporaries) · bourdieu-pierre (conformity and taste) · baldwin-billy (the anti-fashion stance)

Debates: ornament-vs-purity (the reform critique of trade-degraded decorative art) · interior-design-vs-architecture (the trade-Disposition prehistory of the decorator's authority)

Direct Quotes

"Among the many fallacies engendered in the mind of the modern upholsterer, and delivered by him as wholesome doctrine to a credulous public, is the notion that all conditions of decorative art must necessarily vary with the situation in which that art is employed." (p. 101)

"It is not sufficient for him to tell us that the dining-room table and sideboard should, on account of the use to which they are put, be made after a more solid fashion than the drawing-room table and the cheffonier." (p. 101)

"In obedience to this injunction we sit down to dine upon an oaken chair before an oaken table, with a Turkey carpet under our feet, and a red flock-paper staring us in the face." (p. 101)

"After dinner the ladies ascend into a green and gold-papered drawing-room, to perform on a walnut-wood piano, having first seated themselves on walnut-wood music-stools, while their friends are reclining on a walnut-wood sofa, protected from the heat of the fire by a walnut-wood screen." (p. 101)

"A few years ago, all these last-mentioned articles of household furniture were made of rosewood. In the early part of this century it was de rigueur that they should be mahogany; so the fashion of taste goes on changing from age to age" (p. 101)

"if the West End upholsterers took it into their heads that staircases should be hung with moire antique, and that the drawing-room fender ought in summer time to be planted with mignonette, there are people who would repose implicit confidence in such advice." (pp. 101–102)

"Take, for instance, the case of carpets. If the chaste and deftly associated colours which characterize the Oriental loom are right, and content us downstairs, why should we lapse into the vulgarity of garlands and bouquets for the design of our drawing-room carpet?" (p. 102)

"But though the shape of a cheffonier may differ from that of a buffet, there can be no reason whatever why the style of design in these respective articles of furniture should vary." (p. 102)

"We may require, in a modern reception-room, chairs of a lighter make and more easily moveable than those in a library, but why the former should necessarily have round seats and the latter square ones is a mystery which no one but an upholsterer could explain." (p. 102)

"The truth is, there is an absurd conventionality about such points as these, to which most of us submit, under a vague impression that if we differ from our neighbours we shall be violating good taste." (p. 102)

"We pass from one principle of design for the ground floor, to another and completely distinct one when we have ascended two flights of stairs. We leave a solid, gloomy, and often cumbersome class of furniture below, to find a flimsy and extravagant one above." (p. 102)

"Judged by the standard of any recognised principles in decorative art, they would probably both be considered wrong. But it is obvious that they cannot both be right." (p. 102)

"Thus we had Gothic halls, Elizabethan chambers, Louis Quatorze drawing-rooms, &c., &c., all under one roof. It is scarcely possible to imagine any system of house-furnishing more absurd and mischievous in its effect upon uneducated taste than this. Indeed, it was the practical evidence that a healthy and genuine taste was altogether wanting." (p. 102)

"Choose what style of furniture we may, it should surely be adopted throughout the house we live in." (p. 102)

"Inspiring a style to be named after him, Charles Eastlake's influential self-illustrated text sought a simpler cleaner style of furniture that could also be reflected in the decoration of the interior. In this excerpt his barbed attack upon upholsterers and the degradation of decorative art paves the way for the professional decorator as the arbiter of taste. In an effort to homogenise the interior, Eastlake sets a clear agenda by questioning conventional arrangements that seek room-to-room difference in both form and style." (editorial headnote, Taylor & Preston)

Open Questions

Is the house-wide style a principle or a new convention? Eastlake attacks room-codes as arbitrary, but "Choose what style of furniture we may, it should surely be adopted throughout the house" installs a house-wide code in their place — what distinguishes a principled uniformity from just another "wholesome doctrine"?
Eastlake's satire of the drawing room ("the vulgarity of garlands and bouquets," the "flimsy and extravagant" upstairs furniture) targets precisely the feminine-coded room — is his homogenization agenda implicitly a discipline of the drawing room and of the decorative practices gendered to it (see gender-and-the-interior)?
Eastlake demands one style throughout the house; de Wolfe (1913) refuses period-dictation ("Lines and fabrics and woods are the things to be compared"). Is stylistic unity compatible with the decorator's comparative free play, or did the professional decorator profession that Eastlake's polemic "paved the way for" survive by abandoning its founder's unification demand?
The excerpt is titled for the room it treats only as an emblem ("oaken chair before an oaken table") — why did the Intimus editors select this excerpt for a theory reader, and does its value lie less in the dining room than in the upholsterer attack as the decorator profession's prehistory?
How did the American "Eastlake style" (the book was published in Boston in 1872) diverge from his prescriptions — the manufacturers' label attached to machine-produced furniture he reportedly disavowed — and what does that reception do to his claim that taste must be rescued from trade?

Notes

Original publication: Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery and Other Details (Longmans, Green, and Co, London, 1868); the excerpt is original pp. 63–66; "(… p 66)" marks an elision before the citation block. The chapter's argument continues beyond the excerpted passage in the original.
This is the earliest source in the wiki's decorating/advice-literature lineage: Eastlake (1868) → Dresser (1876) → Beecher & Stowe (1869, American) → de Wolfe (1913) → Baldwin (1972).