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ISBN: 978-1-5013-8560-5
George Aitchison
and Frederic
Leighton,
Leighton House,
Kensington,
United Kingdom,
1866–1895.
Charles Barry
and A.W.N.
Pugin, Houses
of Parliament,
Westminster,
England,
1840–1860.
John Nash,
Royal Pavilion
at Brighton,
England, 1815.
Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Palace of the Queen of the Night, Stage design for the Magic Flute,
Berlin, Germany,
1847–1849.
Queen Victoria’s
railway carriage,
1869.
Victorian Furniture
Gothic revival armchair
with neoclassical textile
Chippendale style Chinese
armchair
Sheraton sidechair
borne
Augustus Welby
Northmore Pugin,
Carved oak and
leather chair,
Westminster,
London, England,
1859.
Christopher
Dresser, Thebes
stool, 1884.
H.F.C.
Rampendahl,
Victorian horned
armchair,
Hamburg,
Germany, 1850.
John Henry Belter,
rosewood rococo
revival sofa,
New York, New
York, 1850–1860.
Rosewood.
John Henry Belter,
rosewood rococo
revival sofa,
New York, New
York, 1850–1860.
Rosewood.
Lawrence Alma-
Tadema, Turkish
revival settee,
London, England,
1885. Ebony,
sandalwood,
cedar, ivory,
mother-of-pearl,
and brass.
Henry Hobson
Richardson,
Glesner House,
Chicago, Illinois,
1885.
VOCABULARY
borne
cast iron
folly
janissary
Japonisme
polychromy
Richardsonian Romanesque
Romanticism
Saracenic
whatnot
CONCLUSION
Robert Kerr, not a well-known figure today, was
not only prescient with his perceptions about
nineteenth-century design, he was wise about
what was to come. He placed the blur of nineteenth-
century styles into three categories: the
eclectic, the followers of Pugin and other Gothic
Revivalists, and the early modernists. This is an
astute and productive way of making sense of an
era that defies categorization. On the one hand,
designers of the Victorian era were buried in the
past, yet on the other, they were marching triumphantly
toward the future.