The eclecticism that defined the French Second Empire period also expressed a concern for domestic comfort. As a result, interiors became more sumptuous, such as this Parisian drawing room that author Stafford Cliff describes as "decorated in a style of overblown opulence to suggest the glories of the French Renaissance."

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SEPTEMBER 2008 » book review

European Union

English Style and Decoration: A Sourcebook of Original Designs
by Stafford Cliff
Thames & Hudson Inc., New York, NY; 2008
248 pages; hardcover; over 600 designs and patterns in color and black-&-white; $29.95
ISBN 978-0-500-51399-6

French Style and Decoration: A Sourcebook of Original Designs
by Stafford Cliff
Thames & Hudson Inc., New York, NY; 2008
248 pages; hardcover; over 600 designs and patterns in color and black-&-white; $29.95
ISBN 978-0-500-51400-9

Reviewed by Nicole V. Gagné

With the companion volumes English Style and Decoration and French Style and Decoration, design consultant and author Stafford Cliff has produced one of the most impressive attempts to bridge English and French cultures since the completion of the Chunnel. Although based in London, Cliff has shown an admirable lack of bias – the two books are meticulously balanced: each spans from the 18th to the mid-20th century; each is organized into six chapters; and each weighs in at a user-friendly 248 pages.

Neither book, Cliff is quick to point out, was written as a formal history or a comprehensive directory – a useful disclaimer, because both volumes are so replete with period drawings and sketches that most readers will be inclined to regard them as definitive studies. Virtually every aspect of historic domestic design ideas in England and France are represented in these books, from utensils, teapots and porcelain to textiles, furniture and interior decor. Cliff has assiduously researched the archives of museums and manufacturers to bring to light a plethora of never-before-seen images. "Some of the records I discovered could hardly have been expected to survive," Cliff notes, "being little more than scraps of paper, never intended for a client's eyes, let alone to be printed in a book. Other designs I found recorded in pattern books, swatch books, shape books, sometimes actually rendered in color by the very craftsmen who had earlier made the finished artifact." But far from simply plundering old catalogs, Cliff emphasizes "initial designs and sketches, rather than later printed renderings. The result, I hope, is an anthology brimming with creative energy, the images as immediate and vital as if they had been done yesterday."

English Style and Decoration begins its survey with the Classical and Rococo styles of the early-18th century. Cliff traces the impact of the Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio, whose Four Books of Architecture was published in an English translation in 1715. Architects influenced by Palladio began to assume "a much more prominent role in all fields of domestic design, taking over from guild-organized craftsmen." By the mid-century, however, enthusiasm for the elaborate Rococo style had waned, and Thomas Chippendale's furniture designs ushered in an era of Neoclassicism. This trend, in turn began to fade by the end of the 18th century, and in his second chapter Cliff explains how "a new eclecticism began to appear," relying on "heavier, more florid forms [...] furniture designs look over-ornate and even simple household objects begin to look too elaborate for their function." Cliff's third chapter examines the early-Victorian era, when "the years between 1830 and 1851 saw England assume a position of apparent unassailability in world manufacturing and economic affairs." But that very manufacturing hegemony served to blunt English tastes, "as factories and workshops turned out goods in a bewildering variety of styles, often in inappropriately elaborate and exaggerated forms."

The fourth chapter, on the High Victorian period, begins after the Great Exhibition of 1851, which Cliff sees as a wake-up call to English designers. "Far too many exhibits seemed preoccupied with the grotesque and vulgar detail of a half-understood traditionalism," he writes. A reaction ensued, led by such innovators as William Morris, Charles Lock Eastlake and William Godwin, and commercial furniture utilized cleaner, sharper lines. The fifth chapter is devoted to the emergence in the late-19th century of the Arts and Crafts movement. Here Cliff recounts how "a number of guilds and societies were established, which reflected the new respectability of the applied arts and the preeminence of the artist-craftsman." This change in tastes "was perhaps best expressed by the designers and cabinet-makers who came to be known collectively as the Cotswold School," with designs derived from traditional English country furniture. The final chapter traces the drift from traditionalism to Modernism, exploring how "the very success of the Arts and Crafts movement led in the 20th century to a relative decline in English design, mainly because it failed signally to address the problems of machine production and the new aesthetic associated with it." What emerged was the Modernist design of the 1920s, typified by the ceramics of Clarice Cliff and Susie Cooper, with their bold treatment of color and form; eventually a geometric, angular modernism began to appear in other types of English design.

In French Style and Decoration, Cliff starts in the late-17th century, when the Palace of Versailles was the showpiece of the Louis-Quatorze style: "[…] gilt and stucco, high mirrors, marble paneling, allegorical paintings, trompe l'oeil effects, and marvelously crafted furniture [...] drawn mainly from classical antiquity, crossed, it sometimes seemed, with the Baroque of Roman palaces." His second chapter examines the Louis-Quinze style of the first half of the 18th century, when the Rococo flourished. In these years, the French aristocracy relocated to Paris, seeking "a more relaxed lifestyle away from the pomp of the court." Chinoiserie was embraced, and colors and forms grew lighter as the focus of design "shifted from large state rooms to the more intimate settings of salon and boudoir, demanding smaller, lighter furniture with more obviously graceful lines." His third chapter concerns the Neoclassical reaction that followed later in the century, when the Louis-Seize style championed rectangular forms and straight lines.

Cliff's fourth chapter focuses on the age of Napoleon and "Styles Imperial." The French Revolution had demolished the patronage of French decorative arts by the nobility, but this relationship was renewed under Bonaparte. "The luxury crafts were revitalized and a number of the Parisian ateliers reopened workshops which had flourished under the Ancien Régime, returning to the traditions of excellence of the 18th century," writes Cliff. But as the period wore on, design became "heavier and more obviously ‘Imperial' and favored an elaborate use of textiles in interior decoration. After the fall of Napoleon and the rise of the Second Empire (1848-70), a near-obsessive eclecticism gripped French design; the fifth chapter relates how retailers' products began "incorporating features borrowed from every style from the Renaissance onward, but especially from Louis-Quatorze, Louis-Quinze, and Louis-Seize." This outburst of stylistic crossbreeding would not abate until the late 1890s and the arrival of Art Nouveau. The sixth and last chapter focuses on Art Deco and Modernism in the early-20th century, trends launched by the duality that arose in the applied arts in the last two decades of the 19th century: "a demand for comfortable revivalist styles coexisting with the preference of an elite clientele for adventurous design."

Rather than rely simply on the breathtaking illustrations, Cliff has made sure to name all the essential players and trace the historical and economic developments that shaped domestic design in England and France. Taken together, his twin studies show how the two countries reflected and contradicted each other over some 250 years. As histories, as sourcebooks and as aesthetic surveys, English Style and Decoration and French Style and Decoration stand as remarkable achievements.  

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