Journal of Design History Advance Access published November 27, 2012
doi:10.1093/jdh/eps053
Journal of Design History
© The Author [2012]. Published by
Oxford University Press on behalf
of The Design History Society. All
rights reserved.
Interior Decorating in the Age
of Historicism: Popular Advice
Manuals and the Pattern Books
of Édouard Bajot
Anca I. Lasc
This article calls for a re-definition of eclectic décor as applied to the private interiors
of nineteenth-century France. Previously, scholars of the nineteenth century have
separated two forms of advice literature, one dedicated to women as house decorators
and the other dedicated to men as collectors. By bringing them together, this essay
Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012
argues that these private interiors, rather than being eclectic, as they might appear to
an untrained eye, were, in fact, carefully orchestrated decorative ensembles guided
by the rules of historic revivalism and themed décor, which attempted to create a
collection of different times and places through interior decoration. The first part of
this essay outlines the changes in the art market and the perception of the past in
France in the first half of the nineteenth century, while the second part introduces
collecting and interior decorating manuals from the second half of the century, written
by both men and women alike. The essay concludes with an examination of the work
of the furniture designer (architecte d’ameublement) Édouard Bajot (1853–1900s), in
order to understand how the theoretical tenets put forth in writing by collecting and
decorating advisors were given visual form.
Keywords: clutter—collecting—domestic advice manuals—domestic space—eclecticism—
historicism—interior decoration—nineteenth century—Paris—pattern books—period rooms
In or around 1892, the architect and decorator (architecte décorateur) Georges Rémon
(c. 1853/1854–c. 1931) proposed the surprising inclusion of a reproduction after the
Venus de Milo (late second century BC) right next to one after the Florentine sculp-
tor Giambologna’s Mercury (c. 1565) within a waiting room decorated in the style of
the Renaissance [1]. Rendering decorative schemes for modern dwellings, Rémon’s
pattern book, Intérieurs d’appartements modernes (Interiors for Modern Apartments),
also encompassed such designs as a Louis XV bedroom, an Oriental smoking-room and
a Gothic library, which, like the Renaissance waiting room, were decorative themes
already well-established within the revivalist canon characteristic of the nineteenth-
century’s historicist aesthetic.1 A  student and nephew of Alexandre-Eugène Prignot
(1820–1887), who himself had studied under the chief decorator of the Paris Opéra,
Pierre-Luc-Charles Cicéri (1782–1868), Georges Rémon was in all probability the son of
Henri Alphonse Rémon (1819–c. 1900). Born in Hampstead, in the United Kingdom,
probably in 1853/1854, at the time when Henri Alponse was working on the decora-
tion of Cliveden House near Windsor, Georges Rémon appears to have contributed
designs of interiors to various publications up until 1931, the year in which he pos-
sibly died.2 Throughout his career, the artist published more than a dozen books and
exhibited watercolours at the 1885 and the 1891 Salons, the 1889 Paris Exposition
universelle and the various exhibitions of the Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs.3 An
architecte-décorateur, Rémon had achieved wide public recognition by 1900, when,
together with Henri Rémon (possibly his father), he became the official decorator of the
1
 Fig 1.  G. Rémon, Intérieurs
d’appartements modernes
[Interiors for Modern
Apartments], E. Thézard Fils,
Dourdan, c. 1892, Plate 4:
‘Salon d’attente Renaissance’
[‘Renaissance Waiting Room’].
Image credit: Alfred H. Gumaer
Book Fund, University of
Pennsylvania Library. Copyright:
Public domain. Reproduced
with permission from the Fisher
Fine Arts Library, University of
Pennsylvania

Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012

Centennial Museum of Furniture and Decoration (Musée centennal du mobilier et de
la décoration) at the Exposition universelle.4 How could a respectable decorator such
as Rémon, responsible for the Centennial Museum and the historically-accurate period
rooms installed therein, engage in such ‘decorative blunders’ as placing an antique
sculpture discovered not earlier than 1820 within a Renaissance decorative scheme?5
While a reproduction of Giambologna’s bronze sculpture Mercury of c. 1565 seems a
reasonable choice for such an interior, how can one explain the presence of the Venus
de Milo in the same room?

The private interiors of the second half of the nineteenth century in most of the Western
world have traditionally been seen as assemblages of unrelated objects of radically dif-
ferent aesthetic values and backgrounds, amalgamated in one setting without rhyme or
reason. ‘Too much of anything from anywhere in the same space’ is how scholars such as
Rémy G. Saisselin have defined the so-called ‘bourgeois style’ of the nineteenth century.6
Displaying ‘accumulations of things’, from valuable art objects to mass-produced fakes,
imitation-furniture and decorative items, private interiors have so far been described as
‘cluttered’.7 Oriental objects set in neo-Medieval or neo-Renaissance settings, or Ancient
artefacts displayed in Renaissance-themed interior environments, have been seen as char-
acteristic of a bricabracomania thought to be on a rampage at the time. As a conse-
quence, the bourgeois interiors they populated have often been characterized as eclectic.8
Yet a study of the ideal private interior, as it was represented in French collecting and deco-
rating advice manuals at the time, suggests that a very strict set of guidelines governed
the interior decorating practices of upper and middle-class Parisians.9 Bringing together
two forms of advice literature previously separated by scholars of the nineteenth century,
one dedicated to women as house decorators, the other dedicated to men as collectors,
shows that rather than being eclectic, these interiors were, in fact, carefully orchestrated
decorative ensembles guided by the rules of historic revivalism and themed décor, which
attempted to create a collection of different times or places through interior decoration.10

Scholars of private spaces in the modern world have traditionally portrayed interior
decorating as the affair of women, and have separated it from the more serious pursuit

Interior Decorating in the Age of Historicism

2
 of collecting, an activity that was appropriate for men.11 Associating women’s con-
sumption of goods with the making of family and class in the first part of the nine-
teenth century, and with that of the nation in the second part, scholars such as Leora
Auslander have placed women’s role in the home, primarily as decorators.12 Women
were advised not to desire material goods too much, the reason given being that, espe-
cially with the rise of department stores in the second half of the nineteenth century,
they risked developing kleptomaniac impulses.13 Forms of consumption associated with
men, such as collecting and dandyism, were, however, tied to the self.14 Since the pri-
vate consumption of collectibles paralleled the world of museums, ‘it is not surprising,’
Auslander suggests, ‘that the form of private consumption most closely resembling
state consumption should have been the one defined as “appropriately” masculine.’15

While historians of British material culture in the nineteenth century, such as Deborah
Cohen, have begun to acknowledge the prominent role that men played in the deco-
ration of their private interiors, scholars of nineteenth-century France largely maintain
the separation of public and private spheres, characterizing the home as a feminine
realm and the home’s decoration as a feminine undertaking.16 When they nod to

Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012

the various continuities between collecting and decorating, they see both as char-
acterized by clutter and eclectic arrangements.17 Literary historian Janell Watson, for
example, has identified a direct relationship between decorating and collecting. In
her book, Literature and Material Culture from Balzac to Proust: The Collection and
Consumption of Curiosities, Watson defines eclecticism as ‘the incorporation of col-
lecting into the home interior’.18 While she maintains that collecting cannot be dis-
sociated from decorating, nor vice versa, Watson sees harmonious interior ensembles
emerging only in the later years of the nineteenth century with the fin-de-siècle ‘artis-
tic interiors’ of such aesthetes as Edmond de Goncourt (1822–1896) or Robert de
Montesquiou (1855–1921).19 However, it would appear that, on the contrary, before
the fin-de-siècle and beyond the homes of rich collectors and aesthetes, French
interior decoration was chiefly characterized by harmonious decorative ensembles
that carefully avoided eclectic or mismatched combinations of objects and instead
favoured accurate renditions of different times and places that translated into whole-
room surrounds. Collecting and decorating should be recognized as related activities
that involved and interested men and women alike, and advice manuals on collecting
and decorating should be studied together, and positioned as two literary forms that
falsely appear to have attracted audiences of different genders. By redefining interior
décor in non-gender specific terms, a more complete image of the nineteenth-century
private interior emerges.

Before we move to an analysis of the written discourse concerned with the proper
arrangement of the private interior, it is important to briefly dwell on the social, cul-
tural, and economic conditions under which collecting and interior decorating manu-
als emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century. These manuals produced a
popular visual culture of thematic interior decorating that was a direct result of the
cultural changes experienced by the French population in the aftermath of the French
Revolution.20

Setting the stage
As cultural historian Rosalind Williams has explained, starting with the second half
of the nineteenth century, many more people had ‘considerable choice in what to
consume, how and how much’, in addition to the ‘leisure, education and health to
ponder these questions’.21 The steady increase in purchasing power was matched by

Anca I. Lasc
3
technological changes, which lowered the cost of existing consumer goods while pro-
viding entirely new ones.22 Cheaper items produced under the new factory system, or
with new machines, proved irresistible to a new society which was both financially and
intellectually ready to consume for the home. Yet the wide availability of objects and
decorative choices during the Second Empire also instilled among contemporaries the
fear that the French were not able to judge between good and bad art anymore, or
between successful and unfortunate decorative effects in their homes.

A new regard for the past resulted in a better understanding of earlier decorating
styles, to the extent that many attempted to perfect the reproduction of a specific
period style within their homes, by making all objects in a room belong to that style.
Indeed, ever since the resurgence of interest in the country’s history, starting in the
1830s, and popularized through novels, theatres and museums, French people of dis-
parate social backgrounds had developed a taste for the past and its material culture.
Before the publication of such works of literature as Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de
Paris (1831), or the formation of such coherent displays of antiquities as Alexandre

Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012

du Sommerard’s collection in the ancient town-house of the Abbots of Cluny (begin-
ning in 1832), curiosities from the past had not been objects of popular commerce
in France.23 In the immediate aftermath of the 1789 Revolution and the fall of the
monarchy, a rejection of everything that had to do with the ancien régime had caused
the large scale destruction of royal castles, aristocratic mansions and church holdings.
Homes and monasteries were stripped of their decoration, furniture was burned and
paintings were sold, while gilded decorations and bronze sculptures were melted down
to make new money for the nation and weapons for the army.24 By contrast, starting
in the 1830s, King Louis-Philippe d’Orléans himself encouraged the recreation of his-
torically accurate period style decorative schemes in the royal palaces that he restored,
including Fontainebleau, Compiègne, Pau, Trianon and Versailles.25 As art historian
Rainer Haaff explains, ‘from about 1830/40 to the turn of the 20th century, Historicism
developed as a series of stylistic reversions to, and borrowings from, earlier period
styles.’26 Beginning in the Second Empire, Neo-Gothic, Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Classical
and Neo-Rococo interiors were thus not uncommon in France.

But if upper-class Frenchmen, including the new, so-called ‘triple aristocracy of money,
power, and talent’ (or ‘of the bank, the ministry, and mass media’),27 could afford
such holistic design schemes for their private homes, the common understanding until
now has been that the middle and the lower-middle classes did not partake in such
endeavours, because they lacked the knowledge or the financial means to do so. The
removal of the Bourbon branch of the royal family from power and its replacement by
the Orléans branch following the Revolution of 1830, with King Louis-Philippe assum-
ing the French throne, catalysed the emergence of a new upper class (‘the elegant life’,
or la vie élégante, as Balzac famously called it) from a peripheral position to the centre
of Paris’ high society.28 A new social class that had no blood ties to the old French aris-
tocracy, la vie élégante of the July Monarchy (1830–1848), enjoyed substantial wealth
and could afford to hire architects and decorators to design and organize its private
homes. The suggestion that less wealthy patrons could not have achieved similar holis-
tic design patterns in their dwellings is countered by a plethora of publications about
how to obtain the desired decorative effects with less rather than more means, which
became available to the middle and the lower-middle classes in the second half of
the nineteenth century, as well as by a growing market in antiques and reproductions
of antiques. Old fabrics, old pottery and especially old furniture were sold ‘aged and
dismembered’, including ‘panes and cornices, a head, a foot, the top without the bot-
tom, the door without the cupboard or the cupboard without its door.’29 Starting with

Interior Decorating in the Age of Historicism

4
 the middle of the nineteenth century, when original objects became scarcer and prices
rose too high, the growing interest in such antiques allowed for restored fragments,
adapted pieces and re-accommodations of antique objects to be produced. When not
even these restorations and adaptations sufficed, the Parisian furniture industry delved
into the business of antique imitations, thus permitting even more people to acquire
furnishings in the style of their dreams.30

Writers and critics often commented upon what they called the manie du bric-à-brac et
du bibelot, and accused collectors of popularizing it, encouraging it and sustaining it.31
Invented as a category in the 1840s, the bibelot, an item of curiosity, defined an array
of goods, ‘from mass-produced trinkets to priceless collectors’ items’, including old fur-
niture, valuable art pieces, industrial reproductions, decorative objects and ‘worthless
junk’.32 The quintessential object of modern material culture, as Janell Watson calls it,
the primary characteristic of the bibelot appears to have been its superfluousness, or its
lack of any use-value.33 Knick-knacks, curiosities, collectibles, antiques and other objets
d’art, or the entire world of objects that could be purchased from dealers, merchants,
auction houses and the newly-rising department stores, fell under this category. The

Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012

accumulation of one bibelot after another, without any regard to its value, beauty,
or history (especially when acquired from Meccas of consumption such as the Bon
Marché or the Grands Magasins du Louvre), would, it was feared, lower French artistic
standards and affect the innate good taste that all French were deemed to have.34 But
if the upper classes could afford the services of expert decorators well-versed in the art
of interior décor in arranging their collectibles or bibelots, the middle and the lower-
middle classes were still in need of guidance. As noted, this state of affairs encouraged
the publication of a series of treatises directed to the middle classes, that explained
how to achieve a successful interior arrangement and private collection with less rather
than more means.

Generally relegating the activity of decorating to women and that of collecting to men,
scholars have largely neglected the permeable boundaries between the two activities in
Second Empire and especially Third Republic Paris. Yet the concern with collecting and
decorating permeated different social classes and involved both men and women at the
same time. Domestic advice manuals, which provided guidelines on the management of
all matters of private life, including the bearing and raising of children, housekeeping,
and the rights and wrongs of interior decoration, also included suggestions for the selec-
tion and management of collectible items or bibelots.35 The lavish attention bestowed
by scholars upon such treatises makes it easy to overlook how men, too, were subject
to interior decorating advice. Manuals of advice on collecting instructed their readership
on how to arrange one’s collectibles in one’s home, including furniture and decorative
objects. Thus, not only was there a permeability of boundaries between collecting and
decorating at the time, but critics who wrote about one activity also wrote about the
other.

The advice manuals

Published in 1884, the Grammaire de la curiosité (L’Art intime et le goût en France)
by Spire Blondel (1836–1900), an art historian, critic, and collaborator at the Gazette
des beaux-arts, praised the benefits of collecting by emphasizing the role that art, and
curiosities in general, played in the creation of a relaxing and agreeable atmosphere in
one’s home.36 Citing the historian and literary critic Edmond de Goncourt (1822–1896),
Blondel argued that this newly found bliss of chez-soi could and should be enhanced
by the display of art:

Anca I. Lasc
5
 Today, when everybody, regardless of social standing, seeks to relax from the
strain of every-day work in the calm of his home, le chez-soi has ceased to be the
monotonous [. . .] environment of earlier times. [. . .] the human being [. . .] has
been pushed to desire that the four walls of his home be agreeable, pleasing and
entertaining for the eyes; and this surrounding décor he has searched and natu-
rally found in the object of pure art, or in that of the industrial art, which is more
accessible to everyone.37

Blondel’s art for the home, or ‘l’art intime’ (private art) as he called it, knew no lim-
its: paintings, watercolours, drawings and prints, sculptures, busts, groups and reliefs,
bronzes, marbles, terracottas, ceramics, earthenware, porcelains or biscuits, enamels,
miniatures, boxes and fans—all received equal attention in the pages of his book.38
Mechanical reproductions of original works of art, such as those commercialized by
the Maison Barbedienne and obtained through mathematically-precise reductions
of established masterpieces at a pre-determined scale were also praised.39 Ancient
works such as the Venus de Milo, one of the most publicized archaeological discover-
ies of the nineteenth century, and on display in the Louvre at the time, or Paul Dubois’

Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012

Renaissance-inspired Florentine Singer of 1865, which won the médaille d’honneur at
the Salon, and a copy of which was prominently displayed in the salon de conversa-
tion of the Princesse Mathilde, were just a few of the artworks whose copies Blondel
deemed worthy of display in the private home.40

Together, these ‘thousand and one objects of art and curiosity’, disparagingly called
bibelots, were the finery of the furniture assembled in various rooms of the home.
They completed the furnishings, embellished them, and contributed to the general
atmosphere of the house.41 But this profusion of objects had no value when taken
on their own. The importance of each and every object on display lay in the coher-
ence of the final ensemble, furniture and collectibles included. A bronze, a watercol-
our, a terracotta, a Venetian chalice, a genre painting, unrelated as they may seem,
formed a single whole. ‘Unite them,’ Blondel urged his readers, ‘skilfully bring them
together in the middle of a surrounding which shall serve as their frame and shall
enable them to mutually assert each other.’42 Disparaged by some, the bibelot (l’art
intime par excellence) became the building-block of nineteenth-century interiors for
others.

Indeed, the critic, art historian and fine-arts inspector Henry Havard (1838–1921)
pointed out how the distinction between the beaux-arts on the one hand and the
arts décoratifs or the so-called ‘industrial arts’ on the other made no sense to nine-
teenth-century French citizens: ‘it would be impolite to pretend that the painting
hung in a drawing room [salon], the sculpture placed in a garden, or the bust ornat-
ing a staircase do not decorate this wall, this stairway, this garden, this drawing
room.’43 Havard’s assertion was taken one step further by the nineteenth-century
writer Auguste Luchet, who expanded the definition of ‘furniture’ so as to include
per se all items of interior decoration. According to Luchet, furniture included eve-
rything that served ‘to fill and adorn a house, without being part of it.’44 Thus, ‘a
painting is a piece of furniture; a sculpture is a piece of furniture; the rock-crystal
chandelier of the throne-room at Fontainebleau [. . .] is a piece of furniture; all the
bronzes, all the metalwork, all the jewellery, all the enamels, almost all the marbles,
all Sèvres, all Dresse, China, and japonismes are furniture.’45 So, by dissolving the
boundaries between the ‘high’ and the ‘decorative’ arts, now all subsumed under
the general category of ‘furniture’, the ‘collectible’, or, more generally, the ‘bibelot’,
nineteenth-century French critics appear to have consistently blurred the boundaries
between collecting and decorating.

Interior Decorating in the Age of Historicism

6
 If collecting equalled decorating and vice versa, how could a successful interior arrange-
ment be obtained? Henry Havard’s L’Art dans la maison (Grammaire de l’ameublement),
perhaps the most widely disseminated interior decorating and taste manual at the
time, offered advice. Published in at least six editions until 1887, Havard’s Grammaire
was honoured with a subscription from the Ministère de l’instruction publique et des
beaux-arts, and was declared an indispensable read for the students of the Écoles
Normales, whose libraries all owned copies, as well as for decorators, art students,
architects and furniture-makers, in addition to a general public eager to tastefully
arrange their homes.46 Like Jules Deville (1825–1890), one of Paris’ most fashionable
and successful upholsterers and the president of the Chambre syndicale des apprentis
tapissiers at the time, who argued that ‘every decoration has to start from a style or
a principle’, Havard was of the opinion that, in order to be successful, any decoration
‘must proceed from a unique departure point.’47 All the objects used in the furnishing
and decoration of a room had to have a direct correlation between them. Such cor-
respondences could be obtained through similarities, analogies of form and colour,
or—and this was Havard’s personal recommendation—through the successful coordi-

Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012

nation of the entire architectural ensemble of a room.48 As he explained, ‘each form,
individually taken, has a precise value and significance all of its own. But when the form
becomes part of an ensemble, this value and this significance become completely rela-
tive.’49 Thus, for example, no matter how superbly drawn, marvellously executed, and
pure of lines a fifteenth-century church-stall was, it produced a most miserable effect
when placed in a Louis XV interior.50
Variety in unity and a unique departure point were the main guidelines that taste
educators such as Havard and practitioners of interior decoration and design such as
Deville both recommended. When applied to the historicist tendencies in interior deco-
rating characteristic of the period, these recommendations translated into the applica-
tion of a single period style to the decoration of a single room.51 Should the head of
the household not have adhered to these prescriptions and set out to thoughtlessly
create an interior out of an eclectic hodge-podge of furniture pieces and draperies of
all forms, colours and styles, he should know that his drawing room resembled ‘an
upholsterer’s storeroom’ rather than a tasteful environment.52 A house or an apartment
could contain multiple styles, but they each had to be restricted to one individual room.
The bricabracomania so deplored by scholars of nineteenth-century interiors did not
manifest itself at the level and unit of the regular bourgeois room once people followed
taste educators’ advice.
Another influential treatise and nineteenth-century best-seller on how to decorate the
private home was the Comtesse de Bassanville’s 1878 L’Art de bien tenir une maison
(The Art of Good Housekeeping).53 Aimed primarily at a female readership, the manual
reached multiple editions and could be found in many homes. Amidst very practical
advice about how to remove and store wall hangings, draperies and curtains when
leaving one’s town house for the countryside during summer, how to clean and polish
marble surfaces, or how to treat one’s servants, de Bassanville also provided decorating
instructions. Part of a larger literature aimed at women, including such other works
as de Bassanville’s two-part Le Trésor de la maison (The Treasure-Trove of the Home)
(1867–1868) or Louise d’Alq’s La Science de la vie (The Science of Life) (1882, new
edn), L’Art de bien tenir une maison defined ‘desirable’ taste in decoration in much
the same way that interior decorating grammars such as Henry Havard’s or collecting
grammars such as Spire Blondel’s did.54 No matter how rich or poor one was, when
decorating one’s interior, one always needed to stay within a chosen style and avoid
anachronisms at all costs: ‘Choose an epoch and remain completely faithful to it,’ de
Bassanville argued.55

Anca I. Lasc
7
Thus, as Spire Blondel would advise about a decade later not to stray from the conse-
crated rules of proper decoration and not to amass object upon object in a desire to
obtain magnificence at the risk of sacrificing good taste, so the Comtesse de Bassanville
warned her readers that ‘combining furnishings and decorations in the style of Louis
XV with furnishings and decorations in the style of Louis XIV or Louis XVI would create
a dissonance of the worst possible taste.’56 Such mistakes as placing a plaster-cast of
Michelangelo’s Moses in a Louis XV boudoir filled with Sèvres porcelains and Saxony
celadons had absolutely to be avoided.57 The interior decoration scheme of an indi-
vidual room was considered by such prescriptive literature as a total work of art, and
obtained through the coordination of all the objects within it; particular attention had
to be paid to staying within the pre-established ‘style’ or ‘theme’ chosen, or what
Deville had called the ‘principle’ behind any decorative ensemble. Applied everywhere,
this common rule was to be reflected not least in the choice of fabrics used in the
upholstering of furniture. As one critic would later assert, ‘beware to never commit the
outrageous mistake of covering furniture of a well-defined style with a material that
has no style at all or which displays an entirely different style.’58

Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012

Those with lesser means could achieve the same results that the richest of the rich could.
If the former could not afford an interior filled with objects original to the time that
they tried to recreate, taste advisors suggested that imitations be used.59 The critic, art
historian and fine arts director Charles Blanc (1813–1882), the founder and editor of the
Gazette des beaux-arts, explained how there should be no difference between an origi-
nal object and its imitation: ‘Between a golden object and an object made of gold there
is no difference for the man of taste, who appreciates what is given to him as a spec-
tacle. The general rule that one should not produce in one medium what can be better
made in another does not apply to industry, as long as the latter can achieve perfect
resemblance. Imitation is only blamable when it cannot go beyond mere similarity.’60

The overall attempt to abide by the rules of historic revivalism meant that by the begin-
ning of the twentieth century taste educators even advised against introducing a
newly-made copy of an object from the past into a room that attempted to successfully
recreate the atmosphere of that epoch, unless the object were made to show its age.
Thus, ‘never install a brand-new Louis XIV chair in your drawing-room,’ they argued;
rather, ‘insist that it display the patina of time [. . .] or of the dealer in secondhand
goods.’61 The desire for historical accuracy went even as far as to have the authors
recommend the use of purposefully-aged copies of old furniture pieces. Advisors urged
readers to go to museums to find good examples of old furniture they could imitate
in their rooms and to learn the general appearance of a specific style from the past
in order to explain the latter’s specificities to their chosen decorators.62 A visit to the
Apollo Gallery at the Louvre would reveal the correct form and shape of furniture
pieces by André-Charles Boulle (1642–1732); one to the Garde-meuble would provide
examples of tapestries and draperies from the time of Louis XV or Louis XVI; while a
visit to the Musée de Cluny would familiarize the viewer with furniture objects from
the Middle Ages.63

How, then, given this plethora of advice about harmonious decorating, can one explain
choices such as Rémon’s of placing Greek antiques within Renaissance interiors and
thus apparently committing an anachronism of the worst possible kind? The answer
lies in an 1876 book published posthumously by the art historian and collector Albert
Jacquemart (1808–1875).64 Titled Histoire du mobilier: Recherches et notes sur les
objets d’art qui peuvent composer l’ameublement et les collections de l’homme du
monde et du curieux (A History of Furniture: Research and Notes on the Art Objects
That Can Compose the Furnishings and Collections of the Man of the World and of the

Interior Decorating in the Age of Historicism

8
 Curious), and with an introduction by Henry Barbet de Jouy (1812–1896), the curator
of the Medieval and Renaissance galleries at the Musée du Louvre, Jacquemart’s book
presented a history of ‘furniture’ as understood in the second half of the nineteenth
century. From art objects to furnishings and household utensils—what Henry Havard
was to call ‘la décoration mobile’—everything was included under this rubric.65

Jacquemart took historicist furnishings as his point of departure and explained to his
avowed male readership of collectors and curieux how recreating a truly accurate his-
toric interior (furniture and art objects included) was a complicated matter once origi-
nal furniture pieces could not be procured anymore. A collector himself, Jacquemart
did not approve of altering or adapting old furniture to suit modern needs or of using
modern imitations in lieu of originals to complete room ensembles. Thus, he offered
a new solution to the problem of historical accuracy: rather than using imitations or
ill-arranged adaptations of old furniture to create an accurate ensemble d’epoque,
the young collector and head of the modern household in search of a historic décor
could introduce ‘oriental’ objects, antiques and rich carpets in the historical interiors

Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012

he devised instead.

Throughout different times and in different places, Jacquemart explained, ‘oriental’

objects had decorated private spaces.66 Unlike Western antiques, which belonged to
clearly-defined historic eras and geographic locations, ‘oriental’ objects were ahistorical
and were generally understood to come from a variety of geographic locations. They
could be old or new, and could have originated in either an independent country or in
one of the Western colonies. In fact, French historians such as Madeleine Dobie have
explained how many eighteenth-century objects in ‘oriental’ styles, rather than being
imported from China, Japan, or other Eastern countries, were instead produced by slave
labour in French colonies in the New World but made to look like they had come from
Asia.67 In their dwellings, the Romans had actively sought the company of precious
objects procured through commercial activities in far-away lands. In France, Jacquemart
continued, the fashion for the exotic had been introduced during the Middle Ages in
the aftermath of the Crusades; and it had provided a true revelation at the time in
terms of interior decorating.68 During the seventeenth century, people were overtaken
by a fad for Indian and Chinese fabrics and decorative objects, all of which culminated
during the time of Louis XV with the taste for Chinoiseries and the introduction of
porcelains everywhere in the home.69 Out of all collectibles, Jacquemart concluded,
the ones less difficult to arrange within one’s house were those of ‘oriental’ prov-
enance. They were good accompaniments to any historic style: François I had displayed
them in his interiors in spite of his preference for the works of the Italian Renaissance;
Louis XIV combined the furnishings and porcelains of China and Japan with French
marquetry and bronzes; while the subsequent French monarchs encouraged their col-
lection and display to such an extent that, by the end of the eighteenth century, such
objects had become the preferred choice in decoration.70 Therefore, should one not
find a proper seventeenth-century curtain, one could replace it with an ‘oriental’ one.
Similarly, should one not be able to procure a medieval writing desk, an ‘oriental’ one
would do just as well. What to an untrained eye might seem an eclectic interior, which
mixed exotic objects with others made in various old French styles, was to the trained
eye of a nineteenth-century person an accurate representation of a specific historic era.

To Jacquemart’s theories of collecting, the Comtesse de Bassanville replied with further

attention to the spatial organization of rooms and their decoration. When describing
the proper arrangement of a dining room furnished in sculpted oak, which was very
fashionable at the time, she advised her readers to choose a Renaissance or a Louis XIII

Anca I. Lasc
9
style. As she explained, oak furnishings were last encountered in Europe during the
reign of Louis XIII. Therefore, everything in the room had to be reminiscent of the sev-
enteenth century: walls could not be covered in painted paper but must use real wood,
leather, or good imitations of either of the two; and, rather than paintings, pottery had
to hang on the walls.71 Particular attention had to be paid to the kind of pottery cho-
sen for display. As the Comtesse explained, ‘when one wants to stick to historic truth
[. . .], these plates must be earthenware: [. . .] porcelain, not having been discovered in
Europe until the beginning of the eighteenth century, it would be an anachronism to
mix Sèvres porcelain from the times of Louis XV with furnishings reminding the reign
of a Valois.‘72

Like Albert Jacquemart, de Bassanville recommended the use of Chinoiseries in general

and of Chinese porcelains in particular. The Dutch, who had engaged in a feverish com-
merce with China, towards the end of the reign of Louis XIII flooded the European mar-
ket with Chinese products.73 So she agreed that in a nineteenth-century Renaissance
room, ‘oriental’ objects were allowed, just as they had been during the Renaissance.
Scholars have interpreted such combinations of objects in Eastern and old Western

Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012

styles as eclectic decorating schemes without rhyme or reason. However, such com-
binations of exotic pieces with Medieval or Renaissance rooms or of Ancient artefacts
with Renaissance-themed interiors were, quite the contrary, thoroughly thought-out
coherent ensembles, guided by rules familiar to nineteenth-century Parisians. One
could have all the bric-à-brac one wanted in one’s room, as long as one respected the
particularities of the time and place one aspired to recreate. The mixing of styles within
one room was allowed, even encouraged, as long as the decorative principles of the
epoch cited were maintained. If Greek antiques such as the Venus de Milo had no
place in a rich, armour-filled medieval setting, which had banished all things of Classical
Antiquity, they could nevertheless be a pendant to weaponry and Giambologna’s
Mercury in one from the Renaissance, as proven by Rémon’s design.

The preoccupation with maintaining historical accuracy in the decoration of one’s pri-
vate interior was a larger phenomenon and spurred numerous debates throughout
the Western world. Although France had long been considered the leader of taste and
dominated the market for decorative arts and luxury objects, it was not the only nation
in the nineteenth century that attempted to create historically-accurate or exotically-
inspired harmonious interior decorating schemes. With the rise of nation-states at the
time, each European culture began searching in its own past the inspiration for new
decorative themes. Thus Old English, Altdeutsch, or Old Colonial were interior decorat-
ing styles that flourished in Britain, Germany, and the United States, respectively, along
with traditional French styles like Louis XIII, Louis XIV, or Louis XV.74 French decorators,
too, sometimes made distinctions between English, French and Italian Renaissance
interiors, while also proposing modern ‘English’ bathrooms or study cabinets.75
Besides the various eras of history, the world thus also was a large pool from which
new styles and themes could be chosen.76 And the concern for historical accuracy
in interior décor was shared by most Western countries. In Britain, for instance, Mrs
Haweis advised against the inclusion of objects produced by Victorian manufacturers
in a room furnished in the Georgian style. Similarly, early English artworks had no place
in a Japanese-styled room.77 Writing after the Comtesse de Bassanville, Haweis also
warned her readers that ‘Chinese art would be fish-out-of-waterish in an early English
home’, since China was not open to the West until the sixteenth century, and modern
Chinese work, especially, ‘would dispel the illusion of antiquity, and at once betray that
the room was spurious.’78 Unlike French advisors, however, British authors, including
Mrs Haweis, found ‘eclectic’ room arrangements preferable to those decorated in a

Interior Decorating in the Age of Historicism

10
 specific historic style, since they were more manageable.79 Defined in opposition to
‘the aimless conglomeration of totally discordant periods and schools’ in one interior
setting, eclectic rooms nevertheless required that no one predominant style could be
identified.80 Since Gothic, Oriental, or Renaissance arches or mouldings demanded fur-
niture in similar styles, a room should have sufficient variety so that its harmony could
parallel that found in a ‘Christmas pudding’.81 Yet the types of room designs that
Mrs Haweis singled out as examples for her readers still revolved around one central
theme that could be interpreted in various ways. Thus, for example, ‘A Renascence [sic]
Eclectic Room’ accommodated works spanning two centuries, from both Northern and
Southern Renaissance Europe, while also allowing Classical Antiquity and the Orient to
contribute objects: ‘But the work of at least two centuries, all the world over, is ready to
hand, Northern and Southern interpretations of that overpowering movement; moreo-
ver the old world may contribute, for genuine classic fragments in marble, bronze, or
glass, may mix with Raphaels and Murrilos on the walls, Vandykes, and Durer prints,
autotypes of the old masters’ sketches, and even photographs of fine pictures, as well
as Venetian glass, Brussels and Arras tapestry, old Oriental tissues and panels of leather,

Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012

or leather paper.’82 While British authors catalogued such arrangements ‘eclectic’, to
French authors they were no less than ‘accurate’ renditions of styles from the past.
More open to incorporating ‘eclectic’ decorative schemes in their private dwellings, the
former also allowed for objects in the Empire style to inhabit the same space as antique
and Renaissance objects.83 Characterized as ‘classic revivals’, furniture and objects in
the Empire style could thus accompany antique busts and Renaissance tapestries in
‘eclectic’ British interiors in the ‘Renascence style’.

As to what style belonged in what room, French critics were in disagreement. If a

Renaissance theme was seen as suitable for the dining room, it was no less appreciated
in the hallway, the study, or even in the bedroom. Critics acknowledged the wonder-
ful effects produced in a bedroom by a beautifully-carved columned bed and sculpted
Renaissance buffet. The only disadvantage that one could find when recommending
a Renaissance bedroom over a Louis XV or a Louis XVI one was the impracticality
of sculptures, which were veritable dust-traps requiring many hands for cleaning.84
Therefore, it did not matter what theme or style one chose for the decoration of a
specific room. What did matter was the accuracy in reproducing the period style of the
time and the place chosen. Thus, though ‘masculine’ rooms (dining room, office, smok-
ing room) were allegedly more sombre (and usually thought to be decorated in Gothic,
Henri II, Louis XIII, or the styles of the Italian Renaissance), and ‘feminine’ rooms (salon,
boudoir, bedroom) lighter (decorated in Louis XIV, Louis XV, or Louis XVI styles), no
clear-cut separation was made between them in terms of decoration.85 What scholars
have interpreted as a gendered divide in terms of interior decorating styles was actually
informed by personal preferences or practical considerations such as cleaning. Thus,
even though the hallway was seen as the ‘preface’ of the household, and as the single
room which informed the visitor of the social status, character, fortune and taste of the
apartment’s owner, it could be decorated in any style, ranging from the sobriety of the
Renaissance and the Louis XIII styles to the pomposity of Louis XIV, the rococo frivolity
of Louis XV, or even the neoclassical severity of the Louis XVI style.86

Agreement was, however, not easily reached, since some advisors wanted to push
historical authenticity to its limits. If the artist and decorator G. Félix Lenoir suggested
that the salon could be decorated in all styles and fashions, ‘the correct rendering of
which makes the originality or style of value,’87 Henry Havard argued that some styles
did not fit as well in any room. For example, in a feudal mansion from the Middle
Ages, or in an antique villa, there had been no such thing as a reception room. Only

Anca I. Lasc
11
with the beginning of the reign of François I, when women finally had access to the
court, would one witness the birth of the salon as understood in the nineteenth cen-
tury.88 ‘Let’s limit to the last three centuries,’ Havard explained, ‘the series of mod-
els and examples borrowed from past epochs’ that could serve as patterns for this
room.89 Similarly, given that one would rarely have encountered bathrooms during the
Renaissance, the seventeenth, or even the eighteenth centuries, when running water
was still a luxury and one relied on one’s servants to provide it (if one washed at all), it
made no sense to decorate nineteenth-century bathrooms in royal styles. The Roman
thermal hot springs or the Turkish baths would provide better examples if one wanted
to maintain a semblance of historical precision.90

If historical accuracy was desirable in the salon and the bathroom, it was no less
desirable in the billiard room or in the smoking room. According to the Comtesse de
Bassanville, the smoking room was better set off by furniture, carpets and upholstery
designed in an Eastern style, as it was in the East that one could ‘better comprehend
the appeal of dreams created amidst clouds of tobacco smoke.’91 Furthermore, should

Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012

one choose the fashionable Japanese style for the billiard room, one committed a seri-
ous anachronism: ‘Billiards has not really been a game that flourished in the provinces
of Mikado. Louis XIII, enamoured with this game, could easily become upset by this
choice.’92 The author thus recommended the style of Louis XIII for this room, if one had
not already used it for another chamber such as the dining-room.93

One was discouraged to repeat the same style more than once in the decoration of dif-
ferent rooms belonging to one apartment. As Mme Daniel Lesueur would later empha-
size, should one choose the eighteenth century for the petit salon, one could reserve
the Louis XIV style or that of the Renaissance for the salon.94 Only when the two rooms
were contiguous, and opened up as a single large room, should they be decorated
in the same style.95 The specific attention paid to what style could go in each room
pointed not only to a preference for historical accuracy in decoration but also to a
desire to not repeat the same theme twice. As it generally made no sense for a collector
to possess objects that were alike, so it made no sense for the nineteenth-century indi-
vidual who decorated his or her home to have two rooms in the same style. Thus, one
can easily conclude that decorating was at the time a specific kind of collecting, but
one which was concerned with the whole apartment or house rather than with each
object displayed in part. One collected the world as much as one collected the past or
worlds of fiction; and one created a museum of themes and styles in one’s home as a
sequence of all-surrounding environments.

Henry Havard evoked the impression that nineteenth-century private interiors made
on contemporary viewers when he stated that an apartment allowed the dining room
to contradict the salon, thus creating the impression of crossing two centuries when
moving from one room to the next.96 Seen as a ‘disorderly passion’ that had taken over
the Parisian population in the aftermath of the 1848 Revolution and the installation
of the Second Empire, this desire to have a Medieval, a Renaissance, a Louis XIV, Louis
XV, Louis XVI, as well as a Neo-Greek environment in one’s apartment transformed
nineteenth-century apartments into private collections of some sort.97 ‘It is not [. . .]
the inspiration found in a particular moment from the past that constitutes the dis-
tinctive character of our epoch,’ Havard continued; rather, ‘it is the fact of not having
renounced [. . .] any of our earlier preoccupations; of having brought into the present
not two, not three, but five or six styles that respond more or less precisely to our per-
sonal needs.’98 So the nineteenth-century home functioned like a meta-collection, just
like the universal expositions did.

Interior Decorating in the Age of Historicism

12

Fig 2.  É. Bajot, Les Styles dans
la maison française [The Styles
in the French Home], Librairie
d’art industriel et d’économie
domestique d’Édouard
Rouveyre, Paris, c. 1889, Plate
VI: ‘Bibliothèque—Fin du
Gothique, Époque Louis XI’
[‘Late-Gothic Library, Louis XI
Era’]. Archive: Public domain.
Reproduced with permission
from Columbia University Library
Anca I. Lasc
The pattern books of Édouard Bajot (1853–1900s)
The furniture designer (architecte d’ameublement) Édouard Bajot (1853–1900s)
adhered to these rules when imagining decorative schemes for private interiors. His
work stands out as an example of how the theoretical guidelines described in advice
manuals on collecting and decorating might have found practical applications. Starting
in the 1880s and continuing until the early 1900s, Bajot published numerous volumes
dedicated to interior decoration and design, including a series of books illustrating
historic ornaments for architects and decorators,99 a comprehensive three-volume
encyclopaedia of furniture from the fifteenth century to his present day,100 and a col-
lection of nineteenth-century art furniture inspired by original historic sources,101 as
well as several pattern books of room ensembles dedicated to the interior decoration of
the private home.102 From fifteenth-century decorative schemes to nineteenth-century
ones, including Art Nouveau, Bajot’s designs for room settings paid attention to every
detail of decoration, while always focusing on the ensemble as a whole. The success
of his publications is confirmed not only by their circulation and translation into other
Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012
languages such as English, but also, and more importantly perhaps, by the publication
of later, modified editions of these books.103
Available in several formats, with illustrations ranging from cheaper wood engravings
to the more expensive phototypies, which mechanically reproduced the artist’s draw-
ings without the interference of a printmaker’s hand,104 and to the even more lavish
and costly, hand-coloured special editions,105 Bajot’s books were dedicated to a varied
public, including architects, decorators, upholsterers, furniture-makers, artists, ama-
teurs, bibliophiles and other interested parties. An advertisement for Bajot’s c. 1884
Intérieurs d’appartements meublés (Interiors for Furnished Apartments) describes the
appeal of such publications, in the advice they could provide to both decorators
and their clients. According to the advertisement, the book’s interior views of dining
rooms, libraries, bedrooms and salons, all reduced to the
same scale of one to ten for easier comprehension, ‘will
initiate the furniture maker and the upholsterer, as well as
their client in the impression that an apartment executed
in a specific historic style should give.’106 Publishing houses
prided in such publications due to their inclusion of lesser-
known old furniture pieces taken from public museums and
private collections, in the drawing of which Bajot was an
expert.
Bajot’s Les Styles dans la maison française (The Styles in the
French Home) of c. 1889 was a practical book, which pre-
sented interior ensembles and furniture details together, in
one publication. For each general view of a room-setting,
such as plate VI, a ‘Bibliothèque Fin du Gothique’ (‘Late-
Gothic Library’) [2] corresponded details of the individual
furniture objects or decorative fixtures that composed that
room. Thus, plate IV illustrated the sculpted-oak decora-
tion on either side of the table, the frieze-like relief deco-
ration of the monumental fireplace, the high-backrested
chair, and the wrought-iron firedog (nos 8–11, respectively);
while plate V [3] included details for the sculpted oak stool,
the wood panelling, the oak dresser, a sculpture base and
an iron support for a wall-light. A  craftsman or interior
13
decorator working from Bajot’s models could thus have eas-
ily manufactured or commissioned any of these items and
could have included them in his own work so as to create
a historically-accurate, themed architectural ensemble. The
book operated as a practical guide and visually illustrated
how the theoretical principles set forth in writing by deco-
rating advisors could be applied to real interiors. By 1893,
when the publishing house of Édouard Rouveyre partici-
pated at the World’s Fair in Chicago, Bajot’s Les Styles dans
la maison française had achieved the status of a classic. Its
value was compared to that of Henry Havard’s Grammaire
de l’ameublement, which, as we have already seen, was
recommended reading for all parties interested in home
decorating.107

While Bajot’s Les Styles dans la maison française did not

initially incorporate text alongside images, a later 1898 edi-

Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012

tion of this book, entitled Du Choix et de la disposition des
ameublements de style (Of the Choice and Arrangement
of Furnishings in Various Styles), included a small textual
description of each interior ensemble rendered. Also pub-
lished by Édouard Rouveyre, who might have maintained
some publication rights over Bajot’s plates, Du Choix et de
la disposition des ameublements de style presented illus-
trations that Charles Kreutzberger copied from Les Styles
dans la maison française and improved upon.108 The inno-
vations brought by Kreutzberger’s edition, however, can
be found in the textual explanations that it provided for
Bajot’s choices of the various furniture pieces and decora-
Fig 3.  É. Bajot, Les Styles dans
tive objects displayed in his imaginary interiors. We thus la maison française, c. 1889,
find out how, with each illustration, the imagined décor reflected the realities of the Plate IV: ‘Bibliothèque—Fin du
time-period the artist attempted to recreate. In our example of the library ‘Fin du Gothique, Époque Louis XI’
Gothique’ manuscript-holders were employed instead of modern shelves. There was [‘Late-Gothic Library, Louis XI
no need for a more complex piece of furniture to store books when the latter did not Era’]—details. Archive: Public
domain. Reproduced with
yet exist and when, besides engravings, manuscripts were the single main elements permission from Columbia
of a library.109 A cabinet with shutters, as the image showed, would have provided University Library
enough storage-space for such holdings [2]. The writing-desk, on the other hand,
was indispensable—not least because the reader, none other than the nineteenth-
century head of the household, was also going to be, like his medieval predeces-
sor, a well-versed manuscript ‘illuminator’.110 Bajot reserved the tallest chair in the
room, not shown in the image but prescribed as a necessary component of the
interior ensemble and included in the details, for the host, or the maître of house.
For guests, a smaller-sized bench, barely visible in the lower left-hand corner, could
be moved around at will.111 The text thus described the decorator’s intention of
transposing both visitors and hosts into an imaginary world of the past, where one’s
daily habits and social interactions had to change accordingly. Interiors directed their
owners on how to behave.
Should a medieval theme not seem satisfactory for a modern library, the nineteenth-
century home owner could choose to have this room decorated in a different style.
Indeed, Bajot carefully provided other examples throughout his book, thus offering
decorating alternatives. A library in the style of the Renaissance from the era of François
I  served as a counterpart to the medieval library discussed above [4]. If no shelves

Interior Decorating in the Age of Historicism

14

Fig 4.  É. Bajot, Les Styles dans
la maison française, c. 1889,
Plate XV: ‘Bibliothèque—Style
Renaissance, Époque François
Ier’ [‘Renaissance Library, Francis
I Era’]. Archive: Public domain.
Reproduced with permission
from Columbia University Library
Anca I. Lasc
were allowed in the Gothic interior, two large bookcases now
stood on each side of the reading-desk, with books carefully
arranged behind the two drop-down curtains that protected
them. With the invention of the printing press in the 1440s,
the reader was told, manuscripts had become a thing of the
past. Scribes, copyists and illuminators had much less work
to do; and reading began to take precedence over writing.
Books thus began to line up on shelves, and appropriate
book-cases replaced manuscript-holders.112
Louis XV was yet another style that Bajot proposed for a
modern library [5]. Rather than protected by a mere set of
curtains, shelves of books were now layered behind glass
doors; and the host, rather than a mere ‘illuminator’, was a
man of taste—an enlightened, encyclopaedic soul, like his
eighteenth-century predecessor had been. His knowledge
covered all fields of the arts and sciences, including philoso-
Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012
phy, metaphysics and even archaeology, and his library had
to accommodate the numerous books that encompassed
these disparate bodies of knowledge.113 Here, too, the
secret of providing a realistic experience of an eighteenth-
century environment lay in the details. It did not suffice to
own a large number of books carefully placed in a histori-
cally-accurate setting, curvilinear rococo-style furniture and
highly-decorated wood panelling included. Rather, books
had to be supplemented by ‘exquisite miniatures’ and ‘venerable art relics’, as well
as by ‘medals and jewelry [.  . .] from exotic countries’, all hidden away in draw-
ers and dens, which maintained a sense of secrecy.114 An accurate Louis XV library
décor, therefore, also had to include things from far-away lands, which permitted the
Gothic illuminator of before to become an amateur collector. What in our eyes today
might seem an eclectic interior that mixed rococo objects with antiques and oriental
pieces was only a reiteration of an accurate French eighteenth-century room for a
nineteenth-century home owner.
The colour of the epoch was thus introduced in even the smallest details. Whoever
desired to display a Renaissance or a Gothic library in his or her home had to be well-
versed in the history of the specific period cited. Before becoming a successful decora-
tor, one had to be a thriving antiquarian. One had to know what kinds of books had
been used and when, what their format had been, as well as how they had been
employed. One had to make concessions to the period chosen and eliminate anachro-
nisms from one’s interior setting: books rarely belonged in a Gothic room dedicated to
manuscripts (if at all) and large folios were usually preferred in a Renaissance-themed
library. Once collectibles were added to the room, the nineteenth-century inhabitant
was imaginarily transported to the age of curiosity and frivolity that characterized the
eighteenth century of philosophers.
Like Rémon shortly after, Bajot, in his c. 1884 publication Intérieurs d’appartements
meublés, employed sculptural reproductions of figures from classical mythology to
render a Louis XIII interior [6]. A  reversed copy of Apollo Belvedere can be seen in
the foreground on the left, while a possible replica of Jean-Antoine Houdon’s much
later marble statue of the Greek goddess Diana (c. 1776) poses as its pendant in the
background.115 The Renaissance obsession with antiquity and classical mythology
was thus reflected in this nineteenth-century remake of an interior from that epoch.
15
For the nineteenth-century inhabitant of such an interior it
did not matter that neither of these two works belonged
to the Renaissance. While Apollo Belvedere was a classi-
cal work rediscovered during the Renaissance and consid-
ered to be one of Antiquity’s most accomplished artworks
throughout the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries,
Houdon’s sculpture was an eighteenth-century work that
only had in common with the Renaissance the fascination
with classical mythology. By referencing classical mythology
in a Renaissance setting, however, Bajot stayed within the
chosen style, thus avoiding blatant anachronisms. His work
thus respected the theoretical prescriptions imposed by deco-
rating advisors, and, while seemingly eclectic, it nevertheless
obeyed their rules and regulations.

In an attempt to provide models for successful recreations

Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012

of historic or exotic settings, a plethora of books was pub-
lished in the last quarter of nineteenth-century France. Interior
design schemes often maintained the general impression of a
single chosen theme all throughout. Decorators created the
semblance of a past time through allusion to its specific art-
works, architectural buildings, intellectual pursuits, or collect-
ing practices. Such references, including copies of well-known
works of art, used a visual language that was already familiar
to those who visited public spaces such as museums or univer- Fig 5.  É. Bajot, Les Styles dans
la maison française, c. 1889,
sal exhibitions, or who read about private collections in the illustrated press. If the reader
Plate XLII: ‘Bibliothèque—
of interior decoration pattern books such as those by Édouard Bajot did not immediately Style Louis XV (XVIIIe siècle)’
recognize the style or the theme of the room proposed through the style of the carpets, [‘Louis XV Library (Eighteenth
window hangings, or wallpaper employed, familiar imagery or reductions of famous Century)’]. Archive: Public
sculptures offered cues about the correct period the interior attempted to recreate. domain. Reproduced with
permission from Columbia
University Library

Conclusion
A fevered discussion was taking place in the literature on collecting and decorating
at the time—whether dedicated to men or to women—about what kinds of objects
should be used in a specific interior, how they should be used and when. Taste instruc-
tors debated the role and quality of imitations, argued over the latter’s suitability in
the home, and tried to establish when and where such objects were allowed, if at
all. When studied in their original context, rather than being unconditionally eclectic,
interior decoration designs present themselves as accurate renditions of historically-
remote or exotic spaces that could be collected in private apartments. Without neces-
sarily acknowledging it openly, educators were both contesting and complementing
each other’s arguments. The printed medium of the book proved to be a fertile ground
for such discussions, thus establishing the common theoretical grounds of the late
nineteenth-century popular visual culture of interior decorating. Thinking about the
nineteenth-century practice of interior decorating in non-gender specific terms allows
us not only to recognize the permeability of boundaries between collecting and deco-
rating at the time but also to understand the complexities of interior décor in a culture
overwhelmed by an abundance of goods. A new aesthetic was being developed in
the collecting and decorating manuals of the second half of the nineteenth century,
which was less about the past and more about the present. Conversations always kept

Interior Decorating in the Age of Historicism

16
Fig 6.  É. Bajot, Intérieurs
d’appartements meublés, vus
en perspective dans les styles du
XVe au XVIIe siècles [Interiors
for Furnished Apartments, Seen
in Perspective in Fifteenth to
Seventeenth Century Styles],
Librairie spéciale des arts
industriels et décoratifs Ch.
Claesen, Liège & Paris, c. 1884,
Plate 8: ‘Cabinet d’amateur,
Louis XIII’ [‘An Amateur’s Study-
Room, Louis XIII’]. Archive:
Public domain. Reproduced with
permission from University of
California Berkeley

Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012

an eye on the theatricality of the rooms, the accurate rendition of another world or
period style, as well as on the creation of holistic design schemes that could promote
imaginary time-travel through interior decoration. Decorators and furniture designers
like Georges Rémon and Édouard Bajot helped give these theories visual form, thus
proposing to the late nineteenth-century public decorating schemes that abided by
the rules advisors established in writing. Rather than a superficial activity that resulted
in random associations of objects in space, interior decorating in the age of historicism
was, as I hope to have showed, a complex matter that deserves further attention from
present-day scholarship.

Anca I. Lasc
Department of Art and Design, Shippensburg University, Shippensburg, PA, USA
E-mail: alasc@ship.edu

Dr Anca I.  Lasc is Assistant Professor of Art and Design History at Shippensburg
University. Her work focuses on the invention and commercialization of the modern
French interior and on the development of the new profession of interior designer in
the nineteenth century. She has published in Interiors: Design, Architecture, Culture,
and has presented at numerous conferences, including those organized by the College
Art Association, the Society of Architectural Historians and the Society for French
Historical Studies. In addition to the modern interior, Lasc’s research also studies the art
of commercial window dressing in nineteenth-century France and America.

If you have any comments to make in relation to this article, please go to the journal website on
http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org and access this article. There is a facility on the site for sending e-mail
responses to the editorial board and other readers.

‍‍
Acknowledgements: I would like to thank my Ph.D. advisor, Vanessa R. Schwartz, for her valuable
feedback and relentless energy in pushing this project forward. I would also like to thank Roxane
Debuisson and Florence Quignard-Debuisson, as well as the staff of the Bibliothèque Forney, the

Anca I. Lasc
17
Musée d’Orsay, the Bibliothèque des arts décoratifs and the Winterthur Library for their help with
the research process. The Society of Architectural Historians and the Nineteenth Century Studies
Association have provided me with amazing forums in which to present my work in front of an
academic community. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from French are my own.
Notes
1 G. Rémon, Intérieurs d’appartements modernes, E. Thézard
Fils, Dourdan, c. 1892. I  have determined the book’s
approximate publication based on C. Krantz, Rapports sur
l’Exposition internationale de Chicago en 1893: Comité
34, Imprimerie et Librairie—Cartographie, Imprimerie
Nationale, Paris, 1894. The Librairie spéciale d’architecture
E.  Thézard Fils is listed as having sent Rémon’s Intérieurs
d’appartements modernes as part of its exhibit. Moreover,
the Winterthur Library owns a copy of Rémon’s book that
was signed and dated by the British architect W. F. (William
Frederick) Randall in 1892. For more information about
the age of historicism and its effects on interior decora-
tion in nineteenth-century France see Un Âge d’or des
arts décoratifs, 1814–1848, Galeries nationales du Grand
Palais, Paris, 10 octobre–30 décembre 1991, Réunion des
Musées Nationaux (exh. cat.), Paris, 1991. For a key text
about the development of a new interest in history at the
same time, see S.  Bann, The Clothing of Clio: A  Study of
the Representation of History in Nineteenth-Century Britain
and France, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge & New
York, 1984.
2 Like Alexandre-Eugène Prignot, Henri Alphonse Rémon
had also been a student of Cicéri. At the time when Henri
Alphonse Rémon was in England, Prignot was also working
there, most notably for the furnishing firm of Jackson and
Graham. See the entry on ‘Alexandre Eugène Prignot’, in
U.  Thieme & F.  Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden
Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Verlag von E. A.
Seemann, Leipzig, vol. 27, 1933, pp. 401–2, as well as the
entry on Henri Alphonse Rémon in Thieme & Becker, op.
cit., vol. 28, 1934, p.  149. For an extensive biography of
Cicéri, see C. Join-Diéterle, Les Décors de scène de l’Opéra
de Paris à l’époque romantique, Picard, Paris, 1988, espe-
cially p.  260; and for Cicéri’s birth and death dates, see
the Getty Union List of Artist Names, <http://www.getty.
edu/vow/ULANFullDisplay?find=Ciceri&role=&nation=&p
rev_page=1&subjectid=500028495> accessed 1 September
2011. For more information on Prignot, see O. Gabet, ‘Le XIX
siècle, l’âge d’or de l’ornemaniste’, in L’Objet et son double:
Dessins d’arts décoratifs des collections du Musée d’Orsay,
Musée d’Orsay, Paris, 2006, p. 13. Also see entry no. 157 on
Rémon in the 1885 Architecture section of the official Paris
Salon, in Les Catalogues des Salons, P. Sanchez & X. Seydoux
(eds), vol. 14, Echelle de Jacob, Paris, 1999–2010.
3 Rémon’s publications include Soixante planches de peinture
décorative, Librairie spéciale d’architecture, É. Thézard fils,
18
Dourdan, c. 1880–1900, La Décoration de style, E. Thézard,
Dourdan, 1900s, and Intérieurs d’appartements modernes,
all published by É. Thézard.
4 M. Le Corbeiller, Musée centennal des classes 66, 69, 70,
71, 97: Mobilier et décoration à l’Exposition universelle
internationale de 1900, à Paris, Rapport de la commission
d’installation, Impr. Belin, Saint-Cloud, 1900.
5 For an account of the Venus de Milo’s discovery in 1820
see W. Tufts Brigham, Cast Catalogue of Antique Sculpture:
Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012
Illustrated by Photographs with an Introduction to the Study
of Ornament, Lee Shepard & Co, Boston, 1874.
6 R.  G. Saisselin, The Bourgeois and the Bibelot, Rutgers
University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, 1984, p. 68.
7 Ibid.
8 On French eclecticism in interior decoration see Saisselin, op.
cit.; G.  Badea-Päun, Le Style Second Empire: Architecture,
décors et art de vivre, Citadelles et Mazenod, Paris, 2009;
O. Nouvel-Kammerer, Le Mobilier Français: Napoléon III, années
1880, Éditions Massin, Paris, 1996; and J. Watson, Literature
and Material Culture from Balzac to Proust: The Collection
and Consumption of Curiosities, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge & New York, 1999. On French eclecticism in
architecture, see J.-P. Épron, Comprendre l’éclectisme, Institut
Français d’Architecture/Norma Editions, Paris, 1997.
9 R. Rich, ‘Designing the Dinner Party: Advice on Dining and
Décor in London and Paris, 1860–1914’, Journal of Design
History, vol. 16, no. 1, 2003, pp. 49–61, explains how any
form of advice literature, regardless of whether it came in
the form of written advice manuals or illustrated pattern
books, should be considered as a source for understand-
ing the ideal rather than the reality in interior decoration.
For more information on the various types of advice lit-
erature for the home, as well as their status between fact
and fiction, advice and advertising, production and con-
sumption, see also G. Lees-Maffei, ‘Introduction: Studying
Advice: Historiography, Methodology, Commentary,
Bibliography’, Journal of Design History, vol. 16, no.  1,
2003, pp. 1–14.
10 For the development of interior design themes that were
non-historic and non-exotic, but nevertheless followed similar
decorative principles, see A. I. Lasc, ‘Le Juste Milieu: Alexandre
Sandier, Theming, and Eclecticism in French Interiors of the
Nineteenth Century’, Interiors: Design, Architecture, Culture,
vol. 2, no. 3, November 2011, pp. 277–305.
Interior Decorating in the Age of Historicism
11 The architect Joel Sanders, ‘Curtain Wars: Architects,
Decorators, and the 20th-Century Domestic Interior’,
Harvard Design Magazine, Winter/Spring 2002, pp. 14–20,
has pointed out how profound social anxieties about gen-
der and sexuality have separated interior decorating (the
affair of women) also from architecture (a manly pursuit).
Indeed, current scholarship on interior decorating still
defines the first professional interior decorators as women.
See A.  Massey, Interior Design of the Twentieth Century,
Thames & Hudson, London & New York, 2001, especially ch.
5, ‘The Emergence of Interior Decoration as a Profession’. In
another publication, Massey explicitly connects the profu-
sion of upholstery and cloth in nineteenth-century homes
to a feminine influence in interior decoration, with women’s
tastes seen as closer to nature than culture. See A. Massey,
Chair, Reaktion Books, London, 2011, p.  109. A  similar
view is also shared by P. Sparke, Elsie De Wolfe: The Birth
of Modern Interior Decoration, Acanthus Press, New York,
2005, who identifies Elsie de Wolfe (1865–1950) as the first
professional interior decorator.
12 L. Auslander, Taste and Power: Furnishing Modern France,
University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles &
London, 1996, pp. 278, 295–302.
13 Ibid.
14 Auslander asserts (op. cit., p.  301): ‘Consumption for the
self, understood to be some kind of autoeroticism, was to
be reserved for men.’
15 Ibid., p. 302.
16 D.  Cohen, Household Gods: The British and Their
Possessions, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2006. The
separation of spheres has been challenged by a number
of scholars, most notably by S. Marcus, Apartment Stories:
City and Home in Nineteenth-Century Paris and London,
University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles &
London, 1999, who has pointed out continuities between
private and public spaces in nineteenth-century apartment
buildings, and A.  Friedberg, Window Shopping: Cinema
and the Postmodern, University of California Press, Berkeley,
Los Angeles & London, 1994, who has traced the presence
of the female flâneuse in the public realm; however, men’s
roles in French homes still need to be more fully under-
stood. Like Auslander, W.  Walton, France at the Crystal
Palace: Bourgeois Taste and Artisan Manufacture in the
Nineteenth Century, University of California Press, Berkeley,
Los Angeles & London, 1992, and L. Tiersten, Marianne in
the Market: Envisioning Consumer Society in Fin-de-Siècle
France, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles &
London, 2001, also portray decorators as women and collec-
tors as unmarried men. The work of Katherine M. Kuenzli is
an important exception. In her book, The Nabis and Intimate
Modernism: Painting and the Decorative at the Fin-de-Siècle,
Ashgate, Farnham, England, & Burlington, VT, 2010, Kuenzli
Anca I. Lasc
challenges binaries such as masculine/feminine and private/
public by focusing on a group of fin-de-siècle male artists
who consistently worked as decorators for the private realm.
17 In her book on Art Nouveau, Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Siècle
France: Politics, Psychology, and Style, University of California
Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles & London, 1989, historian of
France Debora Silverman is one of the few scholars to have
clearly articulated the connections between collecting and
decorating in nineteenth-century France, by pointing out
the importance of harmonious interior ensembles. She,
however, draws her conclusions from the private collection
and interior decorating schemes of the brothers Edmond
and Jules de Goncourt, two Parisian dandies who limited
their collecting and decorating vocabulary to the eighteenth
century. Another exception is the work of Elizabeth Emery
and Laura Morowitz, who clearly connect collecting and
Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012
interior decorating in a chapter titled ‘From the Living Room
to the Museum and Back Again: The Institutionalization
of Medieval Art’, in Consuming the Past: The Medieval
Revival in Fin-De-Siècle France, Ashgate, Farnham, England
& Burlington, VT, 2003. Emery & Morowitz, op. cit., p.  8,
connect the medievalesque décor of wealthy apartment
dwellers with private collections such as those of Alexandre
du Sommerard at Cluny. While they acknowledge the reani-
mation of other styles and themes from the past in private
dwellings at the time, the authors choose to focus on medi-
eval revivals since, they argue, medievalism appealed to a
variety of social groups in a way that other eras did not.
18 Watson, op. cit., p. 58.
19 Ibid., pp. 64–5. Watson defines the ‘artistic interior’ as ‘an
intimate interior focalized on a highly subjective total artistic
experience’.
20 T. Stammers, ‘The Bric-à-Brac of the Old Regime: Collecting
and Cultural History in Post-revolutionary France’, French
History, vol. 22, no. 3, September 2008, p. 314, also asserts
that ‘the new opportunities for collecting and thinking
about the bric-à-brac of history’ should be counted among
the legacies of the 1789 Revolution.
21 See R.  H. Williams, Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in
Late Nineteenth-Century France, University of California
Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles & London, 1982, p. 4.
22 Ibid., p. 10.
23 See A.  Luchet, ‘Les Arts Parisiens: Le Meuble’, in
Ornemenation usuelle de toutes les époques dans les arts
industriels et en architecture, R. Pfnor (ed.), E. Devienne et
Cie, Paris, vol. 16, 1 October 1867, p. 28.
24 See É. Pommier, L’Art de la liberté: Doctrines et débats de
la Revolution française, Gallimard, Paris, 1991; D.  Poulot,
‘Surveiller et s’instruire’: La Révolution française et
l’intelligence de l’héritage historique, Voltaire Foundation,
Oxford, 1996; and E. Naginski, ‘The Object of Contempt’,
19
 in Yale French Studies: Fragments of Revolution, H. G. Lay &
C. Weber (eds), vol. 101, 2002, pp. 32–53.
25 The king had the various chambers in châteaux from the
ancien régime restored in their original styles or, as Leora
Auslander, op. cit., p. 163, explains, in styles deemed appro-
priate ‘to the different functions of the rooms.’.
26 R.  Haaff, Louis-Philippe Möbel. Louis-Philippe Furniture:
Bürgerliche Möbel des Historismus. Middle-Class Furniture
of the Historicism, Arnoldsche, Stuttgart, 2004, p. 11.
27 The expression was coined by A. Martin-Fugier, La Vie élé-
gante ou la formation du tout-Paris 1815–1848, Fayard,
Paris, 1990, p. 23.
28 See Martin-Fugier, op. cit., p. 23. Balzac coined the term in
an 1830 article published in La Mode.
29 Turgan, ‘Fabrique d’ameublements en bois massif de MM.
Mazaroz Ribaillier et Cie’, in Les Grandes Usines: Études
industrielles en France et à l’étranger, vol. 5, Michel Lévy
Frères, Paris, 1870, p. 181. Turgan also mentions the contri-
bution of Victor Hugo to the development of the taste for
antiques. See also A. Luchet, ‘Les Arts Parisiens: Le meuble’,
in Pfnor, op. cit., vol. 17, 1 November 1867, p. 35.
30 See Turgan, op. cit., p. 182, who explains that the Maison
Mazaroz et Ribaillier started with repairs and then moved to
the fabrication of outright copies. Department stores also
sold furniture copied after antiques.
31 See E. Bonnaffé, Les Collectionneurs de l’ancienne France:
Notes d’un amateur, Chez Auguste Aubry, Paris, 1873, p. iv.
32 Watson, op. cit., pp. 2, 6.
33 Ibid.
34 The consumption of bibelots, especially when purchased
from department stores, has traditionally been read as a
feminine undertaking. See especially Tiersten, op. cit.
35 Primarily dedicated to a female readership, such manuals
positioned women as the ones responsible for the future
well-being of the nation, including the education of off-
spring and the maintenance of proper aesthetic stand-
ards. For an account of women’s roles in Third Republic
France, see especially E. A. Accampo, R. G. Fuchs & M. L.
Stewart, Gender and the Politics of Social Reform in France,
1870–1914, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore,
1995. For more information on the role of women as inte-
rior decorators, see Tiersten, op. cit., and Walton, op. cit.
36 S.  Blondel, Grammaire de la curiosité (L’Art intime et le
goût en France) (A Grammar of Curiosity (Private Art and
French Taste)), C. Marpon et E. Flammarion, Paris, 1884. For
more information on Spire Blondel, see H. Favrel, ‘Blondel,
Spire’, in Dictionnaire critique des historiens de l’art actifs
en France de la Révolution à la Première Guerre mondiale,
P. Sénéchal & C. Barbillon (eds), INHA, Paris <http://www.
inha.fr/spip.php?article2203> accessed 31 May 2011.
20
37 Blondel, op. cit., p. 1. The quote can be found almost in its
entirety in E.  de Goncourt, La Maison d’un artiste, Ernest
Flammarion, Paris, 1931, reprint [orig. 1881], p. 8. For more
information on Jules and Edmond de Goncourt, see D. Pety,
‘Goncourt, Jules et Edmond (de)’, in Sénéchal & Barbillon, op.
cit., <http://www.inha.fr/spip.php?article2342> accessed 3
May 2011.
38 Blondel, op. cit., p. 5.
39 On the business partnership of Achille Collas and Ferdinand
Barbedienne, see M. Shedd, ‘A Mania for Statuettes: Achille
Collas and Other Pioneers in the Mechanical Reproduction
of Sculpture’, Gazette des beaux-arts, vol. 120, no. 1482–3,
August 1992, pp. 36–48.
40 Blondel, op. cit., pp. 37–38. The Venus de Milo was found in
1820 in an excavation on the island of Milo (ancient Melos)
and entered the Louvre in 1821. See Tufts Brigham, op. cit.
Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012
In 1883, plaster cast reproductions of the original could
be purchased directly from the museum for 140 francs
each, while reproductions of the upper half (the bust) were
available at twelve francs each, and masks of Venus’ face
for only two francs each. See Musée National du Louvre,
Catalogue des moulages en vente au palais du Louvre, pavil-
lon Doru, Imprimerie nationale, Paris, 1883. According to
Tufts Brigham, so widespread was the practice of purchas-
ing reproductions of museum-owned artworks at the time
that such reductions as those of the Venus de Milo could
be ordered even from as far as the United States, either
directly from the Bureau de Vente du Moulage at the Palais
du Louvre, or from private makers of plaster casts such as
Barbedienne or Gherardi in Paris, or Domenico Brucciani in
London, at varying prices depending on size and form. For
an illustration of the Princesse Mathilde’s salon de conversa-
tion, see L’Illustration, 1867.
41 Blondel, op. cit., p. 1.
42 Ibid., p. 12.
43 H.  Havard, Les Arts de l’ameublement: La Décoration,
Charles Delagrave, Paris, c. 1889, p. 4. Henry Havard acted
as inspecteur des beaux-arts from 1887 to 1917. For more
information on Havard, see R.  Froissart-Pezone, ‘Havard,
Henry,’ in Sénéchal & Barbillon, op. cit., <http://www.inha.
fr/spip.php?article2362> accessed 22 September 2010.
44 Auguste Luchet, ‘Les Arts Parisiens: Le Meuble’, in Pfnor,
op. cit., p. 2.
45 Ibid.
46 H.  Havard, L’Art dans la maison (Grammaire de
l’ameublement) (Art in the House (A Grammar of
Furnishings)), 4th edn, Librairie illustrée, Édouard Rouveyre,
Paris, 1883, p. VI. Starting at least with the 1883 edition,
and aiming to reach as wide of an audience as possible,
Havard’s Grammaire was published in fifty instalments,
which could be purchased one at a time, thus dividing the
Interior Decorating in the Age of Historicism
 total price of the publication throughout time. See Havard,
L’Art dans la maison, op. cit., p. VI. The fifth edition, from
1887, was smaller in format and sold at a cheaper price. It
thus became available to an even larger public than before,
including craftsmen and the working classes in general. As
the introduction stated, ‘when one thinks of the expensive
mistakes it [this book] could prevent and the futile expenses
it can help avoid, one will undoubtedly find its purchase
price to be [.  . .] out of proportion with the innumerable
services that the book can provide’ (Havard, L’Art dans la
maison, op. cit., p.  VI). Havard’s L’Art dans la maison also
served as a model for Blondel’s 1884 Grammaire de la curi-
osité. See Blondel, op. cit., p. 1.
47 J.  Deville, Dictionnaire du tapissier critique et historique de
l’ameublement français depuis les temps anciens jusqu’à nos
jours (The Upholsterer’s Critical and Historic Dictionary of
French Furnishings since Antiquity to Today), C. Claesen, Paris,
Lièges & Berlin, 1878–1880, p. 239. The original quote reads:
‘à toute décoration il faut partir d’un style ou d’un principe.’
Havard, L’Art dans la maison, op. cit., p. 218. Havard’s origi-
nal quote read: ‘La beauté dans la décoration, résultant de
l’introduction de la variété dans l’unité, toute décoration bien
comprise, doit procéder d’un point de départ unique.’ For
more information on Deville, see X. Bonnet, ‘Deville, Jules,’
in Sénéchal & Barbillon, op. cit., <http://www.inha.fr/spip.
php?article2283> accessed 31 May 2011.
48 See Havard, L’Art dans la maison, op. cit., p. 218.
49 Ibid., p. 221.
50 Ibid.
51 The artist’s studio, the collector’s interior, the petit salon,
and the boudoir were exceptions to this rule. It would
be interesting to note, however, that the bourgeois was
already following a certain ‘principle’ of decoration when
trying to recreate the atmosphere of an artist’s studio or a
collector’s interior in his house. For a discussion about how
these rooms affected interior decorating towards the end of
the nineteenth century, see Lasc, op. cit.
52 Deville, op. cit., p. 240.
53 A. Lebrun, Comtesse de Bassanville, L’Art de bien tenir une
maison, A. Broussois, Paris, 1878.
54 See A.  Lebrun, Comtesse de Bassanville, Le Trésor de la
maison: Guide des femmes économes, P.  Brumet, Paris,
1867), and A.  Lebrun, Comtesse de Bassanville, Le Trésor
de la Maison, Seconde partie: Guide des mères de famille,
P.  Brunet, Paris, 1868; see also L.  d’Alq, La Science de la
vie: Conseils et réflexions à l’usage de tous. Nouvelle édi-
tion, corrigée et augmentée. La seule autorisée par l’auteur,
Bureaux des Causeries Familières, Paris, c. 1882. Mme d’Alq
was the alias of Marie de Saverny, according to M. Vernes,
‘Bric-à-brac de l’art industriel’, in Divagations, Orléans,
Éditions HYX, 2000, p. 195. Other authors of such studies
Anca I. Lasc
are: Mme Th. Alcan, known as the Vicomtesse Nacla, the
Baronne Staffe, Mme Daniel Lesueur, Mme Pariset, etc.
55 De Bassanville, L’Art de bien tenir une maison, op. cit.,
p. 83. The original quote reads: ‘Adoptez donc une époque
et restez-y complétement fidèle.’
56 Ibid., p. 83.
57 Blondel, op. cit., p. 350.
58 Mme D. Lesueur, Pour bien tenir sa maison, Pierre Lafitte et
Cie, Paris, 1911, p.  28. Similarly, old furniture demanded
an antique spatial arrangement, which was the only way
to properly distinguish it from its architectural surroundings
and yet make it part and parcel of the whole.
59 See, for example, de Bassanville, L’Art de bien tenir une mai-
son, op. cit., p. 81. Also see H. de Noussanne, Le Goût dans
l’ameublement, Librairie de Firmin-Didot et Cie, Paris, 1896,
Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012
p. 163.
60 See C.  Blanc, Grammaire des arts décoratifs: Décoration
intérieure de la maison, Librairie Renouard, Paris, 1882,
p.  82. Blanc acted as Directeur de l’administration des
beaux-arts between 1848 and 1851 and, again, between
1870 and 1873. For more information on Charles Blanc, see
C.  Barbillon, ‘Blanc, Charles’, in Sénéchal & Barbillon, op.
cit., <http://www.inha.fr/spip.php?article2201> accessed
11 January 2011).
61 Lesueur, op. cit., p. 28.
62 Vicomtesse Nacla (Mme Th. Alcan), Le Boudoir: Conseils
d’élégance, Librairie Ernest Flammarion, Paris, c. 1896,
pp. 245–7.
63 Ibid. As Nacla pointed out, the ancient fabrics, draperies
and dresses Louis XV or Louis XVI could very well be imi-
tated by skilled artisans, but these imitations could not be
sold for antiques.
64 See A. Jacquemart, Histoire du mobilier: Recherches et notes
sur les objets d’art qui peuvent composer l’ameublement
et les collections de l’homme du monde et du curieux,
Librairie Hachette et Cie, Paris, 1876. For more information
on Albert Jacquemart, see L. Tilliard, ‘Jacquemart, Albert’,
in Sénéchal & Barbillon, op. cit., <http://www.inha.fr/spip.
php?article2372>, accessed 31 May 2011, which I  have
not had the chance to read. For more information on
Henry Barbet de Jouy, see G. Bresc-Bautier, ‘Barbet de Jouy,
Henry’, in Sénéchal & Barbillon, op. cit., <http://www.inha.
fr/spip.php?article2180> accessed 31 May 2011.
65 As opposed to ‘décoration fixe’, which was part of the archi-
tecture, the ‘décoration mobile’ was not literally attached to
it. It comprises the furniture and any other objects of deco-
ration. See Havard, L’Art dans la maison, op. cit., especially
pp. 219–20.
66 Jacquemart, op. cit., p. 20.
21
67 M.  Dobie, ‘Orientalism, Colonialism, and Furniture in
Eighteenth-Century France’, in D. Goodman and K. Norberg
(eds), Furnishing the Eighteenth Century: What Furniture Can
Tell Us about the European and American Past, Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group, New York & London, 2007, pp. 13–36.
68 Ibid, pp. 19–20.
69 Ibid., p. 20.
70 Jacquemart, op. cit., pp. 24–5.
71 See de Bassanville, L’Art de bien tenir une maison, op. cit.,
p. 115.
72 Ibid.
73 Ibid., p. 116.
74 For an account of larger tendencies in interior decorating in
the West, see S. Muthesius, The Poetic Home: Designing the
19th-Century Domestic Interior, Thames & Hudson, London
& New York, 2009.
75 A. Simoneton, La Décoration intérieure, La Décoration inté-
rieure, Paris, 1893–1895.
76 When focusing on American interiors, Kristin Hoganson has
pointed out how the American bourgeoisie made a con-
scientious effort to stage the world in their private interi-
ors in order to claim a certain cosmopolitanism. The 1882
Chicago house of Bertha Honoré Palmer, for instance,
included a Spanish music room, an English dining room, a
Moorish ballroom and a Flemish library, as well as French
and Chinese drawing rooms and an Egyptian bedroom.
See K.  Hoganson, ‘Cosmopolitan Domesticity: Importing
the American Dream, 1865–1920’, The American Historical
Review, vol. 107, no. 1, February 2002, pp. 55–83.
77 Mrs H. R. Haweis, The Art of Decoration, Chatto & Windus,
Piccadilly, London, 1881, p. 28.
78 Ibid.
79 Ibid., pp. 28–9.
80 Ibid., p. 201.
81 Ibid., pp. 202–3.
82 Ibid., p. 204.
83 Ibid.
84 See de Noussanne, op. cit., pp. 167, 168.
85 Auslander, op. cit., p. 280, argues the opposite: ‘The most
“public” of rooms, the dining room, was almost always fur-
nished if not in Henri II then in Louis XIII. Because Henri II
and Louis XIII were explicitly defined as masculine, they were
also often seen in a study (by definition masculine), but very
rarely in a bedroom or boudoir (by definition feminine).’ Also
see J. Kinchin, ‘Interiors: Nineteenth-Century Essays on the
“Masculine” and the “Feminine” Room,’ in The Gendered
Object, P.  Kirkham (ed.), Manchester University Press,
Manchester, 1996, pp.  12–29. More recently, Katherine
22
M. Kuenzli has convincingly argued that the Nabis’ decora-
tive work consistently blurred the boundaries between mas-
culine and feminine spaces inside the home. Kuenzli explains
(op. cit., p. 13): ‘their [the Nabis’] idiom remains the same
whether they painted for a man or a woman, for a space
given over to intellectual work or to a morning toilette. This
essential sameness suggests a new understanding of the
home as a totality in which social and gender identities were
deemed irrelevant to aesthetic experience.’
86 Havard, L’Art dans la maison, op. cit., pp. 301–2.
87 G. F. Lenoir, Practical and Theoretical Treatise on Decorative
Hangings or Guide to Upholstery, C.-J. Cassirer (trans.),
E. Lyon-Claesen, Brussels, c. 1890, p. 101.
88 Havard, L’Art dans la maison, op. cit., p. 306.
89 Ibid.
Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012
90 De Noussanne, op. cit., p. 180.
91 Baronne Staffe, La Maîtresse de maison, 29th edn, Victor
Havard, Paris, 1892, p. 46.
92 De Noussanne, op. cit., p. 185.
93 Ibid., pp. 185–6.
94 See Lesueur, op. cit., p. 27: if the eighteenth century was
a good fit for the petit salon—‘one could reserve for the
grand salon the beautiful Louis XIV, Renaissance or Louis XIII
furniture [. . .] .’
95 Ibid., p. 23.
96 H. Havard, Histoire et philosophie des styles (Architecture,
ameublement, décoration) (A History and Philosophy
of Styles (Architecture, Furnishing, Decoration)), vol. 2,
Librairie générale d’architecture et des arts industriels
Charles Schmid, Paris, 1900, p. 682. This very same para-
graph was found earlier in Havard, L’Art dans la maison,
op. cit., p. 2, and has usually been interpreted as evidence
for nineteenth-century eclecticism and pastiche in interior
design. See especially Tiersten, op. cit., p. 79.
97 J.  Deville, Recueil de status et de documents relatifs à la
Corporation des tapissiers de 1258 à 1875 (A Compendium
of Regulations and Documents Regarding the Corporation
of Upholsterers from 1258 to 1875), Imprimerie centrale
des chemins de fer A. Chaix et Cie, Paris, 1875, p. 398.
98 Havard, Histoire et philosophie des styles, op. cit., p. 682.
99 É. Bajot, Frises et moulures ornées: Recueil de documents
de styles Gothique, François Ier, Henri II, Henri III, Henri IV,
Louis XIII, Louis XIV, Louis XV, Louis XVI, Empire, tirés des
principaux musées, palais, châteaux, grandes collections,
etc. (Reliefs and Decorated Mouldings: A Compendium of
Documents in the Gothic, Francis I, Henri II, Henri III, Henri
IV, Louis XIII, Louis XIV, Louis XV, Louis XVI, and Empire
Styles, Taken from the Main Museums, Palaces, Castles,
Important Collections, etc.), Charles Schmid, Paris, ca. 1905;
Interior Decorating in the Age of Historicism
 É. Bajot, Profils et tournages: Recueil de documents de
styles Gothique, François Ier, Henri II, Henri III, Henri IV
etc., Charles Schmid, Paris, 1899; É. Bajot, French Styles
in Furniture and Architecture: 1500 Examples of Structural
and Ornamental Details of Original Work in Gothic,
Francis I, Henri II, Henri III, Henri IV, Louis XIII, Louis XIV,
Louis XV, Louis XVI, Empire, and Modern, Chronologically
Arranged, Paul Wenzel, New York, c. 1890s, very
likely an English-version of Profils et tournages, op. cit.
100 É. Bajot, Encyclopédie du meuble du 15e siècle à nos
jours: Recueil de planches contenant des meubles de style
de toutes les époques et de tous les pays, depuis le XVe
siècle jusqu’à nos jours, classées par ordre alphabétique,
avec une notice historique, 2000 meubles de style repro-
duits à grande échelle (An Encyclopedia of Furniture
from the Fifteenth Century to Today: A  Compendium of
Plates Containing Furniture in the Styles of All Epochs and
All Countries, from the Fifteenth Century up to Today,
Organized Alphabetically, with a Historical Introduction,
2000 Large-Scale Reproductions of Furniture Pieces in
Various Styles), Charles Schmid, Paris, 1901–1909.
101 É. Bajot, Les Meubles d’art au XIXe siècle composés
d’après les documents anciens des principales époques de
la Renaissance (Art Furniture in the Nineteenth Century,
Composed After Old Documents from the Main Eras of
the Renaissance), Librairie artistique, industrielle et litté-
raire de Ch. Juliot, Paris, c. 1886.
102 É. Bajot, Intérieurs d’appartements meublés, vus en per-
spective dans les styles du XVe au XVIIe siècles (Interiors
for Furnished Apartments, Seen in Perspective, in Fifteenth
to Seventeenth Century Styles), Ch. Claesen, Liège &
Paris, c. 1884; É. Bajot, Les Styles dans la maison fran-
çaise: Ornementation et décoration du XVe au XIXe siè-
cle, à l’usage des architectes et décorateurs, tapissiers,
fabricants, artistes et amateurs (The Styles in the French
Home: Ornamentation and Decoration from the Fifteenth
to the Nineteenth Century, for the Use of Architects and
Decorators, Upholsterers, Manufacturers, Artists and
Amateurs), Librairie d’art industriel et d’économie domes-
tique Édouard Rouveyre, Paris, c. 1889; É. Bajot, L’Art
Nouveau: Décoration et ameublement moderne (Art
Nouveau: Modern Furnishings and Decoration), Charles
Schmid, Paris, c. 1898; É. Bajot, Décoration intérieure
d’appartements: Ensembles d’intérieur vus en perspective,
meubles, sièges, tentures, etc., dans les styles Gothique,
Renaissance, François Ier, Henri II, Louis XIII, Louis XIV,
Louis XV et Louis XVI (Interior Decoration for Apartments:
Interior Ensembles Seen in Perspective, Furniture, Seats,
Hangings, etc., in the Gothic, Renaissance, Francis I, Henri
II, Louis XIII, Louis XIV, Louis XV and Louis XVI Styles), Ch.
Juliot, Paris, 1885.
103 The Getty version of Bajot’s French Styles in Furniture
and Architecture, op. cit., belonged to H. R. Wilson. Each
Anca I. Lasc
page bears a stamp which says ‘property of H. R. Wilson,
architect’. At least in one instance, Bajot collaborated
with the editor Charles Claesen, who had offices in Paris,
Liège and Berlin and who also distributed his publica-
tions in Brussels through his agent, E. Lyon-Claesen. For
later editions, see especially C.  Kreutzberger, Du Choix
et de la disposition des ameublements de style: Étude
des meubles au point de vue de leur destination variée
depuis les salles d’apparat jusqu’aux petits apparte-
ments dans lesquels se traduisent toutes les exigences
de la vie privée, deux cent vingt documents, dessins de
Ch. Kretuzberger d’après les reconstitutions d’art ancien
relevées par Édouard Bajot, à l’usage des architectes et
décorateurs, tapissiers, fabricants, artistes et amateurs,
ces études comprennent vingt intérieurs d’appartement:
escaliers, antichambres, vestibules, salons, petits
salons, salles à manger, cabinets de travail, chambres
Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012
à coucher, bibliothèques, vus en perspective et accom-
pagnés de deux cents détails d’ameublement ou motifs
d’ornementation: armoires, bahuts, baldaquin, buffets,
bureaux, canapés, chaises, cheminées, consoles, cor-
niches, draperies, dressoirs, étagères, fauteuils, fenêtres,
lambrequins, lambris, lits, moulures, panneaux, plafonds,
portières, poutres et poutrelles, tentures, tables, etc. (Of
the Choice and Arrangement of Furnishings in Various
Styles: A Study of Furniture Pieces from the Point of View
of Their Various Destinations from Ceremonial Rooms
to Small Apartments where All Exigencies of Private Life
Can be Found. Two Hundred Documents, Drawings by
Ch. Kreutzberger after the Ancient Art Restitutions by
Édouard Bajot, for the Use of Architects and Decorators,
Upholsterers, Manufacturers, Artists and Amateurs,
These Studies Include Twenty Apartment Interiors:
Stairs, Waiting Rooms, Vestibules, Salons, Petits Salons,
Dining Rooms, Studies, Bedrooms, Libraries, Seen in
Perspective and Accompanied by Two Hundred Details
of Furniture or Ornamental Motifs: Wardrobes, Chests,
Canopies, Dressers, Desks, Sofas, Chairs, Fireplaces,
Consoles, Galleries, Curtains, Sideboards, Shelves,
Armchairs, Windows, Valances, Wood Panelling, Beds,
Mouldings, Panels, Ceilings, Doors, Girders and Beams,
Hangings, Tables, etc.), Édouard Rouveyre, Paris, 1898.
Kreutzberger’s publication reproduces Bajot’s images
from Les Styles dans la maison française, op. cit., some-
times identically, sometimes with minor modifications.
104 Both Décoration intérieure d’appartements, op. cit., and
Intérieurs d’appartements meublés, op. cit., included
reproductions in phototypie of the artist’s drawings. The
volumes cost sixty and seventy francs, respectively. See the
advertisement for Décoration intérieure d’appartements
at the back of Bajot’s Les Meubles d’art au XIXe siècle,
op. cit., and in C. Claesen, Catalogue illustré des livres de
fonds, Ch. Claesen, Paris & Brussels, 1886, available at the
Bibliothèque Nationale, respectively.
23
105 The price of a lavishly hand-coloured volume of Intérieurs
d’appartements meublés in the author’s hand was no less than
500 francs. Only ten editions were produced, but the author
has not been able to find any so far. See Claesen, op. cit.
106 See C. Claesen, Catalogue général d. tentures, ébénisterie,
menuiserie, décoration intérieure, Ch. Claesen, Paris, Liège
& Brussels, c. 1884, p. 10.
107 Krantz, op. cit.
108 Charles Kreutzberger (1829–c. 1900s) was a painter of
portraits, genre scenes, landscapes, who showed at the
Salon of 1863. See E.  Bénézit, Dictionnaire critique et
documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs, et
graveurs de tous les temps et de tous les pays par un
groupe d’écrivains spécialistes français et étrangers, vol. 8,
Éditions Gründ, Paris, 1999, p. 45.
109 Kreutzberger, op. cit.
24
110 Ibid.
111 Ibid.
112 Ibid.
113 Ibid.
114 Ibid.
115 Houdon’s marble version of Diana, which preceded the
bronze version currently in the Louvre, can be seen in
the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon. The Apollo
Belvedere was rediscovered during the Renaissance, and
in the nineteenth century it was located in the Vatican.
Marble copies of this sculpture could be purchased from
the Maison Barbedienne for as little as eighty francs a
piece, although one could also pay as much as 825 francs
for the same work. See Maison F. Barbedienne, Catalogue
des bronzes d’art s.l.: s.n., 1875.
Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on November 28, 2012
Interior Decorating in the Age of Historicism