A darker vision of Victoriana
QUEEN VICTORIA would not have been amused. The recent revival of Victoriana as hip Hollywood decor -- fainting chaises, nailhead-studded wing chairs, carved spider-leg and hoof-foot tables and vintage taxidermy -- would have sent the prudish monarch scrambling for smelling salts. They are the kind of parlor pieces that would make Morticia Addams and cartoon Goth tween Emily the Strange feel right at home. When we say stuffed animals, we don’t mean the kind at Build-A-Bear.
What is old -- and odd -- is new again, and quickly creeping into American homes. Black crystal chandeliers, old-fashioned patterned wallpaper and fabric, heavily carved and tufted furniture and an explosion of antlers and other animal parts have brought an eerie elegance home. Take the recent ad campaign for furniture maker Maurice Villency, which flanked its sofa with two taxidermy peacocks.
In L.A., the New Victorian look -- modern updates of oddball antiques, vintage scientific equipment and specimens suitable for a natural history museum -- is its own decor genre.
“It’s the antithesis of what people think of Los Angeles -- palm trees and pretty white furniture,” says David Cruz of the L.A. showroom Blackman Cruz. The firm’s Blackman Cruz Workshop line includes bronze bats and piranhas -- big sellers among producers and lawyers, Cruz’s partner Adam Blackman notes -- and lamps shaped like human skulls and octopus tentacles.
“L.A. is paradise,” Cruz says. “But on the other hand, it’s the most polluted city in the country.”
Aside from the smog, there are other parallels between 21st century Los Angeles and Victorian London: Both societies spent a lot of time examining and reinterpreting the past.
A century ago, the British industrial revolution made it possible to reproduce home furnishings from a world of styles and eras dating to the ancient Romans, Greeks, Egyptians and Chinese through the Middle Ages. Revivals included elements of Gothic, 17th and 18th century Baroque, Rococo and Neoclassical periods of Louis XIV to XVI.
Similarly, 21st century manufacturing techniques make it easy to mimic elaborately embellished antiques. Plastic candelabras and mantel clocks can be etched with swirls reminiscent of 18th and 19th century detailing.
“Ornamentation is back,” says Robert Willson of the L.A. store Downtown. He sums up the growing demand for the carved, the curved and the curious in one word: “maximalism.” He says it’s a reaction to the Modernism of the 1950s and the minimalism of the 1990s.
“People are collecting rocks and shells and specimens from nature and science,” Willson says. “They are looking for unique furniture that goes beyond function to show the imagination and the hand of the artisan.”
Whereas a short-lived Victorian revival in the 1960s emphasized the restrained and the respectable, today “it is done with more style and humor and a little bit of darkness.”
Last month, Willson and partner David Serrano launched the Downtown Classic Collection, which includes a black lacquered reproduction of an 1830s bench reminiscent of a giant bat, a screen that resembles the gates of a Medieval abbey and a Victorian canopied wing chair that Lily Munster would curl up in.
Some see the trend in decorating as extension of popular culture: films such as “The Illusionist” and “The Prestige,” and all the TV shows obsessed with forensic science.
Ray Azoulay, who sells medical devices and framed 1895 Folsom Prison mug shots at his Venice store Obsolete, isn’t the least bit startled to see Los Angeles, the sound stage for film noir, turn toward Victorian tastes.
“That was a very curious period in design,” he says of the late 1900s in London. “People with money wanted to stand out and be obscure, and they were much more adventuresome than at any other period when it came to mixing the grotesque and the beautiful in decorative arts.” The same, he says, holds true for Angelenos.
“We are, or live among, the people who create the theater of darkness in films and television, and that makes it OK. With what’s happening culturally here from architecture to art, it seems that people in Los Angeles are more open to what is unique.”
The New Victorian look is not some Frankenstein’s monster stitched together for Goth poseurs who danced to the Cure at their prom. Though the trend may be dismissed by critics as an unattractive and pretentious fad, fans insist it is a stylistic evolution of other post-9/11 home-as-sanctuary trends and a reflection of concerns about security -- personal and global.
The ghosts of Victoriana live on in the taxidermy, antlers and horns that serve as wall sculpture, chandeliers and cutlery. Meanwhile the Chippendale chairs, chinoiserie, damask and other embellishments of the glitzy Hollywood Regency look have become a gateway to darker and starker furniture and accessories. Bed and bath designers Dransfield & Ross have created shower curtains with black and white damask scrolls and black beads fit for Miss Havisham’s claw foot tub.
The Glass Garage sells paneled jardinieres that look like aged zinc, and KeswickRobbins just launched a line of ornate outdoor furniture and planters; both would look at home in the garden of macabre cartoonist Edward Gorey.
THE 21st century version of Victoriana is hardly limited to high-priced custom pieces or auction items such as Brutalist designer Paul Evans’ 1972 stalagmite table, which auctioneer Wright sold for nearly $10,000 earlier this month. At Urban Outfitters, plastic picture frames and mirrors have a decided Rococo flair and cocktail glasses are covered in Old English script.
“Victorian design was all about pastiche,” says Matthew White of the New York and Pasadena interior design firm White Webb. “They were drawing from the past, taking designs from other cultures and making it modern for the time, and most it was pretty awful. Only time will tell if it’s the same for us.”
Since the turn of this century, many contemporary designers have used the silhouettes of decorative styles from the past to add ornamentation to otherwise modern pieces. Philippe Starck notably reinterpreted a Louis XVI chair in acrylic, which has become a bestseller for Kartell. The Dutch firm Moooi burned itself into the design consciousness with Smoke, a collection of Continental chairs and chandeliers that were set on fire and then sealed in epoxy, and a modernist metal dresser that was upholstered in a damask print vinyl.
“No matter what period a designer lives in, you are always drawing from the past,” White says. “Any designer who says they aren’t is just a liar.”
White and his design partner Frank Webb draw on centuries-old engravings for Intaglio, a collection of white wooden furniture and lighting silk-screened with ancient deities and winged creatures.
“We think of these antique illustrations as an early version of photography, a way to document architecture, fashion, botany and decorative arts,” he says. “We take these tiny images and blow them up to the size of real objects. It’s like paper doll furniture built to human scale.”
Modernism, White contends, does not have to be “minimalist and colorless.” People who enjoy modern design are discovering the beauty of older things, “when they see antiques interpreted in a fresh way or placed in a new setting. It feeds our hunger for the romance of the past without actually having to live in it.”
Heather Lee, the owner of Trove in Laguna Beach, sees the future in fin-de-siecle furniture, bronze tree root tables and Victorian dolls under glass domes. She is even reproducing century-old curtain brackets -- one a wolf’s head, the other a chicken’s head -- in bronze and stainless steel.
In her community, creating a context for this offbeat style is key. “Anything quirky that has a romance to it will always appeal to me, but anything that’s not casual comfy down here is a bit of a risk,” she says of her clientele.
Gothic Revival -- “ornate, dark and heavy throughout a whole house, like Cher did” -- isn’t necessarily going to work, she says, “but a fabulous old parlor table with modern chairs around it is going to be huge.”
Obsolete’s Azoulay, who sells laboratory gear, says even the most common machines can acquire a new mystique when they are treated as artifacts.
“There are kids who don’t know what a manual typewriter is,” he explains. “They will be able to see one as a wonderful piece of sculpture. Perhaps one day we’ll even see cellphones on a museum stand.”
Azoulay acknowledges that the early 20th century leather-and-wood prosthetic leg he has for sale “is a little crazy, but it is also a magnificent example or materials and craftsmanship. It is elegant and creepy, but just because something is not pretty does not mean it’s not beautiful.”
He also defends his stock of taxidermy pieces, which were fashionable during the Victorian era. He treats his collection of skeletons and specimens, including a late 19th century stuffed penguin priced at $7,000, with the tender care of a museum collection.
“I feel I am honoring the animal,” he says. “I didn’t kill it. And taxidermy allows people to admire the animal’s magnificent form up close. Children are fascinated by it. They don’t have that taught stigma that it’s not right.”
AZOULAY concedes his wares aren’t for kids -- nor for most adults. He says they’re for “a select group of people -- individuals who have the ability to recognize something unusual and want it in their homes, who can live with it.” But just wait two years, he says. “You’ll probably see a vintage style anatomical or skeletal chart in the Restoration Hardware catalog.”
Maybe even sooner. Last month, the chain launched Brocade Home, an offshoot catalog of furniture and accessories heavily influenced by the return of ornamentation in modern design. More than 250,000 Restoration Hardware customers received the first edition of the publication, which was filled with carved beds that riff on Rococo, velvet tufted chaises, wallpaper print upholstered poufs and smoky colored chandeliers, all staged in loft-like spaces. The collection offers an affordable version of centuries-old grandeur.
“I love modern but it was starting to look too austere and antiseptic,” says Brocade Home’s creator, Lisa Versacio, who previously designed for cost-conscious contemporary retailer West Elm. “I needed to have clean lines but also things that were decorative to warm rooms up.”
When she was designing minimalist and Mod sofas and bedding for West Elm, Versacio couldn’t have imagined that such traditional furniture might tickle America’s fancy.
“Five years ago, modern looked so good,” she says. “Today a lot of people are re-evaluating what they want based on where we are in the world. They want comfort and familiarity, nostalgia even, but not in a great-grandmother’s-stuffy-house-with-cobwebs way.”
Accordingly, “Old World Parisian” is about as close as Versacio will get to pinning a label on the line. Like Anthropologie, Brocade Home trades less on the particulars and peculiarities of periods and styles and more on the idea of creating capital-R romance. It is the softer, less sinister side of the neo-Victorian trend: a little bit of old lace, but hold the arsenic, please.
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Where to get the goods
Shoppers’ haunts for the neo-Victorian house:
Blackman Cruz: Custom wing chairs, antiques, bronze lighting and accessories. 800 N. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles; (310) 657-9228; www.blackmancruz.com/workshop.
Brocade Home: Carved-wood bedroom and living room furniture. Catalog only. (800) 276-2233; www.brocadehome.com.
Downtown: Updated period reproductions. 719 N. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles; (310) 652-7461; www.downtown20.net.
Empiric: Medical and scientific charts and equipment. 7918 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles; (323) 634-7323; www.empiricstudio.com.
Glass Garage: Faux turn-of-the-century zinc and concrete planters. 8379 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles; (323) 651-4231.
KeswickRobbins: Outdoor furniture and planters. (323) 935-0888; www.keswickrobbins.com.
Obsolete: Medical and scientific paraphernalia, folk art, taxidermy. 222 Main St., Venice; (310) 399-0024; www.obsoleteinc.com.
Rose: Unusual furniture and objets d’art. 1225 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice; (310) 399-0040; www.roseinvenice.com.
Trove: Antiques and curiosities. 1233 North Coast Highway, Laguna Beach; (949) 376-4640; www.trovelaguna.com.
Twentieth: Some 21st century Dutch designs with a neo-Victorian vibe. 8057 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles; (323) 904-1200; www.twentieth.net.
White Webb: Intaglio consoles, mirrors and lighting silkscreened with imagery from antique engravings is at Hollyhock, 817 Hilldale Ave., West Hollywood; (323) 931-3400, or at www.whitewebb.com.
-- David A. Keeps