The Modern Interior

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Al ‘Bucky’ Lamb’s home in Aspen, Colorado, 1880s.
supported on the shelf of the chimney-piece. When there was no fire, the
grate, which for some reason it was thought necessary to conceal, would
disappear behind festoons of rep.’ 13 In the 1880s home of an American, Al
“Bucky” Lamb, for example, ropes and tassels were suspended in the doorways
to create visual screens and to counteract the impression of openness
created by the absence of doors. Many of the other familiar signs of
Victorian domesticity were also present, including comfortable upholstery,
a semi-casual arrangement of an eclectic mix of furniture items – velvet
parlour chairs, straight-backed chairs, footstools, a chandelier and elabor -
ate rugs among them – crowded surfaces, multiple patterned surfaces, and
a sense of enclosure. There was no sense of aesthetic unity. Instead individual
items were emphasized. Indeed the Victorian domestic interior was
not conceived as a single visual entity but rather as an accumulation of
artefacts. 14 The level of ‘collecting’ that went on in such spaces, manifested
in Al Lamb’s home by the wall paintings, the ceramic artefacts, the books
and a number of other decorative objects, has been likened to activities
more usually associated with the museum, the department store and the
trade fair. 15
The overwhelming emphasis placed on physical comfort in
Victorian domestic spaces reinforced their roles as havens and as res -
ponses to what were perceived to be the less than comfortable public