A history of the furnished room told through pictures made at the time, by a former Keeper of Furniture at the Victoria and Albert Museum. It shows, period by period, how furniture was arranged: against the walls in the formal rooms of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, then brought out into the room from about 1800.
Authentic Decor: The Domestic Interior 1620–1920
❦
London · 1984 · English
Summarised and illustrated here; the text is not reproduced.
Rules drawn from Authentic Decor
In the formal room, stand the furniture against the walls and leave the middle of the room clear: a pier table (with its glass above) between each pair of windows, the sofa facing the fire, a chair either side of the chimneypiece, the chairs ranged round the walls in a line with the dado, to be brought out when wanted and put back after; and keep each wall symmetrical about its middle, its chimneypiece or its windows.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Peter Thornton, Authentic Decor: The Domestic Interior 1620–1920”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/source/thornton-authentic-decor. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.