I’m a sucker for much of Victorian design.  Inventive, creative, the birth of the machine age unleashed a wave of design, and the Victorians built an art college in every major English town to act as a seedbed for creative and revolutionary thinking. Whilst industrialists powered on devising more and more impressive production lines and mass-producing items for a new consumer market (factory workers wages were initially three time the earning of agricultural workers, moving population from the land to the new cities) the revolutionaries such as Mackintosh and Morris exploited design processes to create a new aesthetic.

Standen, outside romantic East Grinstead is one of the finest examples of the merging of the inventive industrial processes with the respect for the past and understanding of materials that typify the best of Victorian Design. New ranges from a relaunched Morris &Co were appropriately revealed at Standen with an exhibition that blurred the lines between past and present. Still under restoration by the UK’s National Trust, Standen was a collaboration between architect Philip Webb and the Morris factory. A close friend of Morris, who he worked alongside in the same architect’s practise for a while, Webb worked with Morris setting up Morris & Co. and designed many items associated with the Morris works.

Standen was a product of Webb’s architectural practise, and he worked with Morris to produce a harmonious and stunning home for the Beale family. Initially the site was occupied by a 14th century farmhouse and Webb incorporated the structure into his design. As one approaches the house it is the 14th century building and a barn that dominate the view, but from the gardens at the rear the full beauty of the newer building becomes apparent.

The control of proportion, the sensitivity of scale makes the house sit at ease in the landscape. Comparing it with contemporary housing is like comparing Imperial and A size paper. Imperial sizes based on the human form and the golden section are easy to use in composition when drawing. They lend themselves to a degree of aesthetic sub-division missing in the Intellectually created A sizes, which are a logical progression where the long side of one size makes the short side of the next size up.

This link with human scale is inherent in English architecture prior to the ‘age of concrete’ and was a notable part of architecture in the preceding Georgian age. Standen is a tour de force with all elements harmonising throughout the building. Passing through a courtyard to the front door the aesthetic of the group is immediately apparent in the front door and its adjacent bay window. The first reception room shows all the ingredients that make this style not just aesthetically striking but also humanly comfortable.

Cosy corner in the billiard room

There was nothing Luddite about Webb or Morris, and Standen was one of the earliest houses in England to be lit by electric light when it was finished in 1894. The original light fittings survive, and the lamps have been expensively remade to match the originals to give the same quality and aesthetic appearance that was there from the start. Design of the light fittings encapsulates the design approach. The lamps themselves (not bulbs – an electrician on site told me scornfully “we plant bulbs – they are lamps”) are reproductions of the originals for a good reason as they are both a feature and another decorative element in the design.

Like many a great piece of design everything here is a product of a singular design practice, Morris and Webb. Wallpapers, carpets, the totality of the fixtures and fittings is a celebration of the arts and Crafts movement so strongly espoused by Morris – his Red House in Kent was in fact Webb’s first architectural commission. The wallpapers are a feature throughout and are why this was chosen by the current owners of the Morris name to launch their renewed and revised Morris wallpapers.

The key features of design in this period stem in many ways from the new industrialisation. New chemical dyes, new production methodologies all contribute. I was shocked when I heard that only recently were many of the original rollers for printing Morris papers destroyed – then amused when a rep sheepishly admitted that when they were scheduled for destruction he lifted the curse from some and now has them in his garage. The new furniture designs and patterns mimicked hand manufactures but were in many cases made by machine – the regularity of moulding and carving being the ‘give-away’ as consistency in hand carving was high but short of the identical achieved by the machine.

The furniture and internal spaces coming from the same design source obviously integrate, fit together, in the way one would hope many contemporary building do, a hope mostly defeated in reality. Unlike Morris’ day, the bespoke manufacture of items is almost the norm in large construction projects. The quality of the designer output, like that of Webb and Morris, needs to be harmonised to produce a complete symphony through the spaces. This has been gloriously achieved at Standen from what must now surely be considered as a major Webb/Morris design studio achievement.

Many individual spaces have interest created by an architectural device of creating nooks and crannies, little private seating areas, private comfort zones, without breaking the integrity of the whole. Into these feature pieces of furniture are placed again enhanced by the staging at Standen. although a hat mould would not have featured on a piece of furniture as it does here.

To many eyes brought up on minimalism these will seem over decorated and fussy interiors. The pleasure of playing with pattern is obvious but it is well balanced by use of white and natural timbers. The use of art speaks of a visually sophisticated client; a sense of imagery not dulled down to 21st century levels by television. Decoration was carried to a high level. Something as simple as a standard lamp became an ornate tripod yet balanced against simply painted timber panels its complexity balanced their simplicity to produce an elegant solution.

pattern on pattern…!

Art abounds – much of it by Morris friends like Burne-Jones or Leighton, others prints of work by the slightly disreputable Alma Tadema, one of my favourite Victorian artists. Tapestries too, again from the Morris works harkens back to the era of castles but all are hung from picture rails in an area of wall defined by a dado below and the picture rail above.

Interiors at their best carry this harmony through their use of colour and decoration. The house has its version of the country kitchen so beloved of people seeking a country life today – but here unsullied by the cooking apparatus, this being ‘below stairs’ – an area of the house also delightfully restored by the National Trust and generously spaced in keeping with Webb’s socialist views.

Yet inevitably the decoration tumbles over into a glorious riot of pattern and colour, reaction to which came swiftly from Bauhaus some twenty years later, and having its contrapunto in the States  through Welsh wizard Frank Lloyd Wright . Pattern clashing with pattern. colour running riot. harmony vanishing all contributed to a lasting reaction against this work. Webb himself retired rather than come to terms with concrete, and the wheel rolls around as modern design tries to reinvent a system of pattern in creating comfortable interiors.

Many of the small art colleges that could have fostered a new revolution in design are gone, destroyed by a higher education system that is governed by expediency rather than philosophy. Technology continues to change the rules of the game. the marriage between designer, architect,  artist and manufacturer has largely disappeared, and with all our knowledge we are still the poorer for it.