- The Victorian era officially began in 1837
when Queen Victoria began her reign in Britain
and ended in 1901.
We typically imagine a period with
a repressed and moralistic population.
They were terrified of anything natural.
Calling a table leg a limb,
because leg was too sexual.
But that applied to a small segment of the population.
By the time Queen Victoria began her reign
the Industrial Revolution had already begun.
It was during this period that the most dramatic changes
in modern life occurred.
The Industrial Revolution brought low living standards
for the lower classes,
but lead the rise of a growing middle class
and self-indulgent nouveau riche, newly rich, class.
The acquisition of wealth become
a new wide spread cultural force.
To reinforce their new position in society
members of the nouveau riche developed a desire
for ornamentation and ostentatious decoration.
If your neighbor had a fancy chair
yours should be fancier.
This was also the height of the British Empire,
which controlled a vast portion of the world
with colonial structure.
Victorian design celebrated this
with a liberal use of artifacts, art, and pattern
from all of the countries of the Empire.
A room could be decorated with a Moroccan theme,
or Indian textiles, mixed with Egyptian antiquities.
While we consider this style as excessive and cluttered,
the Victorians saw this as a celebration of their wealth
and strength of the British Empire.
This was clearly evident in graphic design.
With the use of typefaces and ornament
in book design and advertising.
Too much was not enough.
If one flourish worked, 50 were better.
Type styles ran to the extreme
with fonts like Fat Face.
And layouts were filled with a multitude of fonts,
styles, and needless ornamental forms.
The idea of legibility and clarity was ignored
in favor of elaborate decoration.
For the first time in history color printing technologies
allowed from mass production of images.
Now everyone, from the rich to the poor
could purchase prints and hang images on the wall.
The images were not however representative
of the best art of the time.
Rather than a reproduction of a remarkable Monet painting,
the images were nostalgic and sentimental,
with innocent young women, elaborate floral images,
and sweet children.
Like any social structure too repressive,
the ridged morality of the Victorian era
began to crack in its later years.
The Victorian era officially ended
at the death of Queen Victoria in 1901,
but it spawned a new generation
resistant to its values.
Designers and graphic artists looked at the Victorian world
and began to question the issues
of industrialization and a repressive culture.
The author Oscar Wilde was a clear voice of this idea
when he satirized the proper behaviors and stereotypes
with statements such as "a gentleman is one
"who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally."
And "it's absurd to divide people into good and bad,
"people are either charming or tedious."