Zoomorphic Victorian Furniture
A Victorian Firescreen containing two Egrets.
Photo Tennants
ZOOMORPHIC VICTORIAN FURNITURE
Zoomorphic Victorian furniture offered the opportunity for the Victorian middle classes to harness the spirit of the upper classes in their country houses who had sailed overseas and brought back these animals from their world travels.
Apart from the exploitative use of feathers that the Victorians went crazy for, they also went mad for making and displaying furniture out of animal parts. They considered this high-class interior chic.
Personally, I find using bits of animals to make decoration quite repelling, but the reason for it was that the middle class Victorian population was doing well, and the British economy was expanding. Commercial enterprises saw an economic opportunity and they turned the otherwise discarded parts of animals into furniture.
These activities were especially associated with the firm of Naturalist and Taxidermist, Rowland Ward in London, who from the early 1870s began to experiment with what he called “the leftovers” of his taxidermy creations to make zoological lamps, cabinets and umbrella stands.
From a pamphlet produced by Rowland Ward in 1901 we see the promotion of his creations from hooves and legs (urgh!) including door stops, match boxes and table bells.
A Rowland Ward speciality was the use of Herons with their plumage arranged to create a firescreen. (Slightly more tasteful than the hooves and legs, but not by much!)
An advert from Country Life 1908 advertising one of Rowland Ward’s specialities – a horse hoof transformed into a match box or similar.
The Strand Magazine 1896
Article by William G. Fitzgerald
Download the whole article from The Velvet Drawing Room website
Copyright free from The Strand Magazine July 1896
William Fitzgerald’s article on “‘Animal’ Furniture” written for The Strand Magazine in July 1896 is the most detailed contemporary digest on this trend.
Fitzgerald says “fancy lounging into the entrance hall of a country mansion after a long ramble, and throwing your hat on the horn of a rhinoceros, which was once half buried in the writhing body of your host, or taking a single malt from a dumb-waiter tiger, a beast who wasn’t always so obliging, and he once nearly tore to pieces the very man he now stiffly supplies with a glass of grog and a cigar”.
This ground breaking article ‘Animal Furniture’ by William G. Fitzgerald in The Strand Magazine of 1895 provides a contemporary key to Zoomorphic objects and their use in the decorative arts.
George Butt is mentioned in this article. Edwin Ward, Rowland Ward’s brother, married Georgina Butt and sold his business to her brother, George Butt, who supplied much of the information and photographs to Fitzgerald for this article.
