INTERIORS for Italianate homes
Italianate houses are relatively easy to identify, but there is no particular “Italianate style” for interiors, because the style spanned half a century. The (French) Rococo was in vogue in the 1850s and 1860s for houses in the Italian style, and Renaissance Revival interiors held sway after 1870. The typical Italianate house had a Gothic Revival piece or two. These Romantic-era styles both were advocated in Downing’s influential pattern books of the 1840s. While the Gothic edged out the Italian in England, the opposite was true here.
One approach to decorating will apply to a mansion, where money and skilled labor were available and the architect may have chosen Rococo Revival pieces from established cabinetmakers. An-
other approach makes sense for a Midwestern builder’s house of the 1880s, most likely furnished with production Renaissance Revival and cottage furniture. Instead of the mansion’s florid castplaster brackets and cartouches, the more vernacular house had just ceiling medallions; the rich man’s trompe l’oeil frescoes were recast, in the vernacular example, as papered or painted panels on plaster walls.
As with exterior color, neutral stone hues were suggested for inside: greys, pinks, pale blues and greens. (After 1860, stronger colors were advised.) Halls were to be cool and neutral, often papered or painted in imitation of ashlar, or smooth stone blocks. Graining was common, marbleizing more so—used
on baseboards, columns, in niches, and even on entire walls. From 1830 until 1850, narrow paper borders were common, decorated with florals, trailing vines, or architectural details.
Floors of narrow softwood boards were meant to be carpeted wall to wall. Later in this period, hardwood floors were laid in patterns including alternating stripes of dark and light. Stone or marble squares, real or painted, were preferred for halls, as were encaustic tiles in terra cotta, buff, and black. Flat-woven Venetian carpeting and ingrains—reversible carpets made up of narrow strips sewn together to span the room—were affordable. Luxury (pile) carpets included Axminster, Wilton, Brussels, and tapestry.