Painted Cottage Style Furniture
The beauty of stylized furniture is the distinct atmosphere it can create. Painted cottage style furniture is one such niche that does this with distinction.
Painted Cottage Style Furniture
The essence of painted cottage style furniture is the appearance of age and a sense that somehow the piece must be a family heirloom of great sentimentality. It is said that when a piece of painted cottage style furniture rolls off an assembly line, it already looks old. The style had its beginnings in America in the years prior to the Civil War most notably on the East Coast. It had the restraint of the Victorian era in its design, but was usually decorated with colorful hand painted designs.
After the Civil War, the people in the North began to turn their attention to luxury items, and painted cottage style pieces began appearing in the homes of the very wealthy. The style was so popular that it did not stay exclusively a luxury item for long, and workshops began turning out pieces designed for the average home. A very few of the pieces had carvings, but the majority were decorated by painting. Flowers and fruits were the most common design used. Even the beds that followed the Victorian mode and featured extremely large headboards had brightly colored designs painted on them.
Many of the craftsmen making the items were much better carpenters than they were artists, and the designs were often crudely drawn. Strangely, these primitive looking drawings added to the charm and sometimes even to the value, of the pieces. Other artists were a bit more talented and produced rather elaborate landscapes, sailing vessels, or examples of local wildlife. The most popular colors were tan, blues, greens, and pinks, and some of the pieces were left unpainted. On these pieces, the natural wood was heavily varnished and the only color came from the brightly painted design.
In the early part of the last century, painted cottage style furniture began to appear in antique shops, and few new pieces were produced. There was a shift in the idea of just what painted cottage style meant during this time. It was during this period that the style earned its name. The motif was based on the idea that the pieces were basically left over pieces from the main house that were being used to decorate the guest house. This is where the idea of age and sentiment came into the picture. Many of the pieces were from the original period of popularity a generation or two earlier, and had been retained in the family. They were too old and did not fit into the more modern decorating trends of the time, but you just couldn’t bear to throw them away.
Today you can still find painted cottage pieces in flea markets, antique shops, and even yard sale. Painted cottage style furniture is amore popular choice for the den or guest bedroom rather than the living room or master bedroom of a home. The bright colors, cheerful pastels, and the primitive, colorful designs have retained their charm, and have led to a resurgence in the manufacture of the pieces. They are now also being found more often in retail stores, a rebirth of this quaint style of furniture.