Lord Nottingham in his news-letter descriptive of Queen Mary’s movements (1689) says: “Her majesty being disappointed of her second play, amused herself with other diversions. She dined at Mrs. Graden’s, the famous woman in the hall, that sells fine ribbons and headdresses. From thence she went to Mrs. Ferguson’s to de Vetts and other Indian houses.”
With such tastes in high places, it is not astonishing to find a popular furore for China and everything Oriental, spurious and real. This Chinese taste affected everything in architecture and interior decoration.
With regard to architecture, the ill-understood Gothic had fallen into very bad odour. John Evelyn’s opinion of it (1697) is worth quoting. He says: “A certain fantastical and licencious manner of building which we have since called Modern (or Gothic rather) congestions of heavy, dark, melancholy and monkish piles without any just proportion, use or beauty.... So when we meet with the greatest industry and expensive carving, full of fret and lamentable Imagery a judicious spectator is distracted and quite confounded.... Not that there is not something of solid and odly artificial too, after a sort; but then the universal and unreasonable thickness of the walls, clumsy buttresses, towers, sharp-pointed arches, doors and other apertures without proportion; nonsense insertions of various marbles impertinently placed; turrets and pinnacles thickset with Munkies and chimæras and abundance of busy work and other incongruities dissipate and break the angles of the sight and so confound it that one cannot consider it with any steadiness.... Vast and gigantic buildings indeed but not worthy the name of architecture.”
Domestic architecture, however, was undergoing considerable changes under the new influences. These changes were in the direction of comfort and cosiness, to the sacrifice of grandeur and magnificence. Of course, novelty aroused opposition. Evelyn (1697) protests:
PLATE XIX
“As certain great masters invented certain new corbels, scrolls and modilions, which were brought into use; so their followers animated by their example (but with much less judgment) have presumed to introduce sundry baubles and trifling decorations (as they fancy) in their works.... And therefore, tho’ such devices and inventions may seem pretty in cabinet-work, tables, frames and other joyners-work for variety, to place china dishes upon; one would by no means encourage or admit them in great and noble buildings.”
The changes in domestic architecture are noticed by Du Bois, who issued a new and sumptuous edition of Palladio (the plates engraved by Picart) in 1715. Among other things he says:
“We see so many bungled houses and so oddly contrived that they seem to have been made only to be admired by ignorant men and to raise the laughter of those who are sensible of such imperfections. Most of them are like bird cages, by reason of the largeness and too great number of windows; or like prisons, because of the darkness of the rooms, passages and stairs. Some want the most essential part, I mean the Entablature or cornice; and though it be the best fence against the injuries of the weather, it is left out to save charges. In some other houses, the rooms are so small and strait, that one knows not where to place the most necessary furniture. Others, through the oddness of some new and insignificant ornaments, seem to exceed the wildest Gothic. It were an endless thing to enumerate all the absurdities which many of our builders introduce every day into their way of building.”
The changes in interior decoration that contributed to form the Queen Anne style were largely due to the requirements of the effective display and preservation of porcelain. The chimney-piece, especially, was affected. As early as 1691, D’Aviler says in his book on architecture: “The height of the cornice (of the chimney-pieces) should be raised six feet in order that the vases with which they are ornamented may not be knocked down.”