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inky-duchess · 1 year

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Fantasy Guide to A Great House (19th-20th Century) - Anatomy of the House

When we think of the Victorians, the grand old Gilded Age or the Edwardians, we all think of those big mansions and manors where some of our favourite stories take place. But what did a great house look like?

Layout

All great houses are different and some, being built in different eras, may adhere to different styles. But the layout of certain rooms usually stayed somewhat the same.

The highest floors including the attic were reserved the children's rooms/nursery and the servants quarters.

The next floor would be reserved for bedrooms. On the first/ground floor, there will be the dining room, drawing room, library etc.

The basement/cellar would be where the kitchens and other food related rooms would be. Servants halls and boot rooms may also be down here too along scullery, where sometimes a maid would clean.

Rooms used by Servants

Boot Room: The Boot Room is where the valets, ladies maids, hallboys and sometimes footmen clean off shoes and certain items of clothing.

Kitchen: The Kitchen was usually either in the basement or the first floor of the house, connected to a garden where the house's vegetables were grown.

Butler's Pantry: A butler's pantry was where the serving items are stored. This is where the silver is cleaned, stored and counted. The butler would keep the wine log and other account books here. The butler and footmen would use this room.

Pantry: The Pantry would be connected to the kitchen. It is a room where the kitchens stock (food and beverages) would be kept.

Larder: The larder was cool area in the kitchen or a room connected to it where food is stored. Raw meat was often left here before cooking but pastry, milk, cooked meat, bread and butter can also be stored here.

Servants Hall: The Servant's Hall was where the staff ate their meals and spent their down time. They would write letters, take tea, sew and darn clothes. The servants Hall would usually have a fireplace, a large table for meals, be where the servant's cutlery and plates would be kept and where the bell board hung. (these bells were the way servants where summoned)

Wine Cellar: The wine cellar was where the wine was melt, usually in the basement. Only the butler would be permitted down there and everything would be catalogued by him too.

Butler's/Housekeeper's sitting rooms: In some houses, both the butler and the housekeeper had sitting rooms/offices downstairs. This was were they held meetings with staff, took their tea and dealt with accounts.

Scullery: The scullery was were the cleaning equipment was cleaned and stored. The scullery may even also double as a bedroom for the scullery maid.

Servery: The Servery connected to the dinning room. It was where the wine was left before the butler carried it out to be served. Some of the food would be delivered here to be carried out as well.

Servant's Sleeping Quarters: All servants excepting perhaps the kitchen maid and outside staff slept in the attics. Men and unmarried women would be kept at seperate sides of the house with the interconnecting doors locked and bolted every night by the butler and housekeeper. If the quarters were small, some servants may have to share rooms. Servants' bathrooms and washrooms would also be up there, supplied with hot water from the kitchens.

Rooms used by the Family

Dining room: The dining room was where the family ate their breakfast, lunch and dinner. It was also where the gentlemen took their after dinner drink before joking the ladies in the drawing room.

Drawing room: The Drawing Room was sort of a living/sitting room. It was mainly used in the evenings after dinner where the ladies would take their tea and coffee before being joined by the men. It could also be used for tea by the ladies during the day. The drawing room was seen as more of a women's room but any of the family could use it. The drawing room was a formal room but could also be used for more casual activities.

Library: The library is of course where the books are kept. The family would use this room for writing letters, reading, doing business with tenants and taking tea in the afternoons.

Bedrooms: The bedrooms would take up most of the upper floors. The unmarried women would sleep in one wing with bachelors at the furthest wing away. Married couples often had adjoining rooms with their own bedrooms in each and equipped with a boudoir or a sitting room.

Nursery: Was where the children slept, usually all together until old enough to move into bedrooms. They would be attended to be nannies and nursemaids round the clock.

Study: The study was a sort of home office where family could do paperwork, chill and write letters.

Dressing room: Dressing Rooms where usually attached to bedrooms where the family would be dressed and their clothes would be stored. The valets and ladies maids would have control of the room.

Hall: The hall was where large parties would gather for dancing or music or to be greeted before parties.

Furnishings and Decor

Most of these Great Houses were inherited which means, they came with a lot of other people's crap. Ornaments from anniversaries, paintings bought on holiday, furniture picked out by newly weds, all of it comes with the house. So most of the time everything seems rather cluttered.

As for Servant's Quarters, most of the furnishings may have been donated by the family as gifts. Most servants' halls would have a portrait of the sovereign or sometimes a religious figure to install a sense of morality into them.

#Fantasy Guide to A Great House #19th-20th Century #Anatomy of a great house #writeblr #writing reference #writing advice #writers on tumblr #writing advice writing reference #writing advice writing resources #writing resources writing advice #writing reference writing advice #Writing reference writing resources #Fantasy Guide #nobility #Servants #writing help

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septembergold · 2 years

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Cornelius Vanderbilt II House

#illustrations #new york city #townhouses #gilded age #19th-20th century #turn of the century #Jahrhundertwende #Vanderbilt

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biggest-gaudiest-patronuses · 5 months

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the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

#due to the Great Data Decay academics write viciously argumentative articles on which episodes aired in what order #at conferences professors have known to engage in physically violent altercations whilst debating the air date number of household viewers #90% of the couch gags have been lost and there is a billion dollar trade in counterfeit “lost copies”#serious note: i'll be honest i always assumed it was english imperialism that made shakespeare so inescapable in the 19th/20th cent #like his writing should have become obscure at the same level of his contemporaries #but british imperialists needed an ENGLISH LANGUAGE (and BRITISH) writer to venerate #and shakespeare wrote so many damn things that there was a humongous body of work just sitting there waiting to be culturally exploited...#i know it didn't happen like this but i imagine a English Parliament House Committee Member For The Education Of The Masses or something #cartoonishly stumbling over a dusty cobwebbed crate labelled the Complete Works of Shakespeare #and going 'Eureka! this shall make excellent propoganda for fabricating a national identity in a time of great social unrest.#it will be a cornerstone of our elitist educational institutions for centuries to come! long live our decaying empire!'#'what good fortune that this used to be accessible and entertaining to mainstream illiterate audience members...#..but now we can strip that away and make it a difficult & alienating foundation of a Classical Education! just like the latin language :)'#anyway maybe there's no such thing as the 'greatest writer of x language' in ANY language?#maybe there are just different styles and yes levels of expertise and skill but also a high degree of subjectivity #and variance in the way that we as individuals and members of different cultures/time periods experience any work of media #and that's okay! and should be acknowledged!!! and allow us to give ourselves permission to broaden our horizons #and explore the stories of marginalized/underappreciated creators #instead of worshiping the List of Top 10 Best (aka Most Famous) Whatevers Of All Time/A Certain Time Period #anyways things are famous for a reason and that reason has little to do with innate “value”#and much more to do with how it plays into the interests of powerful institutions motivated to influence our shared cultural narratives #so i'm not saying 'stop teaching shakespeare'. but like...maybe classrooms should stop using it as busy work that (by accident or designs)#happens to alienate a large number of students who could otherwise be engaging critically with works that feel more relevant to their world #(by merit of not being 4 centuries old or lacking necessary historical context or requiring untaught translation skills)#and yeah...MAYBE our educational institutions could spend less time/money on shakespeare critical analysis and more on...#...any of thousands of underfunded areas of literary research i literally (pun!) don't know where to begin #oh and p.s. the modern publishing world is in shambles and it would be neat if schoolwork could include modern works?#beautiful complicated socially relevant works of literature are published every year. it's not just the 'classics' that have value #and actually modern publications are probably an easier way for students to learn the basics. since lesson plans don't have to include the #important historical/cultural context many teens need for 20+ year old media (which is older than their entire lived experience fyi)

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desimonewayland · 6 months

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Clement Massier

Beetle lustre vase, circa 1900 Ceramic, lustre glazed vase

Bonham's

#clement massier #late 19th century #early 20th century #ceramics #france #lustre #beetle

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stigmatam4rtyr · 6 months

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The Bath of Venus (1898-1904, oil on canvas) | Charles Shannon

#art #fine art #painting #oil painting #the bath of venus #Charles Shannon #19th century #20th century

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paintingispoetry · 3 months

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Vittorio Reggianini, La Soirée, ca. 1880-1938

#vittorio reggianini #reggianini #19th century art #20th century art #history of fashion #painting #art #academic art

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the-evil-clergyman · 5 months

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Two Elves by John Quincy Adams (Late 19th - Early 20th Century)

#john quincy adams #art #paintings #fine art #19th century #19th century art #20th century #20th century art #painting #austrian art #austrian artist #fantasy #elves #fairies #fairy #classic art

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eirene · 1 month

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Semper Vivit Amor

Eugen von Blaas

#oil on canvas #19th century #20th century #art #painting #fashion #portrait #italian art #Eugen von Blaas

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dogzcats · 9 months

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OPHELIA (details)

But long it could not be Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy death.

#ophelia #hamlet #shakespeare #shakespeareedit #art #art history #19th century art #20th century art #women in art #oil painting #oil on canvas #artedit #artblr #anna attempts photoshop #1k+#5k+#6k

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my18thcenturysource · 1 year

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I don't know if you're ready for this BUT American Duchess and the Bata Shoe Museum just launched a collab collection called In Bloom.

They made 3 styles in several colours using 3 styles from the the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries from their current exhibition "In Bloom: Flowers and Footwear", and are currently in pre-sale, with estimated deliveries between July and August 2023.

Let's take a look:

We start at the 18th century with the Primrose shoes, based on their Dunmore model, accurate for 1770s-1790s they are embroidered on satin and are $179 USD while in pre-sale and later will be $199. The original style is in black and pink silk satin, and OF COURSE that's my favourite variation, but the green ones are a close second.

Images from top: 1780s shoes, Bata Shoe Museum / Primrose shoes, American Duchess.

From the 19th century we have this style called Flora, accurate for the late 19th century (1870s-1900), are $230 USD while in pre-sale and later will bee $250. This embroidered boots with satin ribbon laces are probably my favourite style from the collection. Of course my fave colour is black, which is also the colour of the original piece, but the lavender ones are just *chef kiss*:

Images from top: the original French embroidered boots by Francois Pinet, late 1870s-early 1880s, Bata Shoe Museum. / Flora boots, American Duchess

Finally, the 20th century style is the Daisy, accurate for the 1920s-1940s. A vintage style full of flowers and colour, this T-strap style is perfect to pair with a simple dress from any decade and have a very decent 6.3cm heel, so you can dance all night in these art deco shoes.

1920s shoes, Bata Shoe Museum / Daisy shoes, American Duchess.

The sales from the In Bloom collection will support The Bata Shoe Museum in their study, outreach, and conservation of historic footwear, and we're here for it.

More info:

"In Bloom: Flowers and Footwear"

Read more about the collaboration at the American Duchess Blog.

Buy the whole collection in pre-sale here.

Which style are you looking for the most?

#shoes #accessories #in bloom #florals #18th century #19th century #20th century #historical shoes #american duchess

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constanzarte · 2 months

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Ferederic Leighton - Crenaia, the nymph of the Dargle; 1880

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ltwilliammowett · 3 months

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The deck of the 'Birkdale' in a storm, by John Everett, 1920

#naval art #clipper #birkdale #late 19th century #early 20th century #age of steam

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die-rosastrasse · 1 year

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Dreamy mood in the paintings by Henri Le Sidaner (French, 1862-1939)

#art #painting #henri le sidaner #french art #impressionism #post impressionism #art detail #painting detail #classical art #art history #art gallery #flowers in art #flowers #Cottagecore art #Fairycore art #19th century art #20th century art #french artist #art on tumblr

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obsession-of-aesthetic · 1 month

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"The Love Birds" by Adolfo Belimbau (1845-1938)

#art #painting #oil painting #traditional art #paintings #19th century art #inspiration #classical art #20th century art #adolfo belimbau #the love birds #birds #women in art

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anatomicalmartyr · 1 year

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Some well known aristocratic beauties of the late Victorian and the Edwardian era as depicted by John Singer Sargent and in photography

Lady Helen Vincent, Viscountess D'Abernon (1904) // Winifred, Duchess of Portland (1902) // Lady Agnew of Lochnaw (1892) // Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland (1904) // Consuelo Vanderbilt in The Marlborough Family (1904/05)

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history-of-fashion · 7 hours

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1894-1901 Portrait of four young women (photo by C.M. Bell, Washington, D.C.)

(Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

#1890s #1900s #19th century #20th century #women #photo

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