The Eastlake Style is named for Charles Eastlake (1836-1906), an Englishman whose Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery, and Other Details (1868) was highly influential in American design, by translating John Ruskin and William Morris’ ideas into a decorative vocabulary for the carpenter and builder.
The Eastlake style’s importance is delineated by the use of geometric shapes made possible by modern machine techniques of the era. By making these intricate shapes with machines, it was possible to duplicate the exact complex patterns repeatedly, and in unusual places, such as the inside plates of a hinge.
It’s important to realize, however, that Eastlake always emphasized "simple, elegant motifs" rather than the florid decorative excesses of high Victorian style, and the majority of the items labeled "Eastlake" appalled him, as he frequently wrote during his lifetime. This is particularly evident in the United States, where basic Eastlake motifs were usually multiplied into a dizzying geometric mandala of Victorian intricacy.
As the 20th century approached, there was then a revival of old forms in furniture under the name of the Queen Anne, although frequently spoken of by dealers, with absurd anachronism, as the Early English. While the articles made according to Mr. Eastlake’s instructions may be considered a reform, and the Neo-Jacobean a fashion, the revival of the Queen Anne seems to have sufficiently positive features to be regarded as a style.
This revival is said to be the work of that knot of poets and artists and connoisseurs of bric-a-brac at whose head stand Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris, and the traces of Italian fancy and English quaintness combined in it declare that it might have been their work if it is not.
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