Eastlake

イーストレイク様式 / 19th century– / Style / Furniture and Interiors

Eastlake is the name given to a decorative and architectural style in nineteenth century America, tied to the furniture designs of Charles Locke Eastlake. Its architecture borrows the vocabulary of furniture directly, with columns that resemble table legs, curved brackets, spindles, and knobs of various shapes made of circular perforations.

Columns shaped like thickened table legs / Curved brackets repeating at even intervals under eaves and porch roofs / Lathe-turned spindles filling railings and the head of a porch / Knobs pierced with circular perforations set where members meet

Eastlake — Eastlake-style armchair, Missouri History Museum — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain — Eastlake-style armchair, Missouri History Museum — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain ／ Porch woodwork of the Jane Heath House, Buffalo — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 ／ Bradford House, San Rafael, California — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

Eastlake — Porch woodwork of the Jane Heath House, Buffalo — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 — Eastlake-style armchair, Missouri History Museum — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain ／ Porch woodwork of the Jane Heath House, Buffalo — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 ／ Bradford House, San Rafael, California — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

Dictionary entry

Best used for: Unifying a house exterior and its fittings through one vocabulary of furniture parts · Building sets or backgrounds that reconstruct a nineteenth century American street
Type: Cut or raise signage lettering to the same depth as the woodwork, because thin faces lose against the ornament.
Composition: Leave no large blank plane, and score horizontals and verticals with columns, spindles and brackets at even spacing.
Material: Restrict every form to what a lathe and a scroll saw can make, combining turned spindles, circular perforations and curved supports.
Caution: Scaling furniture parts up to building size removes the hand-held proportion they were derived from, and the ornament starts to look like models glued onto a wall.
Further study: how Eastlake's furniture designs were reread in the United States / the route by which turned members were mass produced and passed from furniture to buildings / where the Getty places Eastlake among the modern decorative arts styles of North America

Related entries

Cite this entry

The dictionary is meant to be linked to. Take whichever form fits where you are writing.

Link: https://indexstyle.org/styles/eastlake-style
Markdown: [Eastlake — IndexStyle](https://indexstyle.org/styles/eastlake-style)
HTML: <a href="https://indexstyle.org/styles/eastlake-style">Eastlake — IndexStyle</a>

Back to index position