Charles Locke Eastlake
Charles Locke Eastlake
Knapp Joint
Finding balance between handmade and machine-made has always been an integral part of creating. When a new technology is introduced it allows the professional to perform a task more efficiently, reducing cost and increasing productivity. Products become more accessible to the customer but also shifts the skill set needed for production. This can lead to effecting the socio economics of entire industries. Mass production becomes sterile and yearning for the human element re-emerges. Along with the qualities of handmade character.
Eventually the new ways become the old. The technology that Luddites shun become the methods that the future purists long for. Fawning over the days when film was developed in a dark room, music was analog, pressed to wax, and furniture wasn’t produced in a factory.
In 1868, just two years after the first Sequim homesteader fled the busy settlement of New Dungeness for a quieter life, a British architect named Charles Locke Eastlake published a book titled ‘Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery and Other Details’. At the time, the Industrial Revolution was in full effect and early Victorian era furniture designs were at a peak. Building upon the Rococo, Renaissance, and Gothic styles. The more ornate the better. Overindulgent and by then, mostly factory made.
Charles L. Eastlake was formally educated. Attending Westminster School and the Royal Academy. A talented artist and trained architect, though he never practiced as one. He spent years traveling throughout France, Italy, and Germany honing his appreciation for architecture and design. His passion led him on a path of interior design and journalism. He would also go on to be secretary to the Royal Institute of British Architects and from 1878 to 1898, keeper of the National Gallery in London.
Eastlake advocated for the craftsman. He rejected mass production. Believing that furniture should be handmade by skilled artisans who honored their craft. He Incorporated simple geometric lines, low relief carvings and sturdy construction, built with quality materials. Unlike the overly ornate, extremely heavy and difficult to clean Victorian furniture of the day. Which was primarily made in factories under poor conditions. Though Eastlake never made furniture himself, when ‘Hints on Household Taste’ was published it quickly gained attention. The 1872 publication in the United States saw another large rise in popularity.
The American industrial machine had other plans for Eastlake’s designs. These styles were easily manufactured and soon the likes of Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward were filling their catalogs. Mass produced in factories of their own. Eastlake was not a fan. Quoted saying “I find American tradesmen continually advertising what they are pleased to call Eastlake furniture, the production of which I have had nothing whatever to do, and for the taste of which I should be very sorry to be considered responsible". Because of its new found accessibility and affordable price point it was commonly referred to as ‘cottage furniture’ in the U.S. As mentioned, shifting the socio-economics of the furniture industry.
A perfect example in this period of American manufacturing is the pin and cove joint. Also know as the ‘Knapp Joint’. Patented in 1867 by Charles Knapp of Waterloo, Wisconsin. A handmade dovetail drawer box was the mark of quality. Skilled craftsman could produce approximately 20 drawers a day… definitely not enough to keep up with production. By 1871 the Knapp Dovetailing Co. added the newly invented machine to a production line in Massachusetts, turning out more than 250 drawers a day. The new technology was embraced in furniture factories throughout the northeast, Midwest and Canada. This rise to fame was short lived. By 1900, newer machines had conquered the traditional looking dovetail and the obviously machine made Knapp joint quickly fell out of fashion.
Certainly, Charles Locke Eastlake made a name for himself in the history books of design. Wrapping up the Victorian era with a vision of inevitable change. The precursor of the Arts and Crafts movement that fully embraced the simple lines and the exposed joinery of traditional craftsman.. at least temporarily.
