Patterns: The printed image and a century of colonial-made furniture

Wellington art historian, author and colonial furniture specialist Dr William Cottrell, who wrote the award-winning Furniture of the New Zealand Colonial Era (1830-1900), has been researching his next book in the Turnbull Library. He has identified a formerly unrecognised art history of material culture. William’s lively illustrated talk looked at the influence of printed patterns over one hundred years on colonial furniture design.

New Zealand’s earliest furniture from the 1830s-60s can be traced to just a handful of designers from two major London publishing houses. Their patterns for Greek, Gothic, French and “Elizabethan” Renaissance were interpreted by migrant cabinet makers and had an overwhelmingly influence on the style of our colonial home interiors.  But when the pattern book evolved into a cheaply printed advertising pamphlet displaying manufacturer’s wares, even small New Zealand furniture-making firms began to produce their own ‘brand’ trade catalogues. Invariably they were illicit copies reproduced from the in-house design work acquired from large English cabinet-making firms. Illegality aside, they generated fashion awareness with consumers and were guides for industry. Nowadays very few have survived but those that do provide a new insight into taste, modernity and the surprising range of products available. By the late 1890s, hobbyist publications fostered a pastime for home craftwork. Some of those pieces now represent our rarest and most important domestic furnishing objects, yet little has ever been documented. William Cottrell discussed the three aspects of pattern production that influenced colonial domestic furniture design; the designer, the manufacturer’s trade catalogue and the publisher’s subscription magazine.