Victorian Influence

One of the many influences of P.P.S. was Victorian era. This period was heavily influenced by the industrial revolution and the mechanical advantages it brought to both life and the production of art.

"Victorian book and magazine illustration was often turgidly formalistic yet conceptually freewheeling, running the gamut from incredible fantasy to biting satire, with many shades of black and gray inbetween. (Illustration a Visual History, 16)"

"It was also a time when graphic arts - drawing, typography, lettering - assimilated Byzantine, Romanesque, and Rococo sensibilities and reveled in excessive revivalist ornamentation that was both quaint and exciting. The Victorian era was the bridge between the Industrial Revolution and the twentieth century, and its distinctive illustration and design is an enduring symbol of these times. Graphic stylists - from job printers to book makers - incorporated the decoration of Victorian facades and monuments. Magazine and newspaper illustrations were minutely detailed with ornate filigrees, often in which typefaces and customized lettering appeared to be carved as though in stone or made from twigs, leaves, and logs. Considering the cumbersome wood and metal engraving techniques necessary to create these eccentric concoctions, the results are remarkably and intricately precise (Illustration a Visual History, 20)."

"It came to reprsent a style of illustration that was at times eerie and absurd, realistic and idealistic, fanciful and farcical, and at all times intricate and layered with stylistic mannerisms (Illustration a Visual History, 24)."

"With contemporary aesthetic standards in decline, Victorian artists turned to the past for inspiration. Taking special delight in medieval ruins, they saw parallels in the Gothic art and architecture of previous centuries to their present-day Christian virtue (Graphic Style, 15)."

"The early Victorians reveled in ostentation. After the Great Exhibition of 1851, the taste for ornamentation based on historical forms was passionately indulged. Victorians believed that that the corpulent display of material gain gratified the eye; ornament appeased their need to have visible evidence of their social status. The exaggerated embellishment of virtually every article in the Victorian home created an atmosphere of unshakable comfort and contributed to the decidedly cluttered look of the style (Graphic Style, 15)."

"Victorian commercial printed matter was characterized by the era's pervasive ornamentation, often imitating contemporary architectural eccentricities; images were frequently crudely drawn and engraved; typography was decidedly poor. If a compositor lacked a lower-case g, for example, he would not hesitate to use an upside down b in its place. Sometimes, however, a merchant's demand for distinctive announcements did result in truly original display faces, composed of odd, and even ingenious, woodblock letters. Designers of new display faces savaged the elegant eighteenth century Bodoni and Didot types, distorting and making them larger and blacker. These bastardizations, called Fat Face types, became emblems of the Victorian look. As wood engravers mastered their medium, outline, whiteline, and shadowed letterforms gained greater exposure. The Egyptian faces - sqaured serif letters apparently influenced by the revival of interest in that country after Napoleon's excursions - joined the Fat Faces as one of the most original typographic forms of the century. Wood display types were popularized in Britian and abroad through frequent use by commercial printers. And the distinctive Victorian style of layout - extreme variations of type size and weight crammed within a single headline - was an invention of expedience, allowing the printer to utilize every inch of precious space (Graphic Style, 15)."

"Victorian woodcuts and engravings, and the slab-serif and Gothic types, ultimately gave way to more sinuous, organic, and curvilinear forms. Indeed, during the seventy-five years that Victorian style was dominant, it evolved from a nostalgic Gothic revival into a precursor of Modernism (Graphic Style, 15)."