Osbert's Scottish Baronial

In my previous blog entry, I presented Kieran's marvellous pen and ink sketch of the recently restored Great Hall at Balintore Castle. A friend called Mark said how much it reminded him of a mid 20th Century cartoonist called Osbert Lancaster. I was familiar with the name Osbert Lancaster, but had never studied his works, and Mark very kindly sent me a vintage copy of Osbert's book on the history of building interiors entitled "Homes Sweet Homes".

Osbert's Scottish Baronial Great Hall

You can can see at once how close Osbert's cartoon of the Scottish Baronial style is to Kieran's version of Balintore's Great Hall. Balintore Castle was designed in the Scottish Baronial Style, by the architect William Burn who essentially invented the style. Amusingly, all the stuffed creatures with horns look very happy to be there, but the bears are thoroughly resentful. 

Accompanying every cartoon of the different historic interior styles is some witty text by Osbert who was also a writer. I have to say that both the drawings and the text give me enormous pleasure. The drawings are charming and lightly amusing, whereas the text is savage: very much in the modern spirit of "throwing shade". Here's what Osbert has to say about Scottish Baronial:

His joshing tenet is that Scottish Baronial is pagan in its conception and I daresay he is right, although of course Scottish Baronial is also Scotland's take on Gothic, which is a style premised upon Christian cathedrals. Perhaps Osbert is saying there remains something of the heathen in the Scot? I will append the text of the Scottish Baronial article in a Rosetta Stone moment. :-)

What is fascinating are the categories and names of the interior styles. Some of these are no-longer recognised today, and some are now known by different terms. Here are the terms Osbert uses in chronological order with my modern translation in brackets where this exists.

• NORMAN
• GOTHIC
• TUDOR
• ELIZABETHAN
• JACOBEAN
• RESTORATION
• LOUIS XIV
• BAROQUE
• ROCOCO
• EARLY GEORGIAN
• CLASSIC REVIVAL
• REGENCY
• EARLY VICTORIAN
• LE STYLE ROTHSCHILD
• SCOTTISH BARONIAL
• VICTORIAN DINING-ROOM
• GREENERY YALLERY (Aesthetic)
• THE EARNEST 'EIGHTIES
• ANGLICAN
• DIAMOND JUBILEE
• TROISIÈME RÉPUBLIQUE
• ART NOUVEAU
• EDWARDIAN
• FIRST RUSSIAN BALLET PERIOD
• ORDINARY COTTAGE 
• CULTURED COTTAGE (Cottagecore)
• CURZON ST. BAROQUE
• LUXURY FLAT.
• ALDWYCH FARCICAL (Townhouse)
• STOCKBROKERS TUDOR (Mock Tudor)
• MODERNISTIC (Art Deco)
• VOGUE REGENCY (Hollywood Regency)
• FUNCTIONAL (Modern)
• EVEN MORE FUNCTIONAL (Brutalism)

I recognise the style "Curzon St. Baroque" from the illustration. This is a modern style of the 40's and 50's but looking back to the Italian past for ornamentation. I never knew this had a name before. :-) Most of the 20th Century styles Osbert describes have died. The one style that is still going very strong is CULTURED COTTAGE, this is very much alive in magazines like "Homes and Gardens" where the interior reflects a rural idyll. There is colour-washing, distressed-textures, but enough books and works of art scattered around to shout that educated, rich and arty people are in residence not yer actual country yokels.

Osbert's light touch is at one remove savage satire, but also betrays a deep love of his subject and is, in a paradoxical way, educational. One critic indicates that by stereotyping styles, in the fashion of a cartoonist, in a printed form Osbert almost defines these styles for future generations and I think this has some truth to it.

The book was first published in 1939, and when Osbert references the 'fifties he means the 1850's, and he still has the cultural memory that can distinguish the style of the 1870's from the style of the 1880's. We have lost this, so the book's time perspective is of an even greater historic value today. He casually refers to air raid precautions, and we tend to forget that life still went in throughout WWII. The book was republished in 1939, 1940, 1941, 1944, 1946 and 1948, which I presume is the date of my copy since it is the last date provided.

Osbert Lancaster is now out of fashion: he once held a much higher currency. However, I am delighted to report he is still in value.

SCOTTISH BARONIAL

THE official religion of Victorian England is usually considered to have been an evangelical form of Christianity suitably modified to bring it into harmony with a public school education and the principles of free trade, but one is sometimes tempted to wonder whether in large tracts of the country, particularly in Scotland, an older faith that blended ancestor worship with totemism did not reassert its hold on the upper classes from about the 'fifties onwards. How else can we explain the sudden appearance of those vast, castellated barracks faithfully mimicking all the least attractive features of the English home at the most uncomfortable period of its development, and filled with rank upon rank of grim-visaged, elaborately kilted forebears? What other explanation can be found for the presence of these enormous necropolitan menageries stuffed full of stags and caribou, bears and tigers-creatures which, however attractive in life, in death perform no function but the constant employment of legions of housemaids with dusters? What other reason can be advanced for the phenomenal popularity of Mr. Landseer whose only merit as a painter was the tireless accuracy with which he recorded the more revoltingly sentimental aspects of the woolier mammals?

Whether or not Scottish Baronial has its origins in primitive religion its popularity was soon assured in all classes of society. Tartan, stags' heads and faithful representations of Highland cattle in various media soon enlivened the Coburg simplicity of the Court as successfully as they added to the discomfort of cosy little villas in Tulse Hill or Twickenham where the rafters were unlikely ever to ring with the sound of the pipes. And to-day many a dusty hotel lounge, many a dentist's waiting-room with their ritual display of these old symbols, recall, like the mosques of Spain, the former domination of a vanished faith.