Victorian revival describes the many historical styles that were deliberately revived and reinterpreted in Britain during the reign of Queen Victoria. Rather than developing a single new style, Victorian designers, architects and manufacturers drew freely on the past, producing buildings, furniture and decorative arts in Gothic, Elizabethan, Jacobean, Rococo, Renaissance, Greek, Egyptian, Queen Anne and Georgian modes.
The Gothic Revival, championed by A. W. N. Pugin and seen in the Houses of Parliament, was perhaps the most influential, shaping churches, country houses and furniture. The Rococo revival brought curvaceous carved furniture, gilded mirrors and floral porcelain into fashionable drawing rooms, while Elizabethan and Jacobean revivals produced heavy carved oak for halls and libraries. Later in the century, the Queen Anne movement in architecture and the Sheraton and Adam revivals in furniture looked back to the eighteenth century. The term is also used for the renewed appreciation of Victorian taste in the twentieth century, after decades of disregard. Revival pieces can be confused with originals, so collectors look closely at construction, timbers, machine work and proportions to tell Victorian interpretations from earlier work.
