Tag: Victorian

Designer Desire: Mary Ellen Best

Montage of paintings by Mary Ellen Best

I love going out for a walk around dusk, when people have turned on their lights, but haven’t yet drawn the curtains. You can get a sneaky look inside and see how they’ve furnished and decorated their homes. I think that’s why I was first attracted to the works of this week’s artist.

Mary Ellen Best (1809-1891) was an English watercolour artist, primarily concentrating on English – and later on, German – domestic interior scenes. She was born in York, the daughter of Dr Charles Best, a physician who worked at the York Lunatic Asylum (now Bootham Park Hospital). Her mother was Mary Norcliffe Dalton, the daughter of a Yorkshire landowner. She was brought up, along with her younger sister, Rosamond, in Little Blake Street (now Duncombe Place) near the west end of York Minster.

Best showed artistic promise from a young age, having art lessons at boarding school during her teenage years. As a young woman, she produced and sold many paintings and also exhibited widely.

As well as her own home, Best painted a number of studies of the Norcliffe family’s East Yorkshire home, Langton Park. There are many well-to-do town & country house drawing rooms, sitting rooms, dining rooms, music rooms etc. But it’s the ‘below stairs’ views that I find most interesting; the servant’s quarters, the kitchens and the more modest cottage interiors.

After the death of her parents and grandmother, from whom she inherited handsome sums each time, Best’s artistic output decreased. After she married German schoolmaster, Johann Anton Phillip Sary in 1840, the number of paintings she produced lessened even further until they virtually dried up after giving birth to and raising a son and daughter.

In 1985, a biography entitled The World of Mary Ellen Best was written by Caroline Davidson. In it, she calculated that Best produced over 1,500 paintings in her lifetime. Copies of the book are available at Abe Books and Amazon.

You can also find many more details about life on the Women of York blog and essay, Negotiating Identity: Mary Ellen Best and The Status of Female Victorian Artists.

Self-portrait by Mary Ellen Best, 1839
Self-portrait by Mary Ellen Best, 1839 (credit)

Additional image credits:
Askart

What would you spend your £50 on from The Victorian Emporium?

Win a £50 voucher from The Victorian Emporium

We’re thrilled to be working with The Victorian Emporium this month. They’re giving one of our readers a £50 voucher to spend in their store.

Victorian style lighting accessories from The Victorian Emporium

If you live in a Victorian house, or have done up your home in a Victorian period style, this is the competition for you! The Victorian Emporium has a huge range of decorative homeware items to adorn your abode – both indoors and out. They specialise in supplying fixtures & fittings to help restore homes to their period best. Their website even provides handy tips, guides and advice; such as how to research the history of your house, choosing period colour schemes and decorating your Victorian home at Christmas.

Victorian style door furniture from The Victorian Emporium

Choose from door furniture to curtain tiebacks, lighting to bathroom accessories. There are bound to be things in their collection that catch your eye.

Antique style curtain tie backs from The Victorian Emporium

To take part, go check out The Victorian Emporium shop and return here to tell us what you’d spend your £50 voucher on if you won. This month’s competition is open to all our followers around the world!

£50 voucher from The Victorian Emporium

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Victorian Fireplaces Infographic

Victorian living room with blue painted walls and period Victoria fireplacecredit

Victorian homes often contain period features, such as ceiling roses and plaster mouldings, tiled floors, and antique fireplaces. A Victorian house has the potential to be a beautiful family home when restored to its former glory. However, if you’re planning a restoration project, it is worth spending some time researching the Victorian era. That way, you can source authentic design features rather than resorting to reproduction imitations.

The fireplace is an excellent place to start if you’re renovating a Victorian period property. Fireplaces from the period were rather eclectic in design. They tended to incorporate both classical and naturalistic elements and unlike fireplaces from the regency era, Victorian fireplaces had generous mantels to accommodate the fashion of the time for displaying numerous ornaments.

If you would like to learn more about the history of fireplace design, check out the infographic below. It’s a great resource for anyone interested in renovating a period property.

Fireplace history infographic

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Cakes & Bakes: Victorian cottage loaf

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Sliced home made Victorian cottage loaf

Did you watch the first of three episodes of Victorian Bakers on the BBC this week? It inspired me to try to make a Victorian cottage loaf – something that would have been a rural family’s staple back then. Apparently this bread was eaten for breakfast, lunch and evening meal.

On the programme, the loaves were made using brewers’ yeast – not something readily available in the supermarket. I used fresh yeast instead, which you can buy very cheaply in Morrisons.

Scoring an uncooked Victorian cottage loaf | H is for Home

I took a recipe from Country Bread by Linda Collister & Anthony Blake as inspiration. It’s called ‘Clive Mellum’s Favourite loaf’. Clive is a master baker at Shipton Mill Organic Bakery in Tetbury. The very same Shipton Mill whose bread flour I currently use.

I slightly adapted the recipe using wholemeal instead of white bread flour. We like the flavour & goodness of wholemeal, and it’s perhaps the more authentic country loaf as white or refined flour was something that only the upper classes would have been able to afford.

bread sponge

You need to start this Victorian cottage loaf the day before, making the ‘sponge‘… a mix similar to a starter, and leaving it to prove overnight. So a bit of forward planning is required!

Victorian cottage loaf | H is for Home

The resulting loaf was delicious – no wonder the Victorians ate it 3 times a day!

Victorian cottage loaf
Yields 1
Cook Time
40 min
Cook Time
40 min
For the sponge
  1. 5g/⅕oz fresh yeast
  2. 130g/4½oz lukewarm water
  3. 150g/5¼oz wholemeal flour
For the dough
  1. 225g/8oz wholemeal bread flour
  2. 4g/⅙oz salt
  3. 12g/½oz fresh yeast
  4. 110ml/4fl oz lukewarm waterVictorian cottage loaf ingredients
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Instructions
  1. Crumble & stir the yeast into some of the water before adding this to the flour with the rest of the water
  2. Mix until the thoroughly combined
  3. You don't need to knead the sponge as time will develop the gluten sufficiently
  4. Put the sponge into a bowl that's large enough to allow it to expand to at least 3 times its original size
  5. Cover with a lid, polythene bag or cling film and leave it at room temperature for 12-18 hours
  6. Mix the flour and salt together and make a well in the centre
  7. Crumble the yeast into the water and stir to combine
  8. Pour the yeast liquid into the well
  9. Bring the flour from the sides of the bowl towards the centre
  10. Add in the sponge and continue mixing to form a smooth but not sticky dough
  11. Turn out the dough on to a lightly floured surface and knead for at least 10 minutes
  12. Form the dough into a ball and return it to the bowl
  13. Cover the bowl with cling film and leave to rest in a warm place for 15 minutes
  14. Turn the dough out on to a lightly floured surface and knock back
  15. Divide it into two balls - one with ⅓ of the dough, and the other with ⅔ of the dough
  16. Place the balls of dough onto a greased baking sheet. Cover with inverted bowls or lightly oiled cling film and leave to rise in a warm place for about an hour until doubled in size
  17. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 200ºC/400ºF
  18. Gently flatten the top of the larger round of dough and, with a sharp knife, criss-cross the centre about 4cm across
  19. Brush or sprinkle with a little water and carefully place the smaller round on top of the larger
  20. Gently press a hole through the middle of the top ball, down into the lower ball, using your thumb and first two fingers of one hand
  21. Cover with lightly oiled cling film and leave to rest in a warm place for about 10 minutes
  22. Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped on the base
  23. Allow to cool on a wire rack for at least 15 minutes before slicing or serving
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