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Belter Parlor

The Belter Parlor reflects the height of fashionable taste in the 1850s. By the mid-nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution had given America new manufacturing techniques, new prosperity, and unbridled enthusiasm for new luxuries. A prolific assortment of elaborate furnishings became part of the display of wealth.

The parlor, the room in which guests were received, was considered the woman's domain. The decorative style deemed most appropriate for her was a reinterpretation of the Rococo, one of the many revival styles to influence decorative arts in the middle of the nineteenth century. The curving forms, naturalistic carving, and asymmetrical shapes of the eighteenth-century Rococo were pushed further to create designs that were even more elaborate and flamboyant.


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Everything in the Belter Parlor--furniture, carpet, mantelpiece, cornices, and overmantel mirror--embodies this new style.


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