Adam style

During the 18th century there was much work for eager architects and designers, as Britain experienced a boom in the building of new houses, theatres, shops, offices and factories, with towns growing rapidly due to the onset of the Industrial Revolution.

Architects, designers, cabinet makers, stonemasons, and craftsmen published pattern books and style guides to advertise their ideas, thereby hoping to attract a lucrative clientele.

The Adam brothers aimed to simplify the rococo and baroque styles which had been fashionable in the preceding decades, to bring what they felt to be a lighter and more elegant feel to Georgian houses.

The Adam style moved away from the strict mathematical proportions previously found in Georgian rooms, and introduced curved walls and domes, decorated with elaborate plasterwork and striking mixed colour schemes using newly affordable paints in pea green, sky blue, lemon, lilac, bright pink, and red-brown terracotta.

Artists such as Angelica Kauffman and Antonio Zucchi were employed to paint classical figurative scenes within cartouches set into the interior walls and ceilings.

They were attracted to the light and elegant designs, as a contrast to the heavier and more cluttered interiors which had dominated their homes during the second half of the 19th century.

The Adam and Regency revivals, however, lost mainstream momentum after World War I, being replaced by Art Deco in popular taste.