The Newel

Jay W. Christopher is a formidable collector of industrial, mass produced decorative

arts, specifically newel posts from the 1880s to the 1940s. The assembled collection

is highly unique in this exhibition more than over eighty newel posts at the Brauer

Museum of Art. Newels vary greatly in design and fabrication, from turned single

stems to compositions of many pieces. Their ornamentation can be hand carved,

machine carved, or applied. The Jay W. Christopher Newel Post Collection is unique

as it removes the newel from its traditional environment and places it on display as

a piece of art and sculpture.

Newel posts, while all serving the same function, exist in different shapes - some are

slender, some are stocky, some are tall, some are short, and some take ornamentation

better than others. Most staircases have a newel post, some have two, even three or

four. Stairs and their accompanying railings cannot easily exist without a newel post.

Newels are the end of the line, providing strength in a turn, starting or culminating the

steps at a landing.

Newels are differentiated by the location of the stairs they serve, either inside or

outside. Inside newels, as the name implies, stand guard inside the home much like

a butler; they are polite and unobtrusive but always present. Since they are not subject

to seasonal weather, they can be structurally complicated, made of costly woods, cast

of exotic metal, gilded, cut from stone, and decorated with sculptures. In some cases,

they have also been outfitted with candelabras, gas jets, and, beginning in the 1890s,

electric lights. The inside newel often sets the tone of the house or provides insight into

the owner through its ornamentation. In contrast, outside newels are strong and tough,

blistered by the sun, parched by winds, and rotted by rain. They tend to be far simpler

in design.

Though the United States began as a country of European immigrants, the American

newel post is not tightly rooted in European traditions. Once America was discovered

to be apparently free for the taking, many first generation European immigrants quickly

realized wealth. This wealth allowed them aspirations their families in the “old” country

would have associated only with the upper class, the gentry and nobility. Early American

homes were ornate, boasting new wealth from new resources. The American dream

home emerged.

By the eighteenth century, it was common for Americans to own a home and

accompanying land. The houses reflected the newly acquired grand aspirations of the

immigrants’ version of a gentleman’s house: a two-storied facade pierced with windows,

a fancy door with an ornamented frame that faced all those who passed by, and a

staircase inside with an ornamental newel that greeted visitors. These homes, whether

from the 1680s, 1780s, or 1880s, each reflected their owners’ interpretations of the

fashions of the day. The main staircase - a showpiece with applied, molded, and carved

ornamentation, and delicately carved balusters and newels - took visitors from the

entrance hall to the floors above. The higher in the house the visitor climbed, the simpler

the newels and stairs.

The back stairs or servant’s stairs were always decidedly plain. Until the introduction of

electric lighting, stairs hugged walls pierced by large windows, reflecting the dim glow

of candle light or the bright yellow glare of gas jet flames, which in turn washed the

newel in ornamental shadows and reflective sparkles. Rarely were rails and newels

painted, while the balusters were often painted white or hand grained in a flat chocolate

brown. Under these lighting conditions, the newel and balusters became the pinnacle of

the turner’s craft.

From the time of the American Revolution to the 1800s, the layout of the American two

or three-storied homes changed little. What did change was the look of the newels and

the balusters. Almost all staircases received a stepped profile rather than a straight one.

The twists of previous balusters were avoided and replaced by simply tapering ones,

turned or planed. Drably painted fir or pine became the standard, displays of wealth.

Homes built in the American Federal and Empire Period, 1800 to 1850s, had newels

that were heavily turned, with attenuated columns. Tapering square posts decorated

with swags, garlands, vines, acanthus leaves, and scrolls are also characteristic of the

period. Carvings were heavy and deep, creating dark shadows. The accompanying

staircases were wider at the base, creating a more elegant and inviting ascent. With

the introduction of steam power by the mid-1850s, newel production changed. Now

the newel could be turned with greater speed, and efficiency at a constant speed,

by belt driven mechanical power, not the irregular, slower power generated by a horse,

treadmill, or a water wheel. A new skilled craftsman emerged, the guider of the power

cutting lathes. Softer woods such as pine and fir were used to not dull the cutting blades

as quickly as harder woods did. The finished products could easily be stained or

pigmented as desired to imitate expensive harder woods.

The newels on display in this exhibit, The Art of the Newel, may appear to be from the

American Revolution time period, but in reality they are not. What is often believed to

be Early American is in reality a revival of the style in the early 1900s. This revival

began after the centennial in Philadelphia in 1876 and then ebbed and flowed with

patriotic fervor into the 1930s, only to be revived again in the 1950s as America gained

historical self-awareness. Mass production took over the woodcarvers’ art, and homes

became less unique. Starting in the early 1900s, Sears, Roebuck & Co. and other

millwork companies sold homes through their mill-work catalogs. There would be stock

inventory on hand, and consumers could order practically an entire house by catalog.

Original millwork catalogs are on display as part of this exhibition. Newel posts and the

majority of machine-made decorative products sold in the United States became

synonymous with two words: American Victorian. While it is common to think of

American Victorian from the 1870s to about 1915 as a style, it is easier to understand

it as an umbrella term gathering under it a clutch of short lived, but popular, interior and

exterior styles. American Victorian encompasses the years from about the 1870s to

about 1915 and envelops Second Empire (1850s - c.1880s), Stick - Eastlake (1860s -

1890s), Gothic Revival or New Gothic (1860s - 1890s), Queen Anne (1880s - 1910s),

American Renaissance (1876 - 1917), Richardsonian Romanesque (1880s - 1900s),

Shingle (1880s -1900s), and, more widely, Aesthetic (1860s - 1900s) and Japanism

(1872 - 1910s). Except for Richardsonian Romanesque, none of these styles is uniquely

American, but rather the result of a rapid mix of international ideas and visuals brought

together as a first line of aesthetic defense against a rapidly industrializing society.

Naturally, each of these styles presented itself as hand crafted; yet all of them were

sympathetic in their own way to industrialized production. Typically, it was a matter

of cost that dictated hand crafted versus industrial. Power machine cut wood could

look close enough to hand carved that it was not worth it for the average American to

pay the premium price for handcrafted. The perception of hand carved exclusiveness

flourished until the advent of Modernism, which eliminated traditional interior decoration

including the newel for an elegantly proportioned machine-derived aesthetic. For a

small avant-garde, Modernism was the aesthetic and intellectual key to the twentieth

century. Today, antique newels are prized and replicated so that a new home visually

carries the values of an authentic historical, lived-in home that has carried with it original

architectural elements from an extinct time period.

The newels in the Jay W. Christopher collection are diverse and offer much for the

viewer to observe, compare, and contrast. Closer inspection of the newels reveals

similiar motifs and carvings that share common features, such as small columns,

rosettes, finials, and bands. The newel post collection represents the great age of

American architecture, with representations of the Italianate, Eastlake, New Gothic

(Gothic Revival), and Renaissance Revival styles ranging from the 1880s to the 1920s.

Charles L. Eastlake (1833 - 1906), one of the later nineteenth century’s most influential

writers on interiors and their design, first published his "Hints on Household Taste in

Furniture, Upholstery and Other Details" in the United States in 1872. The fourth edition,

published in 1878, was the first to include illustrations. This resulted in an increased

interest in the book among American readers and was subsequently reprinted numerous

times. These editions established Eastlake as an architectural style. With its massive,

angular, notched, and low relief carving in natural, stained, unpainted wood, the Eastlake

style is decidedly anti-curve, anti-Baroque Revival, anti-French, and anti-Second

Empire.

Other characteristics include extensive detail that is carved in low relief to appear more

two-dimensional due to the decrease in shadows, in contrast with deeper carvings

that appeared more three-dimensional. Eastlake decoration is often comprised of

elongated fluting, troughs, or rills centered on the length of the square shaft. The newel

is often topped with a cube shape, the sides of which have a centered projecting or relief

carved rosette. The Eastlake style is one of unity, encompassing the whole object, not

just emphasizing decorative sections.

Though Eastlake does not spend a great deal of time mentioning newel posts or stairs

specifically, he implies that newels and stairs were not subject to the changeable, fickle

fashionable whims of taste that defined upholstery, drapery design, furniture finishes,

etc., but once decided on were subject to the production and construction aesthetics of

their day. This aesthetic could last for decades, while the remainder of the home’s

furnishings, wallpaper, drapes, flooring, lighting, and furniture could change on a whim.

Eastlake valued sustainability achieved by a direct, transparent simplicity.

His championing of the Gothic Revival, or New Gothic as he called it, rests his case.

The Jay W. Christopher Collection has many fine examples of which Eastlake would

have approved.

The Italianate style was developed in Great Britian and Scotland, drawing heavily from

the Renaissance. The American Italianate version thrived from the 1840s to the 1890s.

The Christopher Collection has several variants of American Italianate newels that

feature the style’s bold characteristics such as large, machine turnedreels (looking like

mushrooms) and a flamboyant flared skirt pieced. together to form a polygonal cone.

By the 1880s, with the rapid encroachment of wealth in all parts of the nation, Italianate

and its cousin, Second Empire, were all the rage.

Stairs were the approved and envied centerpiece of the home. Traditional wall hugging

stairs had their lavish newel swirl into the room, resulting in a wider first few steps. It

was all show, not function, and it suited America just fine.

Square-shaped American Renaissance Revival newels defined imposing stairs in

suitably grand homes and public buildings. Everything was done by machine to appear

handmade. Newels were laminated, then sawn, turned, and carved by clever cutting

machines that worked each side independently, sometimes even differently at the

same time. Though the posts look hand carved, whirling knives affixed to rapidly

rotating shafts guided by skilled craftsmen cut the troughs and flowers into a hand

cut appearance. From the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, it was the

Renaissance, both Italian and Northern European, not the Greeks, that provided all

the basic catalogue of classical forms. The Chirstopher Collection has a fine selection

of motifs from this period and style.

American homes from the last quarter of the nineteenth century contained elaborate

newels and accompanying staircases that were centerpieces of domestic entrances,

public buildings, and private clubs. The Arts and Crafts, Neo-Gothic, Neo-Renaissance,

and Italianate interiors typically avoided traditional floor plans and focused on the

staircase as the asymmetrical grand display element.

To soften the entryway, the newel and stairs were usually set off to one side of the

entrance or set at the head of a broad staircase. In most homes, the stairs were not

a continuous flow of steps, but went from floor to landing, landing to floor, in single

flights, carefully staging the interior views. As a result, each flight demanded its own

newels, its own start and finish. This newly devised, multi-storied interior with viewing

platforms allowed the hostess to great her guests in a space of her choosing. Often,

the landings were large enough for a small orchestra, or at least a grouping of three

or four violins, to define and set the cultural tone.

Coupled with the use of innovative technologies such as square hole drills, blades that

cut very thin veneers, and machines that were capable of simultaneously cutting multiple

identical pieces and patterns, the exteriors, interiors, and newels of the great wooden

homes of the American Midwest and West consumed a seemingly endless supply of

fine lumber from Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota. This sped up production for the

never slowing demand for newels and balusters.

The steam powered, belt driven lathe became the machine of choice for newel

production. The carving tools could be positioned as desired by the craftsman, yielding

newels that could be widely or narrowly ribbed, mushroom topped, chamfered, and

faceted as the current aesthetic fashion dictated. New cutting technologies allowed

for cutting of ornamentation directly into planks, chamfering of corners, and, probably

very important from a commercial aspect, the producing of newels born out of an

assemblage of pieces. The pieces were probably discards from other assemblages

and larger wood cuttings that, with a ready supply of glues supplied by Chicago’s

stockyards, offered an effective use of scraps, especially when more costly woods

were used.

Italianate, a style that was developed in England, was related to and inspired by the

Renaissance Revival. Its great champion was Charles Eastlake, who in 1868 published

Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery and Other Details. This book was

widely influential in Britain. In 1872, the book was published in the United States and

also became enormously influential at all levels of society for the next forty years.

Eastlake proposed certain principles that were eagerly followed by craftsmen as well

as by customers. No carvings, moldings, or ornament would be glued on. In other

words, wood should be solid, in its natural color. Joints should not be mitered, but at

right angles and if painted, then with a flat color, with a line or stenciled ornament at

the angles. Stenciled lines were straight, and panels were cut square. Ornamentation

was either stenciled, metal, or carved into the wood; there were no projecting relief

molds or carvings. North American collectors, dealers, and historians call this style

Eastlake, while British contemporaries called it Italianate, Neo-Gothic, and on

occasion, Neo-Greco.

The ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement were distributed through dedicated journals

and magazines; clubs and societies hosted lectures and programs. Boston hosted the

first American Arts and Crafts exhibition in 1897, with approximately one thousand

objects on display crafted by more than one hundred and sixty craftsmen, half of whom

were women.

The Arts and Crafts Movement originated in England and quickly became an

international style in 1880; its influence continued till the 1930s. William Morris

(1834 - 1896) defined the style in the 1860s. He found extensive writings from

theorist John Ruskin (1819 -1990), who had written about the style but had not

formally defined it. Great Britain adopted this style, quickly followed by the rest of

Europe and finally the United States. Arts and Crafts was a reaction to industrial

production that contributed to the decline in the hand crafted arts.

In the United States, the terms American Craftsman or Craftsman style are synonymous

with Arts and Crafts, including style elements of Art Nouveau and Art Deco. In October,

1897, the Arts and Crafts Society was started in Chicago at the historic Hull House, the

nation’s first settlement house and bastion for social reform.

Initially, Queen Anne was a style associated with the reign of Queen Anne from 1702 -

1714. In later nineteenth-century England, around 1870, Queen Anne was a term used

to define houses popularized by Richard Norman Shaw (1831 - 1912). In the United

States, Queen Anne is defined by elaborately eccentric and asymmetrical shapes

constructed and textured as wooden houses that look handmade, but were mostly

machine-made of precut parts. Pattern books and a quickly expanding rail system

that brought urban made products to the farthest recesses of the United States aided

in the national distribution of this style.

The Jay W. Christopher Collection has representative examples of the various styles of

newels, the visual function each newel served, and the technological innovations the

style and construction represented.

Some definitions of commonly used design terms:

Fluting: In classical Greek and Roman shafts of columns or pilasters, vertical channels

with rounded sections cut for decorative effect, to play with light and shadow.

Finial: A decorative ornament placed on the apex of a pediment, a tower, the ends of a

chair’s upright supports, or atop a newel post. Finials take many shapes and have

several names such as a pommel, which is just a knob.

Festoon: An ornament representing a garland of fruit or flowers suspended from both

ends in a loop and hanging in a curve.

Banding: A decorative inlaid border of contrasting forms or woods. It is called cross

banding when the wood is cut across the grains, and straight banding when it is cut

with the grain.

Starting Newels: The millwork catalogs defined a starting newel as a newel at the foot

of the stairs. It typically has a broad, square base that braces the culminating visual

weight of the stairs and sets the aesthetic tone of the ensuing balusters.

Angle Newels: These are defined in millwork catalogs as newels at junctures or at

curves of stairs, and thus require both a top and bottom finish ornament, with the top

being more elaborate.