Create that Creepy Atmosphere in Your Turn of the Century Fiction

photo credit: Małopolski Instytut Kultury via photo pin cc

What is it that makes the late Victorian period so creepy? Well other than the obsession with death culture and the constant air of society wandering into the mysterious future with the industrial and technological revolutions, the furniture was absolutely disturbing!

photo credit: Alexandre Prévot via photo pin cc 

You’ve seen this type of furniture before. It involves incorporating human and animal faces, body parts, and various other characteristics into wood carvings and furniture. Remember that movie The Haunting with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Owen Wilson where all the children’s souls were trapped in the headboards and walls – that’s the style I’m talking about! It also includes a lot of scrolling, winding, waving, and melting effects. Lots of cast iron and wood carvings.

It’s actually a style of décor call Art Nouveau, 1890-1914, according to the National Gallery of Art – Art Nouveau Exhibition webpage. Art Nouveau was a form of art developed in North America and Europe by various artists, designers, and architects in an effort to create the first form of art fit for the modern age. Some designers embraced the changes occurring in technology and society by using new materials like cast iron while others returned to a disturbing combination of the old world and the fantasy world of myth and magic.

photo credit: Alexandre Prévot via photo pin cc

I decided to research Victorian/Turn of the Century furniture while writing A White Room my novel where the furniture comes to life – it’s like Beauty & the Beast but beauty’s nuts and the furniture’s evil – and it’s not an allusion. Victorian furniture is creepy.

While researching this style of décor, I visited the Art Nouveau Exhibition at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno and boy is this stuff awesome to see in person. Check out Monsters and Maidens to learn some history and see an example of some of the more fantastical creations involving dragons, sea creatures, and maidens.

photo credit: IPBrian via photo pin cc

So if you work is set in Victorian period, around the turn of the century, or during the Industrial Revolution, don't forget to incorporate some Art Nouveau touches to create that creepy atmosphere. 

Here are some more online resources if you want to further research this topic: Europeana Exhibit, National Czeck & Slovac Museum and Library , and Arthistory.net and A World History of Art has a list of different styles that also effected furniture and deco design. And here is an Art Nouveau Timeline. 

Click here to see some books on the subject.

Hope that helps get you started. 

What are some details you have used or seen others use from a historical time period to create a creepy effect or atmosphere in historical fiction?