British design critic Stephen Bayley once remarked that "interior design is a travesty of the architectural process and a frightening condemnation of the credulity, helplessness and gullibility of the most formidable consumers—the rich".
Walking into the Viceregal Lodge, you are at once awestruck, exasperated and amused by its interior. If its exterior is Promethean, its interiors are pure Hamlet! If the exterior is about Power, then the interior is an endless chain of indecision: pagan? Jacobean? Victorian? Scottish Baronial? Heck, let's have it all!
The value of economy is abandoned in favour of grandeur, of a sort of unrestrained "look at me" drama! The woodwork, the heights, the patterns speak not only about the forces at work in society at the time when the Viceregal Lodge was created, but also about the intensely social character of the interiors of its occupants.
Rich detail characterises each room. Yet nothing is left to your imagination: it is not ambiguous, or arcane and certainly not mysterious. This is not a world of intuition; and yet, you are transported by the shape and form of the corporeal objects all around you into a world of unique and inexpressible beauty. There is order, and symmetry and a sort of moral comeliness to this building... If the intention is to strike awe in the viewer, it is achieved in great measure!!
Walking into the Viceregal Lodge, you are at once awestruck, exasperated and amused by its interior. If its exterior is Promethean, its interiors are pure Hamlet! If the exterior is about Power, then the interior is an endless chain of indecision: pagan? Jacobean? Victorian? Scottish Baronial? Heck, let's have it all!
The value of economy is abandoned in favour of grandeur, of a sort of unrestrained "look at me" drama! The woodwork, the heights, the patterns speak not only about the forces at work in society at the time when the Viceregal Lodge was created, but also about the intensely social character of the interiors of its occupants.
Rich detail characterises each room. Yet nothing is left to your imagination: it is not ambiguous, or arcane and certainly not mysterious. This is not a world of intuition; and yet, you are transported by the shape and form of the corporeal objects all around you into a world of unique and inexpressible beauty. There is order, and symmetry and a sort of moral comeliness to this building... If the intention is to strike awe in the viewer, it is achieved in great measure!!
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4 comments:
Looks excellent to me. Fine, rich, warm, hardwood. I wonder whether the wood was harvested locally or was imported from England? Great pictures. Thank you. Hope to live in Shimla someday.
Thank you, dear Anonymous person. The wood is teak, imported from Burma. Looking at the size of the Viceregal Lodge, it is clear that somewhere a small forest was destroyed so that this rich look could be born.
Interesting choice of words in your description of the interiors.
Missed seeing the Viceregal Lodge, during my maiden visit to Shimla earlier this month. But one of the books I picked up during the trip was Imperial Shimla by Pamela Kanwar. She quotes historical sources and personages describing it as '...most impressive structure in Shimla......yet trifle ludicrous' :-)
i agree--we used to picnic on the grounds in our school days--and sneaked inside a couple of times...it was quite imposingly gothic outside yet even then,the interior seemed like a waste of wood..
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