History and Styles of Interior Design and Decorative Arts
What this domain tests
Recognising periods by plan type, construction, material and ornament, and placing Cyprus within the international sequence - Byzantine, Lusignan Gothic, Venetian, Ottoman and British colonial alongside the modern movements.
Antiquity and Byzantium
- Greek house: rooms arranged around a courtyard, with the oikos (living room) and andron (men's dining room); the megaron is a rectangular hall with a porch and central hearth.
- Roman domus: axial and symmetrical, with atrium, compluvium and impluvium, peristyle garden, fresco walls and mosaic floors.
- Byzantine: domed basilica, marble revetment, gold mosaic, opus sectile. Cypriot example: the Early Christian basilica of Panagia Chrysopolitissa at Paphos.
Medieval to colonial Cyprus
- Lusignan Gothic, 13th–14th century: pointed arches, rib vaults, flying buttresses - Bellapais Abbey near Kyrenia; St Nicholas Cathedral in Famagusta, now the Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque.
- Venetian period: fortifications at Nicosia and Famagusta, Renaissance detailing.
- Ottoman: the konak with a sofa (raised seating platform around the walls), divan cushions, cumba (projecting window bay), kafes lattice screens, courtyard and fountain.
- British colonial, 1878–1960: deep verandas, high ceilings for ventilation, timber floors, louvered shutters.
Modern movements
- Arts and Crafts, 1880s–1910: honest materials and craftsmanship.
- Art Nouveau, about 1890–1910: whiplash line, ironwork, Guimard's metro entrances.
- Art Deco, named from the 1925 Paris Exposition: stepped forms, lacquer, chrome, exotic veneers - not to be confused with Art Nouveau.
- De Stijl from 1917 (Mondrian, Rietveld's Red-Blue Chair); Bauhaus 1919–1933 (Gropius, tubular steel, functionalism).
- Mid-century modern, 1945–1969 (Eames, tapered legs, moulded plywood); Postmodernism about 1975–1990, Memphis founded 1981; contemporary minimalism.
Worked example
A room has a raised 40 cm platform seating running around three walls, low divan cushions, a projecting latticed window bay, a high ceiling and a courtyard beyond. Attribute it to the Ottoman konak tradition - sofa, cumba and kafes - not to Byzantine (domes, marble revetment, mosaic) and not to Art Deco (geometric lacquer in an urban interior of 1925–1939). The reasoning runs material → plan → ornament → date, and each named feature is the evidence for the attribution.
Traps that cost marks
- Swapping Art Nouveau and Art Deco in date or form.
- Treating Byzantine as an ornament catalogue rather than an architectural system.
- Naming a style with no supporting feature quoted from the description.
- Mixing the Cypriot sequence - a Lusignan Gothic church is not a Byzantine basilica.