Charles Eastlake

Charles Locke Eastlake (11 March 1836 – 20 November 1906) was a British architect and furniture designer.

Antique arm chair drawn by Charles Eastlake, whose 1868 book on furniture became influential in Britain and the United States

Eastlake was born in Plymouth. Trained by the architect Philip Hardwick (1792–1870), he popularized William Morris's notions of decorative arts in the Arts and Crafts style, becoming one of the principal exponents of the revived Early English or Modern Gothic style popular during the nineteenth century. He did not make any furniture; his designs were produced by professional cabinet makers.

In 1868 he published Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery and other Details, which was very influential in Britain, and later in the United States, where the book was published in 1872.[1] From 1866 to 1877 he was secretary to the Royal Institute of British Architects, and from 1878 to 1898 he was Keeper of the National Gallery, London.[2]

He died, aged 70, at Leinster Square, Bayswater, and was buried at Kensal Green.

The style of furniture named after him, Eastlake style, flourished during the later half of the nineteenth century. A style of architecture, with old English and Gothic elements, is also named for him.

His uncle, Sir Charles Lock Eastlake PRA (born in 1793), was an earlier Keeper of the National Gallery, from 1843 to 1847, which, nowadays, results in much confusion between the two men, whose names are distinguished only by the presence or absence of an "e" in their middle names.