THE EMERGENCEOF MODERNISM IN FURNITURE DESIGN
From the 16th century decoration of furniture (usually with historical reference) equated to status and refinement. In the early Victorian period furniture was lavishly decorated in a number of historical styles: Grecian, Rococo Revival, Elizabethan and Gothic.
A. W. N.Pugin(1830/40’s)identified the Gothic withChristian moral values and sought to restore to it historical authenticity and stylistic integrity.Significantly he stated that authentic decoration should always be secondary to function in design. Concerned at the poor design of British furnishingsHenry Coles(1840’s)established an enterprise uniting Art (Decoration) with Manufacture (Construction), also asserting that function should be the paramount concern in design, and decoration drawn from nature. He was one of the leading figures behind the Great Exhibition(1851), seeking, and largely failing, to stimulate better manufacturing design.
In its wake CharlesEastlake(1860’s)and others identified in ‘Old English’(Tudor) interiors a degree of honesty in revealed materials and construction, and extolled the virtues of ‘native’ furniture for its simple and effective design and manufacture.
In a reaction the meretricious decoration of the early Victorian historicism the Aesthetic Movement (1870-80’s)inspired lighter, elegant interiors and ‘Art’ furnishings characterised by open construction of ebonised turned elements, influenced in the designs ofWilliamGodwinand Christopher Dresserby Japanese models. Form and structure became the primary aesthetic elements. Simultaneously, a romantic reaction continued the Gothic theme with a reverence for the culture, art and craft of the Middle Ages. WilliamMorris’s(1860-90’s)belief in the importance of personal creativity was expressed in the integrity of materials and construction, inspiring the honest and unaffected craftsmanship of the Arts and Crafts Movement (1880-90’s), but maintaining hostility to mechanised production.
Charles Voysey,Frank Lloyd Wrightand Charles Rennie Mackintosh(1890’s on)combined the revealed construction and honest materials of the Arts and Crafts Movement with the structuralexpression of ‘Art’furniture. The work of the latter especially was admired and adapted by the Wiener Werstatte (early 1900’s).
Simultaneously Art Nouveauwas embracing natural forms, thus arguably ending the connection between decoration and historical antecedents.
Figures such as RichardRiemerschmid in the Deutscher Werstättemovement (early 1900’s) moved towards standardised typenmobelin a machinestil: design in the logic of the machine.The ‘standardisers’ (Riemerschmid, Hermann Muthesius et al.) in the Deutcher Werkbund challengedthe ‘individualists’ (Henri Van de Velde, Walter Gropius et al.) insistence on the role personal creativity in design.On becoming the post-war director of theWeimarBauhaus(1919 – 1933)WalterGropius initially instituted artistic instruction alongside craft techniques in the craft trainingprogramme. Progressively Bauhaus design theory moved towards a primary emphasis the function, the nature of materials and of the production process. This was seen as embodying sachlichkeit; ‘common sense’ or objective design.Theoretical functionalism, or Modernism, had arrived – although it could be argued that it was expressed, without the name, by Michel Thonetin his bentwood furniture some seventy years earlier!