Furniture

This is an article about items in a room. For information about the UK band, see Furniture (band).

A Shaker chair.

Furniture is the collective term for the movable objects which may support the human body (seating furniture and beds), provide storage, or hold objects on horizontal surfaces above the ground. Storage furniture (which often makes use of doors, drawers, and shelves) is used to hold or contain smaller objects such as clothes, tools, books, and household goods. (See List of furniture types.)

Furniture can be a product of artistic design and is considered a form of decorative art. In addition to furniture's functional role, it can serve a symbolic or religious purpose. Domestic furniture works to create, in conjunction with furnishings such as clocks and lighting, comfortable and convenient interior spaces. Furniture can be made from many materials, including metal, plastic, and wood.

Cabinetry is the term for the skillset used in the building of furniture.

History of furniture

Furniture has been a part of the human experience since the development of non-nomadic cultures. Murals from Pompeii depict benches with decorative legs, and wall paintings and sculpture from Egypt show chairs, thrones and tables in use. Medieval furniture was often heavy and thick, but the Renaissance inspired an explosion of design in the field. By the late 20th century, application of varied materials, from glass to steel to plastics, led to avant-garde styles. Further applications of cantilevering and wire tension structures also influenced furniture's development. Other schools of thought developed the idea of harvesting and shaping wood to enhance and celebrate its origins in the tree, especially as seen in the large fletch-based tables of George Nakashima.

Furniture design

Furniture design has followed many trends.

Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau in architecture and interior design eschewed the eclectic historicism of the Victorian era. Though Art Nouveau designers selected and "modernized" some of the more abstract elements of Rococo style, such as flame and shell textures, in place of the historically-derived and basically tectonic or realistic naturalistic ornament of high Victorian styles, Art Nouveau advocated the use of highly-stylized nature as the source of inspiration and expanded the "natural" repertoire to embrace seaweed, grasses, and insects. Correspondingly organic forms, curved lines, especially floral or vegetal, and the like, were used.

Arts and Crafts

In the United States, it should be noted, the term Arts and Crafts is often used to denote the style of interior design that prevailed between the dominant eras of Art Nouveau and Art Deco, or roughly the period from 1910 to 1925.

Art Deco

Art Deco is characterized by use of materials such as aluminum, stainless steel, lacquer, inlaid wood, sharkskin (shagreen), and zebraskin. It also features the bold use of zigzag and stepped forms, and sweeping curves (unlike the sinuous curves of the Art Nouveau), chevron patterns, and the sunburst motif. Some of these motifs were ubiquitous — for example the sunburst motif was used in such varied contexts as a lady's shoe, a radiator grille, the auditorium of the Radio City Music Hall and the spire of the Chrysler Building.

Bauhaus

One of the most important contributions of the Bauhaus movement is in the field of furniture design. The world famous and ubiquitous Cantilever chair by Dutch designer Mart Stam, using the tensile properties of steel, and the Wassily Chair designed by Marcel Breuer are two examples.

Gjernes

A style following the methods of Liv Mildrid Gjernes is primarily popular in Scandinavia.

Shaker furniture

A distinctive style called Shaker furniture was developed by the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing (that is, the Shakers), a religious sect founded by Jane and James Wardley. They came to America from Manchester, England in 1774 led by Mother Ann Lee. Shaker furniture is widely admired for its simplicity, innovative joinery, quality, and functionality. Shaker designs were inspired by the ascetic religious beliefs of the Society.

See also: List of furniture designers

Selected bibliography

Gloag, John. A Short Dictionary of Furniture. New York: Holt, Rhinehart, and Winston, 1965.
Hayward, Charles H., Antique or Fake?: The Making of Old Furniture. London: Evans Brothers, 1971.

External links

Antique furniture articles at the Harp Gallery.