I.

Introduction

Furniture, the equipment in a room, such as beds, chairs, tables, and chests, that usually gives a room a particular function, such as that of bedroom, dining room, or kitchen.

II.

Materials and Design

Historically, the most common material for making furniture is wood, but other materials, such as metal and stone, have also been used. Furniture designs have reflected the fashion of every era from ancient times to today. Whereas in most periods a single style dominated, a diversity of old and new styles influences present-day design. Some of the most highly prized items of furniture used in contemporary homes, however, are antiques—pieces ranging from 100 to 300 or more years old. The most successful designers today are eclectic, and furniture ranges from innovative designs to adaptations of historical models for special needs, also including well-made reproductions of antique pieces.

The basic requirements of furniture design are complex, for appearance has always been as important as function, and the general tendency has been to design furniture to complement architectural interiors. Indeed, some forms were conceived architecturally, with legs designed as columns; other forms were at least in part anthropomorphic, with legs in animal forms. Furniture design ranges from simple to elaborate, depending on the pieces' intended use rather than on the period in which they were made. The earliest records, such as ancient Mesopotamian inventories, describe richly decorated interiors with gold cloth and gilt furniture. Some surviving ancient Egyptian examples are elaborate and were originally sheathed in gold, but many very plain pieces were also made in ancient times. In surveys of historical furniture, however, it is the fine furniture, made for royalty, nobility, and the wealthy classes, that is emphasized, because in general it has been the best preserved. Fine furniture, with its elaborate designs, also reveals the most about a period because highly developed designs closely reflect changes in taste. The simplest work furniture, by contrast, made for ordinary members of society, tends to be more purely functional and therefore timeless; thus tables and chairs used by working people in 1800 bc would be surprisingly similar to the tables and chairs used in farmhouses in ad 1800. Dutch genre paintings of the 1600s and early 19th-century American paintings depict rural interiors that often look remarkably similar.

III.

History of Furniture

Furniture must have existed at least since the Neolithic period (7000 to 2000 bc), although none survives. A history of furniture must therefore begin with a discussion of the oldest surviving examples, those from the 4th to the 6th Dynasty (c. 2680-2255 bc) in Egypt of the Old Kingdom.

A.

Egyptian Furniture

The dry Egyptian climate and the elaborate burial practices of the ancient Egyptians both contributed to the preservation of their furniture, which includes stools, tables, chairs, and couches. Egyptian wall paintings give an insight into the design and use of furniture in aristocratic Egyptian life. In both design and construction the methods used in ancient Egypt are followed wherever furniture is made today. In large pieces, particularly seating and tables, the mortise-and-tenon construction familiar in ancient Egypt is still in use, although the tenon may be replaced by a dowel to speed up production. In ancient Egypt the more delicate boxes and chests were constructed by dovetailing, a technique that persists in contemporary work. One ancient Egyptian stool illustrated on a wooden panel (c. 2800 bc, Egyptian Museum, Cairo) from the tomb of Hesire has animal legs as the supports. It does not differ much from a chair (c. 1325 bc, Egyptian Museum) from the tomb of the New Kingdom pharaoh Tutankhamen.

A chair, table, couch, and canopy (c. 2600 bc, Egyptian Museum) from the tomb at Giza of the 4th-Dynasty Queen Hetepheres were reconstructed from remnants of their original gold sheathing. The chair has animal legs, a solid back, and arm supports of openwork panels in papyrus patterns. The bed, higher at the head, has a headrest and a footboard. The relief decoration on some of the furniture consists of symbols of gods and scenes of religious significance. The design of other surviving tables and stools is restrained, with legs that are plain but beautifully made. It is conceivable that ornament could originally have been applied in the form of stamped metal sheathing; however, wall paintings do illustrate simple, upholstered pieces.

Extant examples and illustrations from wall paintings suggest the broad scope of decoration used on Egyptian furniture. Gold sheets were applied to legs of chairs and tables; inlays of ivory and other materials were employed on panels of chests and other surfaces. The basic notion of forms with legs as anthropomorphic and of storage pieces as buildings in miniature was popular in ancient Egypt, and in succeeding cultures.

B.

Mesopotamian Furniture

Although virtually no examples of Mesopotamian furniture have survived, an idea of the appearance of such pieces as tables, stools, and thrones can be formed from depictions in reliefs and inlays dating from about 3500 to 800 bc. A Sumerian standard—a box on a pole (c. 3500-3200 bc, Iraq Museum, Baghdad)—has shell inlays depicting very simple chairs and thrones. By contrast, a surviving Sumerian harp (c. 2685 bc, University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia) has rich, colourful inlays and a bearded bull's head carved in the round and covered in gold foil. A stele made about 2300 bc shows a backless throne that appears to have been elegantly upholstered but had very plain straight legs. The furniture shown in a relief (9th century bc, British Museum, London) of Ashurnasirpal II and his queen is more elaborate, with tables and thrones supported on both trumpet-shaped and animal-form legs and embellished with relief decoration.

C.

Minoan and Mycenaean Furniture

Surviving examples of furniture in the roughly contemporaneous civilizations of the Mycenaeans on mainland Greece and the Minoans in the Aegean Islands are equally scarce. Representations in relief on Minoan rings and in the form of small bronze and terracotta pieces provide most of the evidence. One splendid exception is the gypsum throne in the Throne Room at Knossos (c. 1600-1400 bc). The extant examples—stools, chairs, couches, benches, and chests—do not suggest the use of much elaborate decoration. One or two tablets have been discovered, however, that make reference to inlays and gold embellishments on furniture. A single ivory leg from Thebes is also elaborately ornamented.

D.

Greek Furniture

As little Greek furniture has survived, it is best known from paintings and sculpture. Its appearance can be reconstructed from details on vase paintings, grave stelae (tombstones), and other relief sculpture such as that in the frieze from the Parthenon. A few marble thrones have survived, as have isolated wooden elements from actual Greek pieces. The available evidence suggests that Greek designers did not follow the free forms of the earlier Aegean examples. The tendency to base furniture ornament on architectural decoration, and the general symmetry and regularity of overall design, appear to follow Egyptian precedent. Nevertheless, although they resemble each other, the Greek couch is quite different in function from the Egyptian bed. Used for eating as well as resting, the Greek couch was made with the horizontal reclining area at table height, rather than low off the ground and at an incline. The headrest was often curved to support pillows; no footrest was used. Although the animal-form leg is seen occasionally, legs were more often a trumpet form or a rectangular design based on a columnar form. Various stools were used for sitting. Folding stools with X-shaped legs and fixed stools with straight legs were made at least from the 6th century bc to the Hellenistic era.

Functional and plain examples were to be seen as well as the more elaborate. More distinctively an innovation of Greek designers is the chair known as the klismos, a light (or easy) chair with a back. Comfortable and very popular, it was used most in the Archaic and Classical periods. The klismos is essentially plain, with legs curving out from the seat and a back support consisting of a simple rectangular panel curved inwards from sides to centre. Tables depicted in paintings are generally small. Rectangular tops appear to have been the more popular type; most often the support consists of three legs—mostly simple and curved but sometimes carved in animal forms—that were at times reinforced with stretchers near the top. Literary references and illustrations suggest that typical tables were light. They were moved in to serve individuals at dinner and removed after the meal, to allow space for entertainers to perform. Round tables of Greek origin were made in the Hellenistic period.

Chests in ancient Greece varied in size from those made on a miniature scale to monumental examples, and, in design, from those with plain flat tops to the more architectural style with gabled lids. They were made of wood, of bronze, and of ivory, with architectural decoration. The chest shapes are a long-lived phenomenon; they were first found in ancient Egypt and then became traditional, remaining evident in 19th-century folk examples.

E.

Roman Furniture

At first glance, Roman furniture design appears to have been based on Greek prototypes. In the first century ad opulent Roman design reflected strong Greek influence. The ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum provide clear evidence of handsome domestic architecture and show the settings that required furniture. Pompeiian frescoes illustrate the use of furniture and suggest that a wider variety of forms was known. The source and date of new storage pieces that had been introduced in Hellenistic Greece are questionable. No secure evidence confirms the theory that cupboards were introduced then. Roman frescoes featuring cupboards may be copies of Greek paintings, but a cupboard from the House of Lararium in Herculaneum has survived.

Extant examples indicate that more marble and bronze furniture was made in Roman than in Greek times; also, the designs were more complex, even though they employed the same basic vocabulary of ornament. In addition to the small tables common in Greece, larger, rectangular examples and round tables of various sizes were used. More practical designs were also introduced: tables that could be taken apart and others with folding bases. The richness of elegant inlays and elaborate work in ivory, bronze, marble, and wood are mentioned in Roman literature, and enough fragments exist to prove the accuracy of the early descriptions.

F.

Byzantine and Early Medieval Furniture

Although an abundant quantity of artefacts from Early Christian and Byzantine times survive, there is strangely little evidence of furniture either in the East or the West. Byzantine art has been much admired; the richness of imperial churches in İstanbul, Turkey, and in Ravenna, Italy, indicates that there must have been a parallel magnificence in the furnishings of the palatial homes of ruling families. Byzantine mosaics suggest that, although classical ornament may have become stylized, it was still used between about ad 400 and 1000. A single Byzantine monument, the Throne of Bishop Maximian (c. 550, Archiepiscopal Museum, Ravenna), a masterpiece of ivory relief sculpture completely covering a wooden frame, was designed for ecclesiastical use, but the throne reveals the rich, stylized ornament of the period, and it suggests the manner in which secular Byzantine furniture design must have been conceived.

The so-called Throne of Dagobert I (c. 600, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris), a bronze folding stool, has animal legs familiar from Roman examples but rendered far more boldly. Manuscripts and an occasional mosaic dating from between the 5th and the 9th century provide further evidence that, although Roman influence persisted, changes in taste inspired artisans to render detail more abstractly and simply. Flat patterns replaced the high relief of Roman times. Conservatism, a strong element in the manuscript illuminations of the period, was also evident in its furniture.

The years 1000 to about 1200—the Romanesque period—are known for the regeneration of spirituality and for the large number of new churches built in western Europe, but little evidence exists of the actual furniture of the period. Romanesque furniture design is best known from the assortment of 12th-century representations in French sculpture, in which simplified, schematic interpretations of Graeco-Roman ornament are used. A few surviving turned-post (lathe-turned) chairs from 12th-century Scandinavia are Romanesque in spirit. Wooden chests, made somewhat later, are carved in schematic, geometric patterns that continue the Romanesque style.

G.

Gothic Furniture

Gothic architecture involved new, dramatic conceptions of space through the use of pointed arches, flying buttresses, and other radical innovations, but 12th-century furniture design was not influenced by the new style. The new cathedrals were expressions of affluence, but for their interiors the rich patrons of the Church appear to have enjoyed simple, functional oak furniture draped with tapestries. The decorative elements of the Gothic, particularly the pointed arch, were not seen in the design of furniture until about 1400. Then, for more than a century, tracery and arches were carved on the panels of chairs, on chests, and on tables of every size.

In the 15th century a few new forms were introduced. One was a type of sideboard, with a small storage area set on tall legs; it had display space on the top of the enclosure as well as on a shelf below it. Cupboards were made with either one or two tiers of storage areas enclosed by doors. Another important storage piece was the armoire, with tall doors enclosing a 1.5- to 2-m (4- to 6-ft) area. Along with such architectural motifs as arches, columns, and foliate patterns, appeared decorative carving based on hanging textiles, a motif known as linenfold. The Gothic style, primarily a northern European phenomenon, remained significant in furniture design into the early 16th century.

Most surviving medieval furniture is constructed from oak, though other timbers, less durable, were also used. Initially, construction was of a simple boarded form but in the later Middle Ages frame and panel construction became common, utilizing mortise-and-tenon joints to construct a frame into which panels, often carved, could be inserted. Much medieval furniture in Europe is found in an ecclesiastical context and many of the best examples are in the form of fixed seating, such as choir stalls and misericords. The appearance of carved work was often enhanced with paint, and fabrics played an important role in covering items of plain furniture and in wall and bed hangings, giving interiors of high status buildings an opulent appearance in keeping with the rank of the owners.

H.

Renaissance Furniture

By contrast to the skill and invention lavished on painting, sculpture, and architecture in Renaissance Italy, Italian furniture design in the 15th century tended to be simple and functional.

H.1.

Italy

The first innovation in Italian Renaissance furniture was the elaborately decorated chest known as the cassone, with its gilt, stucco, and painted decoration based on Classical prototypes. The form of the cassone was to some degree inspired by Roman sarcophagi; some early examples, however, had scenes illustrating the international Gothic romance, Le Roman de la rose. Interiors in 15th-century paintings, such as those in the Dream of St Ursula (1490-1495, Accademia, Venice) by Vittore Carpaccio and the Birth of the Virgin (1485-1494, Santa María Novella, Florence) by Domenico Ghirlandaio, suggest the restraint of Italian furniture design before the High Renaissance at the end of the 15th century.

Rich marquetry, imaginative carving, and the use of walnut in place of oak (which had been preferred for earlier work) characterized the more flamboyant efforts of the 1500s. A greater variety of forms and richer ornament were employed than in earlier periods. Portable folding chairs, with seats of tapestry or leather, were revived. New solid-backed side chairs were developed; these have carved backs and, instead of legs, solid carved panels as supports.

H.2.

France

Even richer decoration is found on 16th-century French furniture, which reflected Renaissance influence. Renaissance styles and ideas were brought to France by Italian artists working at the courts of Francis I and his son Henry II. During the reign of Henry II, designs by the architect Jacques du Cerceau were adapted for furniture. His complex juxtapositions of classical motifs were used for decorating furniture panels in the new Renaissance taste. A major figure, the cabinetmaker Hugues Sambin, published an influential folio of designs that featured works richly carved with ingenious designs. Distinctive examples reveal a basic understanding of the new classicism.

The impetus of designers working in the 16th century carried the style into the 17th century. Characteristic tables with thin columnar legs and chairs with panelled backs, first made in the 1560s and 1570s, continued to be made after 1600. In the first decades of the 17th century, changes in design became subtle. During the reign (1610-1643) of Louis XIII, furniture forms followed 16th-century models but with greater delicacy and with an increased use of rare ebony and rich tortoiseshell veneers instead of carving.

H.3.

England

English Renaissance design was essentially simpler than that of France. Characteristic were less elegant carved detail, simpler decoration in turned parts, and flatter, more stylized foliate motifs. Oak continued to be the predominant wood for furniture-making in England in the 16th century. Other developments included the use of fixed upholstery on seating furniture for the first time, with X-frame chairs, covered in Turkey-work (a form of knotted embroidery) or velvet used by persons of high status. Another new innovation was the drawing table, which could be extended by “drawing” out leaves at both ends. Carving on bedheads and bedposts, chests, and court cupboards was often taken from Flemish and French architectural design books, which circulated widely in Northern Europe. As in France, interest in Renaissance design persisted until about the mid-17th century in England.

H.4.

The Netherlands

This general interest is documented in several 17th-century publications. Two books of designs influential in the early 17th century were published in Amsterdam by Jan Vredeman de Vries and Crispin van de Passe. Dutch cabinetmakers created furniture closer in spirit to English examples than to French ones. The Dutch were conservative, and Renaissance designs were still popular in the 1650s and later. One special form—the armoire, with a bold overhanging cornice crowning it and with doors decorated with deep mouldings—is characteristically Dutch and continued to be made over a long period by Dutch settlers in North America. Dutch influence—probably because of the design books—can be seen in other northern European furniture, although each area developed distinctive designs for popular forms.

H.5.

Spain

In Spain influences were more varied. There, design was guided as much by Renaissance new ideas as by the long local Moorish tradition. Although Spain had long been free of direct connections with Islam, since the expulsion of the Moors in 1492, the delicate patterns on tiles and leather, and the bold combinations of wood, iron, and gold (or gilding) that remained popular there in the 16th and 17th centuries, bear out the continuation of Moorish influence.

I.

Chinese Furniture of the Ming Dynasty

The 17th century was a period of growing cosmopolitanism. Trade routes by sea from Europe had opened a century earlier and were becoming sources for new ideas and new materials. The 16th and 17th centuries were an ideal time for the West to discover Chinese furniture, for during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) Chinese furniture making was at its height. Tall cabinets, graceful tables, chairs, and benches were made in subtle designs. Straight legs on tables and chairs were often finished with delicately curved edges. Brackets and stretchers used as reinforcements added special decorative elements; these were restrained but showed to advantage the cabinetmaker's understanding of the beauty of wood. Oriental decoration was well known in the 17th century and was probably an important influence on later Western design. Lacquer chests were used extensively in Western settings, beginning in the 17th century. A number of examples have gilt stands, which were made in the West to adapt the lacquer chest to Western needs.

J.

Baroque Furniture

Baroque design is most evident in furniture of the late 17th century, decades after the Italian Baroque architects Gianlorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini had first introduced their innovative approaches in Rome. In the early part of the century the new style had influenced surfaces but not shapes. In the last quarter, however, a growing number of changes took place. Among these was an increased use of caryatids as supports, along with scroll-shaped and spiral-turned legs that were different from the earlier Renaissance models. Cabinets made in Antwerp and Paris were prestige items, often veneered in exotic imported woods such as ebony, and designed for the reception of collections of coins, medals, and curiosities from newly discovered lands and trading destinations.

At the very end of the 17th century, curved fronts were first used on large pieces of case furniture such as wardrobes and chests of drawers, reflecting the new Baroque architecture. In chairs, rich carving on new high-backed forms came into fashion. Both English and Continental examples were made with caned seats and backs as an alternative to upholstery, the cane being imported from the Far East. Simple variations of these chairs were made with turned parts in place of the carved areas, but the same tall backs were used.

J.1.

French Baroque

The most elegant and elaborate furniture of the Baroque era was made for the court of Louis XIV, in France. The outstanding craftsman André-Charles Boulle created unusual forms and embellished them with inlays combining metal (pewter, gilt, bronze, or silver), tortoiseshell, and ebony in designs that were imaginative juxtapositions of classical motifs. These sometimes look as if the basic inspiration was ancient Roman fresco. Columnar legs, handsomely gilded, were used to support tables, chairs, and stands for chests.

J.2.

English and American Colonial Baroque

In variations made in other countries the gilding was less extravagant and new shapes emphasized. In England, Baroque influence is most easily seen in work from the reign of William and Mary, when marquetry based on Dutch and French examples was used most freely. On the North American continent, Renaissance design was still important in the late 17th century. American artisans used Elizabethan and Tudor models as partial inspiration for distinctively American “Pilgrim-style” furniture in oak stained to resemble walnut.

K.

Rococo Furniture

The Baroque remained popular in many areas until fashions began to change, first in Paris and then in the rest of the Western world in around 1730. It was superseded by the Rococo, which called for greater delicacy in the scale of objects and a more intimate connection of furniture and people. Architectural ornament was less relevant, as pieces in Parisian interiors were conceived to be in scale with people rather than with rooms.

K.1.

French Rococo

French sources were of primary importance and influence; their results were the most elegant. Rococo flourished in the reign of Louis XV. The French version included ambitious designs in a variety of materials that required great skill to execute. These were characterized by complex, sinuous forms that curved in every direction. Fanciful patterns were inlaid on layers of veneer that, in turn, were framed with ormolu (gilt bronze) outlining the legs, edges, and drawer fronts of a piece. Columnar legs were replaced by animal-form legs in a variety of curved forms. Rococo forms are seen to their best in mirror frames and associated pier tables, the work of the carver and gilder.

K.2.

English Rococo

In England, Rococo style was much more restrained. Marquetry was used rarely because cabinetmakers favoured the use of fine mahogany imported initially from Cuba and later from the Bay of Honduras, which was handled with great skill to exploit grain patterns. English designers—and those who were inspired by them—introduced cabriole (s-shaped) legs with claw-and-ball feet for chairs, tables, and chests. This foot must have been inspired by the claw and ball known on Chinese bronzes (but not on Chinese furniture prototypes); it represents a popularization of Oriental design. Towards the end of the Rococo period in England, the London cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale published a book of designs, The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's Director (1754), in which he presented the English interpretation of the Rococo style. He was the first to categorize the varieties of Rococo as French, Chinese, or Gothic and offered samples of each. Innovative French designs of the 1750s were translated by Chippendale into engraved designs of elaborately carved examples without the French use of ormolu or inlays. The element of the Rococo emphasized by Chippendale and by most English artisans was its air of whimsy, achieved in French examples by a novel use of classical motifs. In the Director, Chinese and Gothic designs were included as additional ways of achieving whimsy; moreover, these designs could be executed more easily than those based on French sources.

For larger case furniture designers chose to follow forms that were based on the prevailing Palladian style of architecture. In it, Renaissance designs of the Italian 16th-century architect Andrea Palladio were modified to suit 18th-century taste. The London cabinetmaker William Vile (active 1750-1767), who was employed by the Crown in the 1750s and 1760s, made some classical furniture along with Rococo work. In the American colonies, the lightly scaled classical was as important as the pure Rococo in furniture made between 1740 and 1780.

English and American chair designs are the exception to the rule of continuing classical emphasis. Fashionable designers in London developed elegant side and armchairs with wooden backs, a basic form different from the upholstered-back chairs favoured on the Continent. In chairs made in the period to c. 1740 the backs were made with solid splats as the central support, framed by curving rails and stiles in a design that was a very free adaptation of Chinese chairs. Later, the frame was yoke-shaped, and the splat was executed in one of a large repertoire, Rococo in spirit, of pierced-work designs.

In the English approach to furniture design, woods were handled with a special sense of understanding; American cabinetmakers chose to follow the same path. On the Continent, cabinetmakers were more intent on creating the appropriate Rococo fantasies, using paint where inlays and ormolu might prove too expensive. Italian, German, Scandinavian, and even provincial French cabinetmakers followed this Continental manner of executing Rococo design.

L.

Neo-Classical Furniture

Neo-Classicism, a reaction against the excesses of the Rococo and a return to the order of classicism, was a movement that began when the Rococo was at its height. The designers who initiated it advocated a return to ancient Graeco-Roman sources, now being revealed by excavations in Italy such as Pompeii and Herculaneum, rather than to the Renaissance. To suit 18th-century taste, however, they interpreted classical models with a delicacy that proved a welcome contrast to Rococo elaboration.

The question of who was responsible for this revolution in design is a disputed one. Robert Adam, the British architect, introduced the first of his Neo-Classical designs before 1760. In Paris, however, an important collector, La Live de Jully, had furnished a room “à la grecque”, or in the Neo-Classical style, at about the same time. Artists of British, French, and other nationalities were finding the ruins in Rome and Athens worthy of study and were becoming aware of the place of history in the study of design. Neo-Classicism was the first conscious effort to revive a style in a coherent manner, rather than to use elements of a past style as inspiration for new designs. The earliest efforts were less authentically classical than its designers seemed to believe, but the transition to a purer historicism occurred in a relatively short time.

L.1.

French Neo-Classicism

In France the first phase of Neo-Classicism is called the Louis XVI style, although his reign began in 1774 and prime specimens were made earlier. The classicism of this style manifested itself in a whole vocabulary of motifs derived from Graeco-Roman sources, but the overall shapes also reflected the new style. Furniture shapes were simple and geometric; rectangular, circular, and oval forms rested on straight, tapering legs that were either square or round in section. Garlands of flowers or drapery, architectural motifs such as paterae (medallions), dentils, Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian mouldings, and related details were used as ornaments for Neo-Classical pieces. There was also a revival of the use of marquetry, little used in the Rococo period.

L.2.

English Neo-Classicism

In England painted furniture became popular, and interest revived in marquetry decoration, which had all but disappeared in the Rococo era. Neo-Classical style was appealing to a growing number, and design books disseminated suggestions for new furniture forms, shapes, and decorations. George Hepplewhite's Cabinet Maker and Upholsterer's Guide, posthumously published in 1788, adapted some French and some traditional English designs to the needs of cabinetmakers working in the Neo-Classical style. The best-known aspect of Hepplewhite's work is his designs for shield-back chairs, but the scope of Hepplewhite Style was much broader. Popular Neo-Classical design in England is generally regarded as being inspired by Hepplewhite or by Thomas Sheraton, whose first book, the Cabinet Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book, appeared, in parts, between 1791 and 1793, with a second edition in 1794, and a third in 1802. This work included designs for square-backed chairs now popularly considered as Sheraton.

M.

Empire Furniture

The use of archaeologically inspired design increased in the late 18th century, and it appears to have influenced furniture made both in Britain and on the Continent. This new emphasis marks the second phase of Neo-Classicism, called the Empire style in France and the Regency style in Britain, though it first appeared some time earlier than the coronation of Napoleon as emperor in 1804 or the appointment of George Frederick as Regent in 1811. Although the tendency to design furniture in ancient Roman style had begun before the French Revolution, Napoleon's designers, Charles Percier and Pierre François Léonard Fontaine, were the most innovative. The publication, beginning in 1796, of designs inspired by them in the Journal des Modes de Pierre de La Mésangère helped make the style international. The furniture illustrated in La Mésangère's journals appear to have been appropriated by Rudolph Ackermann for use in his London-based journal, Repository of Arts, Literature, and Fashions, which began publication in 1809. German-language publications disseminated versions of the Empire style throughout the Continent and Scandinavia.

In each country, Neo-Classical style was interpreted slightly differently. In England Henry Holland, architect to the Prince of Wales from the 1780s, designed furniture in this style for royal residences and major country houses. In Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (1807), Thomas Hope, a collector and connoisseur with great enthusiasm for the classical, outlined his conception of a classical style in which Greek and Egyptian influences were strong.

Empire became an international style, with Scandinavian, German, Italian, Russian, and American interpretations. The basic concept was constant, with ancient prototypes adapted to 19th-century taste. The major change, besides the increase in archaeological influence, was in scale. Designers were attempting to regain the sense of monumentality that had been lacking since the beginning of the 18th century. In German-speaking areas, Neo-Classicism evolved into Biedermeier style. The name was applied as the style was going out of fashion in about 1850. Whatever it was called, Empire was a lasting style; introduced before 1800, it did not disappear completely until the middle of the 19th century. A prominent exponent of the Empire style in the United States was the New York cabinetmaker, Duncan Phyfe, who had begun activity in the 1790s, and did not close his shop until 1847. His output included a grand variety of Neo-Classical designs, although he is best known for distinctive work made between about 1800 and 1820, in which light proportions and archaeologically correct details were integrated.

N.

Victorian Eclectic Furniture

Concurrent with the Neo-Classical styles of the first half of the 19th century were revivals of other styles.

N.1.

Gothic Revival

The Gothic, which Chippendale had used as a source of ornamental motif, was also of interest to later designers. In George Smith's Collection of Designs for Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (1808), a few Gothic designs are shown along with the predominantly Neo-Classical work. By the 1830s interest in the Gothic was more profound. The Gothic was admired by some as a delightful reaction against the classical; others regarded it as a Christian style to be preferred over the pagan. Romantic enthusiasm favoured ruins and asymmetry, and there was a strong desire for design inspired by religious faith. Whatever the impetus, the Gothic Revival flourished on both sides of the Atlantic, in England as well as on the Continent. Augustus Charles Pugin, and his son Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin were instrumental in the development of the Gothic Revival. Essentially, this involved the use of Gothic architectural ornament on 19th-century forms. Closely associated with the Gothic Revival is what is known in the United States as the Elizabethan Revival, inspired by 16th-century and 17th-century English designs.

N.2.

Rococo Revival

A completely different approach was taken by designers who strove for a return to elegance. Beginning in the 1820s, the Rococo style of the 18th century was the inspiration for a revival—actually a reinterpretation—of Parisian Rococo design. The Rococo revival was popular in England, on the Continent, and in the United States. The American Rococo revival, which flourished between about 1840 and 1860, is possibly responsible for the most distinctive furniture. One New York manufacturer, John Henry Belter, obtained four patents for improvements in production that enabled the Belter shop to make flamboyantly carved work curved to the extreme by using laminated wood. Belter and contemporaries in Europe as well as in the United States found inspiration in Baroque as well as Rococo ornament.

N.3.

Renaissance Revival

By the 1860s the Rococo had fallen from favour and Renaissance Revival became fashionable. Renaissance was defined very broadly, the revival style also including Neo-Classical motifs as well as those based on French Renaissance models. A revival of Louis XVI design was favoured by some, but in general the new style was characterized by large, straight-lined forms decorated with inlays, low relief, and incised linear decoration. French, English, and Continental examples include a broad range of decoration that is more elegant than that on most American examples.

O.

The Revolt Against Mass Manufacture

Machine carving took over from skilled craftsmanship. New materials were introduced such as papier-mâché, coiled metal springs for upholstered furniture, and cast iron was favoured for bedsteads and garden furniture. Rapid industrialization and the consequent urbanization and the rise in middle-class demand coupled with improved transportation by railway led to the expansion of furniture workshops and the concentration of manufacture in locations such as the East End of London. Veneers covered up cheap woods, and both the carving and inlays that embellished low-priced stylish furniture were poorly executed.

O.1.

Arts and Crafts Furniture

In reaction against the suppression of originality and the lower standards of craftsmanship that mass-production inevitably caused, the Arts and Crafts Movement was established in 1861 by the English poet and designer William Morris. Along with such associates as the architect Philip Webb and the Pre-Raphaelite painters Ford Madox Brown and Edward Burne-Jones, Morris sought a return to medieval traditions of craftsmanship. Together, the group produced designs for every branch of the decorative arts, with the intent of elevating them to the level of the fine arts. Their products, including furniture, were much admired for their beauty and consummate craftsmanship and were widely copied. By the 1890s, the movement had spread to the Continent and North America. The influence of Morris and his followers was enormous; their designs are often considered the wellspring of modern furniture design. Morris's ideas were expressed in popular language by the English architect and writer Charles Eastlake in his hugely successful Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery and other Details (1868). Eastlake advocated a return to simple, straight-lined designs inspired by country work, executed in oak and native woods, often used in the solid. In the United States, where Eastlake's book became a decorating bible, the simplicity was often embellished with such luxurious additions as ebonized wood, gilding, and inlays.

O.2.

Art Nouveau Furniture

Directly fostered by the Arts and Crafts Movement was Art Nouveau, a style which flourished between the 1890s and 1910, affecting both art and design. Art Nouveau may be characterized as an organic style derived from natural forms that convey a sense of movement, exemplified by the “whiplash” curve found in many Art Nouveau works. In furniture, its early exponents were the Belgian architects Henri van de Velde and Victor Horta, who furnished the interiors of their buildings to complement the sinuous forms of the architectural settings. In France, the architect Hector Guimard, creator in 1900 of the graceful Métro (subway) stations in Paris, also designed similarly asymmetrical, heavily carved free-form furniture. The noted glassmaker Émile Gallé also designed some of the most opulent Art Nouveau furniture, in which plant and flower motifs predominate. Louis Majorelle produced luxurious furniture, again inspired by forms from nature, and went on to become a notable Art Deco designer after World War I. The Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who was based in the early years of his career in Glasgow, produced, in his unique interpretation of Art Nouveau, chastely beautiful furniture. Characteristic pieces are of oak painted white, with elegant inlays and set with metal or stained glass in curvilinear, abstract plant forms.

P.

20th-Century European Furniture to World War II

Reform and revolution in the arts, including furniture design, marked the turn of the century. Prominent among the leaders of the revolt was the Austrian architect and designer Josef Hoffmann, who, with other architects and artists, founded the Vienna Sezession (see Sezessionstil) in 1897 and the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop) in 1903. The Werkstätte produced, among other types of decorative arts, furniture in cubicular forms that contrasted radically with the Art Nouveau obsession with curvilinear forms. They are reminiscent of Mackintosh's restrained designs, which were much admired by the group. The right angle was used consistently, and detailing was rigidly austere. Sezessionstil was the precursor of two major 20th-century styles, the German Bauhaus and the French Art Deco.

P.1.

Bauhaus Furniture

The Bauhaus, founded in 1919 in Weimar, Germany, by the architect Walter Gropius, was an all-encompassing school of art and architecture that proved to be one of the most influential forces in the development of 20th-century art. Classic contemporary furniture, still being manufactured, was designed by its most renowned architects, Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Breuer designed his “Wassily” armchair, of chrome-plated steel tubing and canvas, in 1925, and his much-copied cantilevered side chair, of tubing with wood-framed cane seat and back panels, in 1928. Mies created his famous Barcelona chair, a masterpiece consisting of two elegantly curved X-frames of chromed steel strips supporting rectangular leather cushions, in 1929. The aim of both architects was to devise aesthetically pleasing furniture for mass production.

P.2.

Art Deco

Art Deco, although its name is derived from the 1925 Paris exposition of decorative arts, can be traced back to the first decade of the 20th century, especially to the sharply defined geometric forms of the Sezessionstil. The Bauhaus concern with the use of new materials also had its influence. The style persisted through 1939, and underwent a revival of interest and even imitation in the 1970s and 1980s. The most accomplished Art Deco designers were French: Louis Majorelle, André Groult, Pierre Chareau, and Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann. Their pieces have a streamlined richness that owes as much to superb handcrafting—lustrously finished rare woods with inlays of such exotic materials as ivory in angular, abstract designs—as to their daring geometric shapes. The style was rapidly debased, however, by shoddy, mass-produced versions.

P.3.

Scandinavian Furniture

In the two decades following the end of World War II Scandinavian design was dominant, but the basis of this success was to be seen prior to 1945. Although influenced by the Bauhaus, the furniture industry in Scandinavian lands looked to its native strengths. Timber products were plentiful and innovative use of laminates and bent plywood married to other indigenous materials such as leather and canvas produced chair designs based on simple pleasing lines and ergonomic research. In storage furniture the ideas advanced concerned creating flexibility by devising a range of matching units that could be added to as need dictated. Such furniture was well suited to modern urban living where space might be restricted and needed to be utilized with economy and care. Production was often carried out in workshops where hand construction and finishing were still in evidence, enhancing the appeal of the piece to the consumer. Native timbers such as birch and pine in Sweden and Finland and beech in Denmark were used.

In Sweden the pioneer was Carl Malmsten, who worked in an Arts and Crafts tradition, adapting traditional forms to the needs of the 20th-century public. Of a younger generation was Bruno Mathsson, who from the early 1930s developed a range of chairs based on a detailed study of human anatomy, using wooden frames and plywood legs in an innovative manner. Production of his designs continued for many decades. Josef Frank moved to Stockholm from Vienna in 1933 and designed for the Svensk Tenn Company. His work was displayed at the New York World Fair in 1939 and its clean lines were well suited to mass production post-1945. The designer who established the reputation of Danish furniture was Kaare Klint. He taught furniture design at Copenhagen Art Academy from 1924 and produced clean functional furniture designs that were put into production by a number of Danish furniture makers.

Probably the most important of the Scandinavian designers was the architect Alvar Aalto. In connection with his architectural commissions in Finland he also designed the furniture needed, for instance for the Paimio Tuberculosis Sanatorium (1929-1933) and the library at Viipuri (1927-1935). In partnership with his wife he established, in 1935 in Helsinki, a shop called Artek. His chair and stool designs of moulded plywood and bentwood were greatly appreciated overseas and publicized at international exhibitions.

Q.

20th-Century American Furniture to World War II

Furniture designers in the United States were, until World War II, overshadowed by their European counterparts and were heavily influenced by them, with few exceptions.

American arts and crafts movements led at the turn of the century to the establishment of numerous ateliers and small factories, such as that of Gustav Stickley. Stickley devised the Mission style, ostensibly based on old Spanish furniture in the California missions. His furniture, made between 1900 and 1913, was straight-lined, simple, and utilitarian, carefully made of oak, with decoration limited to the handsomely crafted hardware. American mass manufacturers took up the Mission style with a will and produced great quantities of ponderous imitation Stickley. With the exception of Louis Comfort Tiffany, who designed furniture primarily for his own use, the United States produced no outstanding Art Nouveau furniture. Art Deco flourished in America, mostly in mass-produced furniture of lesser quality. A notable exception is the work of the studio of Donald Deskey, which created in 1932 the palatial Art Deco interiors and the furniture of Radio City Music Hall in New York. The architect Frank Lloyd Wright also designed furniture, but its idiosyncratic appearance defies categorization, since the furniture design was entirely subordinated to the design of the building; the same motifs appear in both. He consistently favoured built-in furniture, however, because the furniture thus became part of the architecture.

R.

Post 1939—Modernism and After

Despite the war, design development continued in the United States. It was in 1941 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that the innovative chair designs of Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen, utilizing moulded plywood and tubular metal legs, were first displayed, though they were not at that date in commercial production. In Europe austerity and destruction prevailed. Innovation was not entirely dead, however. In 1942 in Britain the “Utility” ranges of furniture were put into production on a limited scale to meet the needs of bombed-out, homeless families. Materials available were restricted but the common designs were influenced by Gordon Russell, who chaired the Design Panel from 1943. The principles of the Arts and Crafts Movement were behind the ranges of plain but well-designed furniture. Control was eased from 1948 but some of the designs remained in production until 1952. Post-war furniture designers and manufacturers struggled with shortages of materials and needed to innovate. War surplus stocks of tubular metal and certain plastics came to their aid. Wartime production had also led to improved manufacturing techniques applicable to the furniture industry, such as developments in moulding plywood, used in aircraft production, and the use of stronger synthetic adhesives which could replace traditional jointing. In Britain the bonding of metal and plastics with wood was to be seen in the designs of Ernest Race, while sponge rubber was substituted for metal springs in the Parker-Knoll ranges of seating furniture. Wall dividers were included in the G-Plan ranges manufactured by Gomme, while chairs of moulded plywood and steel rod by Robin Day and Ernest Rae were designed for the 1951 Festival of Britain.

R.1.

Modernism

Although some British designers were working in the new styles and materials, it was in the United States and Scandinavia that the main focus of innovation was to be found in the late 1940s and 1950s. Eero Saarinen’s Womb chair of 1948 combined bases and legs of steel with foam rubber upholstery, and two years earlier Charles Eames had designed a chair using a moulded seat and back and metal legs. This was the same year in which he was introduced to George Nelson, chief designer for the Herman Miller Company, which introduced modernism to the affluent American consumer. In Europe, Scandinavian designers and furniture makers were the most innovative. In Denmark the influence of Børge Mogensen was strong. Teak was used in both seating and storage furniture both for its strength and appearance. Arne Jacobsen in the 1950s developed classic chair designs such as the plywood and metal Ant chair of 1952 followed by the upholstered Egg and Swan designs. In Finland the Asko Company was formed, developing new chair forms using bent and moulded plywood. The period to the mid-1960s was dominated by Scandinavian design, the style being popular across Europe and the United States.

A challenge to Scandinavian dominance came in the 1960s with the rapid expansion of the Italian furniture industry from 1958; within a few years Italy had become the major furniture exporter. One of the areas in which Italian design and manufacture was in advance of other countries was in the use of moulded plastics. One particularly talented designer was Joe Colombo, who set up his own design studio in Milan in 1961. His Chair 4860 of 1965 is claimed to be the earliest example of an all-plastic chair entirely made by injection moulding. Such bright, light plastic seating furniture was ideally suited to being stored in stacks, thus saving space. It was not, however, only in the application of plastics that Italy excelled. In the 1970s the Milan-based firm Cassina produced ranges widely renowned for the use of quality materials, fine woods, marble, smoked glass, and hide. Employing the best Italian designers, their reputation grew internationally and in 1980 they opened showrooms in London.

R.2.

Postmodernism

Since the 1970s there has been a diverse range of design developments. Some have involved the revival of interest in past styles, including design classics of the earlier decades of the 20th century. Cassina in the 1960s reproduced designs by Le Corbusier, Rietveld, and Mackintosh in its “Master” series. By the 1980s American and French manufacturers were driving this trend. Another revival was in the area of traditional craftsmanship, coupled with innovative design, producing the so-called “Crafts Revival”. This trend is to be seen in the United States, Sweden, and Denmark, and in Britain is particularly associated with Alan Peters and John Makepeace. ‘“High-Tech”, another movement, sought to source materials and items often designed originally for industry, and introduce them into the domestic interior, providing furniture that was cheap, practical, and suited to the “young” market. Furniture designed originally for the office, factory, and commercial use found its way into the home. This produced a reaction in the 1970s and 1980s called ”Postmodernism”, which was based on popular culture revivalism and even kitsch, sourcing furniture items from diverse international manufacturers.

Not only has the period from the 1980s lacked the focus of earlier decades but it has also seen great changes in the ways that furniture is distributed. Flat-pack furniture appealed to manufacturers and distributors as it took up less storage and also was suited to the age of “Do-it-Yourself”. The high street retailer of furniture began to be replaced by the retail park furniture warehouse epitomized by the arrival of international retailers such as Ikea. The Habitat chain, started by the designer Terence Conran in 1964, was aimed at the younger consumers, now affluent enough to adopt new styles in their homes. Non-furniture retailers such as supermarkets and catalogue stores have widened the sources from which furniture can be bought by the masses.

See also Chinoiserie; House; Interior Design; Lacquer Work; Rugs and Carpets; Woodcarving.