An Illustrated Guide to Furniture History

Joclyn M. Oats

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000406108
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Arquitectura
• Categoria: Diseño arquitectónico

An Illustrated Guide to Furniture History provides upper-level students and instructors with an alternative visual analytical approach to learning about furniture history from Antiquity to Postmodernism. Following an immersive teaching model, it presents a Nine-Step Methodology to help students strengthen their visual literacy and quickly acquire subject area knowledge.

Moving chronologically through key periods in furniture history and interior design, such as the Renaissance, the Arts and Crafts Movement, and Modernism, it traverses Europe to America to present a comprehensive foundational guide to the history of furniture design.

Part I addresses furniture within the context of the built environment, with chapters exploring the historical perspective, construction principles, and the categorization of furniture. In Part II, the author visually depicts the structural organization of the methodological process, a three-category framework: History, Aesthetics, and Visual Notes. The chapters in this part prepare the reader for the visual analysis that will occur in the final section of the book. The book is lavishly illustrated in full color with over 300 images to reinforce visual learning and notation.

A must-have reference and study guide for students in industrial and product design, interior design, and architecture.

PART I
Furniture and the built environment

1
A historical perspective

Furniture is an integral part of architecture and interior design. An awareness of how fundamentally furniture is integrated into the built environment is crucial to understanding its design and development—remembering that at certain points in history, furniture was often designed apart from its need to function. Inseparable from social, political, and economic influences, furniture design and its history reflect the changing living conditions and lifestyles of developing civilizations.¹ Exactly defining furniture styles can be arduous because furniture styles evolve in a historical continuum, each reflecting the one preceding it and incubating the one to follow, running concurrently and interweaving or overlapping in both time and place.² For individuals interested in understanding furniture design and its history, placing furniture in a historical context—time period, social and political factors, including wars, religions, dynastic marriages, etc.—is important. The context allows one to see how each design grew out of a design that had gone before. The concept of designing began only 400 or so years ago.³ Design comes from the Italian noun, disegno, meaning drawing or design; it’s a term used during the 16th and 17th centuries to designate a form and discipline required for representation of the ideal form of an object in visual arts.⁴

Regarding furniture physiognomics in a historical continuum, this book uses a “pictorial timeline” for reference. This chapter introduces the pictorial timeline in Timeline 1.1—the complete timeline from Antiquity through to the 20th century. Timeline 1.1 provides the complete time range of the furniture covered in Chapters 6–13. On the subsequent pages, the pictorial timeline is enlarged and divided into three sections for visual clarity, Timeline 1.2, Timeline 1.3, and Timeline 1.4.

1.1 Pictorial timeline (all sections)

1.2 Pictorial timeline—Antiquity, Renaissance

1.3 Pictorial timeline—18th–20th century: Europe, America

1.4 Pictorial timeline—20th century: Europe, America

The pictorial timeline will assist the student or adult learner in understanding the evolution of furniture design and styles and is intrinsic to the premise of this book’s nonconventional approach, immersion-learning model, and prescribed methodology—the Analysis of Form: Nine-Step Methodology. For the pictorial timeline, a small selection of furniture pieces that are indicative of the period and capture the aesthetic spirit of the time has been chosen. The timeline isn’t extensive in the number of pieces chosen but selects what are deemed paramount examples. The pictorial timeline moves chronologically, but not century by century, spanning from Antiquity to the 20th century. This pictorial timeline consists of critical points in time that define the Western canons pertaining to furniture history and interior design; the goal, as mentioned in the Introduction, is for the student or adult learner to gain knowledge about furniture history through the use of visual notes (Chapters 6–14), simultaneously reinforcing visual literacy. Using this type of timeline for investigation of furniture design and history exposes the relationship between the physical form of furniture and social concepts of class, status, and gender. This indelible timeline should facilitate a visual understanding of design changes through history, a journey from Antiquity to the 20th century, noting furniture’s evolution from functional and utilitarian to decorative-arts status, or “object of desire.” By the end of the book, the reader will possess a basic understanding of furniture history and will have developed a foundation of knowledge that will facilitate continued learning of the subject if he or she chooses.

There will be some unevenness content-wise with respect to the canons. In-depth coverage will be dedicated to periods that have a stronger impact on furniture, such as the historical periods defined by monarchs, specifically 18th-century England during the reigns of George I through George III; in France, in the period of Louis XIV through Louis XVI; and comparable periods in American history. Briefer coverage will be given to Antiquity—Egypt, Greco-Roman classicism, Renaissance, and Baroque.

Important to understanding a furniture piece historically is gaining familiarity in the various ways of furniture making—ways in which furniture has been constructed. Chapter 2, Construction principles, will focus on 18th-century furniture construction because of the advancement in technology at the time. This chapter centers on the salient 18th-century furniture pieces, those that represent technological advancements in furniture assembly. Examples from France, England, and America are reviewed. In Chapter 2, the main focus is on wood construction methods and the role of the cabinetmaker, who was responsible for design conception and production. Also discussed is the role of the craftsmen who assisted in the production—turner, joiner, ebéniste, etc. This chapter reviews tools and equipment, such as the turning wheel and lathe, and detailed furniture examples that have been designed and shaped using these tools. Other examples indicate assembly methods (e.g., mortise-and-tenon connections, dovetail joints, rabbet joints, scarf joints) and furniture pieces representing these methods, including chairs with turned legs, stile backs, table legs, etc.

As mentioned in the Introduction, due to the book’s premise, immersion-learning model, and nine-step methodological approach, all chapters pay particular attention to the visual images. Serving as guides and tools that reinforce this learning model, the images represent a range of delineation methods, techniques, and illustrative approaches, and include quick sketches, tightly delineated drawings, or refined rendered drawings. Examples representing a range of rendering techniques (e.g., watercolor, colored pencils, markers, oil pastels) are also included throughout the book.

Becoming familiar with 18th-century construction principles in Chapter 2 will provide the platform for understanding how to categorize a piece within a timeframe and place of origin. Chapter 3, Piece categorically, describes how to do this by examining 18th-century French, English, and American furniture examples to show how furniture can be categorized and identified by specific physical features. The chapter explores ubiquitous pieces of this period (e.g., chairs, bureaus, case pieces) and how certain pieces possess anthropomorphic qualities, such as a back, leg, arm, foot, or knee. Additionally, the importance of provenance and the impact it has on a piece of furniture’s physical characteristics is discussed. These characteristic examples range from the form of a piece, type of joinery, material, and the finish—in essence, the overall aesthetic quality. This section emphasizes important questions to ...