Modern furniture
Post-World War II ideals of cutting excess, commodification, and practicality of materials in design heavily influenced the aesthetic of the furniture.
Dark or gilded carved wood and richly patterned fabrics gave way to the glittering simplicity and geometry of polished metal.
[3] The idea of accessible, mass-produced design that is affordable to anyone was not only applied to industrial mechanics, but also to the aesthetics of architecture and furniture.
However, the modern movement sought newness, originality, technical innovation, and ultimately the message that it conveyed spoke of the present and the future, rather than of what had gone before it.
Following the Second Industrial Revolution, new philosophies and artists emerged from the De Stijl movement in the Netherlands, the Deutscher Werkbund and the Bauhaus school, both located in Germany.
The movement was based on the principles of promoting abstraction and universality by reducing excessive elements down to the essentials of form and colour.
Characteristics of furniture from this movement include simplified geometry of vertical and horizontal compositions and pure primary colours and black and white.
Influential artists from this movement include Gerrit Rietveld, Piet Mondrian, and Mies van der Rohe, who continued to evolve the ideas of modernist design.
Among the most notable architects and designers from the DWB are: Hermann Muthesius, Peter Behrens, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
It eventually was forced to move to Dessau, Germany, in 1925 due to political tensions, then Berlin, in 1932 until the doors of the school were closed from the pressure of the Nazi regime.
Prominent artists and designers from the Bauhaus include: Marcel Breuer, Marianne Brandt, Hannes Meyer (who was Gropius's successor, only to be replaced by Mies van der Rohe).
[6]: 38–138 [9] An aesthetic preference for the baroque and the complex was challenged not only by new materials and the courage and creativity of a few Europeans, but also by the growing access to African and Asian design.
Designers such as Charles Rennie MacIntosh and Eileen Gray are known for both their modern and Art Deco work, and they and others like Frank Lloyd Wright are notable for a certain elegant blending of the two styles.
[6]: 32–183 This modernist creation enjoyed enduring fame in the post-war period, seeing reproduction numbers upwards of four digits across two continents.
This piece is particularly influential because it introduces a simple, yet elegant and light-weight industrial material to be used in structures within the domestic space: chrome plated tubular steel.
With the tubular steel frames and leather or skin upholstery, the sleek Chaise Longue was initially manufactured for private French house commissions including the Villa Savoye, Poissy (1929–31) and the Ville-d'Avray.
[6]: 48–183 The Le Corbusier LC2 are armchairs and sofas with the chrome plated tubular steel frame supporting loose cushions placed on elasticated straps.
The LC2 represented the new and modern conception of designer furniture in the Le Corbusier minimalism – style with the steel cage giving an element of industrial.
The first results of the collaboration between Le Corbusier and Perriand were three pieces of furniture made with chrome-plated tubular steel frames.
Today it is regarded as a modern design classic, and has been celebrated by Royal Mail with a commemorative postage stamp.
Both the Bauhaus School and the Deutscher Werkbund had as their specific creative emphasis the blending of technology, new materials and art.
It often includes both modern and traditional as well as making visual reference to classical Greek form and/or other non-western styles (for example Tribal African pattern, Asian scroll work etc.).
