furniture

furniture properly such movables as chairs, tables, and beds; it is extended to include draperies, rugs, mirrors, lamps, and other furnishings. In its gradual evolution from periods of earliest civilization, the history of furniture parallels the progress of culture. Furniture has been made in a great variety of materials and decorated by many methods, the most usual being inlaying , painting or gilding, wood carving , veneering, and marquetry . Western furniture has drawn motifs of ornament from four main sources: Egyptian, Asian (Persian and Chinese), Greek, and Gothic.

Probably the first pieces to be in demand were the chest, the stool (prototype of the chair), the table, and the bed. From remote times Oriental furniture has exhibited carving and inlay on ebony and teak. Egyptian pieces 6,000 years old display an advanced form of woodworking, structure, and decoration and are characterized by inlays of gold and ivory and by carved supports representing animal forms. The Greeks favored the low couch, the tripod, and a chair with graceful, curved outlines. The Romans adopted Greek and Etruscan forms and during the imperial period developed many ornately decorated variations.

The heavily carved Gothic furniture reflected styles in architecture. Under Italian influence, the Renaissance brought richly decorated pieces designed specifically for domestic interiors. Peasant pieces were generally solid, painted or rudely carved, and slow to change in style. Provincial pieces followed in simplified form and in native woods; the period styles developed in the centers of culture. France became a leading influence with the Louis period styles , Directoire style , and Empire style .

English period styles include Elizabethan, in oak, with huge, bulbous supports; Jacobean, lighter and more comfortable, with spiral supports; William and Mary, introducing curved outlines, the trumpet leg, and the inverted-cup foot; Queen Anne, in walnut, characterized by cyma curves (double curves formed by joining a convex and a concave line), the rounded cabriole leg, and the broken pediment; Georgian, with its fine cabinetwork in a number of styles set by such designers as Chippendale , Hepplewhite , Robert Adam and his brother James, and Sheraton .

Early American furniture adapted current English styles in utilitarian form and in native woods—pine, maple, cherry. Later Phyfe , Savery , John Goddard , and other expert cabinetmakers added walnut and mahogany. The late 19th cent. brought mass production of machine-made furniture and saw an expression of flamboyant taste in golden oak of rococo design; this was followed by a reaction in the United States to the Mission style of rectilinear construction in weathered oak.

Around the turn of the 20th cent., the organic forms of the art nouveau style achieved popularity. In the 1910s and 20s many attempts were made to develop a new and at the same time functional design. The efforts of the Dutch group de Stijl are notable, especially those of Gerrit Rietveld . Modern materials were effectively employed by Miës van der Rohe in his famous Barcelona chair made of unadorned steel and leather, and contributions were also made by Saarinen and Bertoia. Other popular materials are welded metal and plastic. The use of fine woods in starkly simple design is the keynote of the elegant work that has been produced in the Scandinavian countries and won worldwide popularity since World War II.

Bibliography: See J. Aronson, The Encyclopedia of Furniture (3d ed. 1965); J. Gloag, A Social History of Furniture Design (1966); O. Wanscher, The Art of Furniture: 5000 Years of Furniture and Interiors (1967); K. McClinton, An Outline of Period Furniture (1972); M. Stimpson, Modern Furniture Classics (1987).

furniture, indicator of status, reflector of domestic habits, technological development, and personal taste, has constantly been influenced by architecture and socio-economic change. Until the 14th cent. furniture was scarce, since medieval kings and landowners were peripatetic, and it was customary to transport essential items (including door-locks and window-fittings) from estate to estate. Requirements were therefore basic and minimal, with design subservient to nomadism (folding stools, trestle tables with removable tops, collapsible bed-frames, portable chests); ‘fixed’ furniture was often built in (stone seating, cupboards recessed within a wall's thickness). Other than chests, medieval furniture was both functional and a reflector of precedence rather than just rank. When most folk used stools and benches, the outstanding symbol of authority was the chair, occasionally upholstered, often on a dais or beneath a canopy. Any bed with seigneurial pretensions (and a probable heirloom) required a canopy too, but other beds were also closed with curtains or set in alcoves for warmth and privacy. Display mattered, but money went on rich hangings, portable and adaptable, rather than on oak fashioned by semi-skilled woodworkers with crude tools.

As a more settled way of life developed, furniture acquired fixed location and function, and specialized items began to appear (lecterns/book-storage in monasteries); emphasis on textiles yielded only slowly to carved decoration influenced by Gothic arches and linenfold panelling. Houses were still sparsely furnished, but changes in furniture construction produced lighter items less inclined to split in damp northern climates, and joiners rather than turners or carpenters became the furniture specialists. Changing social custom affected form: late 16th-cent. tables broadened as host and hostess began to sit at each end rather than on one side with backs to the wall, and the use of upholstery increased. After Flemish immigrants reintroduced board construction in the late 16th cent., producing solid pieces that permitted veneers and elaborate marquetry, joined furniture became restricted to country craftsmen; differences began to appear between urban and rural furniture in both quality and technical approach.

In the 17th cent., increasing shortage of native timbers led to imports of walnut and exotic hardwoods like ebony, letting craftsmen refine their skills and leading to a healthy reciprocal export trade of finished items. The new enthusiasm for collecting boosted showpiece cabinets, while large mirrors increased light in a room and encouraged the integration of furniture with interior decoration. As trade expanded, particularly post-Restoration, overseas influences on design abounded, such as lacquering and cane-seating from the East and baroque flamboyance from Italy which prompted sculptured/gilded pieces, while France held position as arbiter of fashionable taste. For those unable to afford elaborately carved items or high-quality cabinetry, there was nevertheless much practical, utilitarian furniture. Though convention still dictated sparse furnishing and rigid arrangements (chairs aligned against a wall), associated discomfort prompted 18th-cent. development of private quarters in large country houses, away from deliberately impressive ‘state’ rooms, subsequently dust-covered; as the middle classes burgeoned, more people owned good furniture, and those in unfurnished lodgings could buy on hire purchase. The introduction c.1720 of mahogany, which gradually displaced walnut, enabled pierced openwork carving, so obsession with fashion generated new styles and the emergence of designer-craftsmen (Chippendale, Hepplewhite, Sheraton); enthusiasm for chinoiserie was renewed, eventually inspiring the royal pavilion at Brighton. Architects such as William Kent and neo-classical Robert Adam produced fully integrated interiors, while Horace Walpole's neo-Gothic Strawberry Hill innovatively created an environment to express his own personality and taste.

After the Napoleonic wars the demand for expensive furniture fell, but a plethora of styles was still available—Gothic Revival for the dining-room or library, rococo for the drawing-room—though a general diffusion of furniture throughout the population shifted emphasis towards practicality and comfort, while still heavily ornamented. Technological changes led to cheap and partly mechanized furniture, but there was no real factory system in the 19th cent. Sprung upholstery, plywood, and bentwood appeared, metal was used structurally for bed-frames (eliminating bed-bugs) and cast-iron outdoor chairs, and arrangements became more informal. Early Victorian taste favoured opulence and eclecticism, so exhibition showpieces coexisted with simpler, compact items like Windsor chairs. A substantial improvement in the standard of living of ordinary people after 1850, coupled with the spread of mass production, led to the heavily furnished Victorian parlour, with carpet, rugs, fringed tablecloths and antimacassars, and decorated with stuffed birds under glass, Staffordshire figures, and reproductions of Holman Hunt's Light of the World (1854), Millais's Bubbles (1886), homilies, or portraits of the queen on the walls. A gradual move to studied simplicity, showing strong Japanese influences, contributed to the aesthetic movement, preceding the rise of art nouveau— Charles Rennie Mackintosh's black, elongated furniture in the early 20th cent. was both distinctive and scaled to his interiors. As formal living declined and living-spaces shrank after the First World War, the modern movement emphasized function and collaboration with industry, though metal furniture established itself more easily in offices than homes. Technical advances, putting much of the furniture industry on a fully industrial basis, were accompanied by marked stylistic uncertainty, though Scandinavian and Bauhaus influences flourished; the imposition of standardized Utility furniture (1942), to enable sufficient furniture for the bombed-out/newly married, was resented but did much to break down lingering resistance to modern design, and crossed class barriers. Post-war furniture, steered by designer imagination and machine capabilities, has seen technological experimentation (inflatable chairs, granule-filled sacks, expanded plastic foam in fitted covers) and promotion of a ‘look’. With portable flat-pack, self-assembly furniture and increase in built-in storage space, the wheel has almost turned full circle.

A. S. Hargreaves

furniture. Very little is known about Irish furniture made prior to the 18th century since very few pieces have survived. The furniture recorded in early house inventories, which may or may not have been indigenously Irish, has mostly disappeared. The tremendous surge in building of both Dublin town houses and country mansions during the 18th century was matched by increased activity in the furniture trade. Newspapers of the time carried advertisements for cabinetmakers, gilders, japanners, carvers, makers of mirrors, wallpaper, etc., and there is also evidence that furniture was exported from Ireland to America. Unfortunately, little original furniture remains in any of these large houses and it is almost impossible to attribute the majority of the pieces still held in these houses or in public/private collections to specific makers. However trade labels adhering to a piece of furniture can in some cases allow some form of attribution to the manufacturer or retailer of the furniture.

The principal characteristics popularly attributed to 18th‐century Irish furniture include grotesque masks elaborately carved on friezes and legs, mainly on mahogany tables; punched and diaper backgrounds behind relief carving; and cabriole legs with square paw feet. However Irish pieces fitting these descriptions exist alongside furniture indistinguishable from English work, either because they are imported pieces, or because Irish craftsmen derived their inspiration from the published trade catalogues of English cabinetmakers such as Thomas Chippendale.

By the last quarter of the 18th century, the fashion for heavily carved mahogany and walnut furniture had given way to the neoclassical style that had begun to pervade English furniture design. Irish characteristics disappeared almost completely as Irish craftsmen sought to follow the prevailing fashions. William Moore was one of the many Dublin cabinetmakers listed in directories of this time who worked in this new style, first at Abbey Street (1785–91) and then at Capel Street (1792–1814). He used fashionable satinwood embellished with marquetry inlays to create furniture that echoed the work of the English architect and furniture designer Robert Adam.

The use of marquetry decoration carried on well into the next century. Dublin cabinetmakers such as Robert Strahan & Co., who had workshops during the mid‐19th century, at 24/25 Henry Street and 5 Leinster Street, catered to the Victorian taste for highly decorative furniture with elaborate pieces using marquetry and parquetry. Marquetry was also to feature greatly in one distinctively Irish area of 19th‐century furniture making. In the 1850s Killarney became the production centre for a particular style of inlaid furniture that became known as Killarney ware. The local arbutus wood was elaborately inlaid with other woods depicting scenes from around Killarney such as Muckross Abbey. Production declined and ceased during the early part of the 20th century.

Celtic imagery featured prominently in the work of Arthur Jones of Dublin who exhibited his work at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London. Jones, who had taken over the family business in 1840, displayed 20 pieces of excessively ornamental carved ‘bog yew’ furniture. Towards the end of the century the Victorian yearning for styles of antiquity prompted many cabinetmakers to reproduce furniture from earlier periods. One such cabinetmaker, James Hicks, was extremely skilled at producing furniture in 18th‐century styles. He set up business in 1893 at 5 Lower Pembroke Street, Dublin, making fine veneered and inlaid furniture usually to commission. During the 1930s, he also produced some pieces that reflected the Art Deco fashion of the time.

The only Irish furniture designer to have a truly international reputation was Eileen Gray. Born in Co. Wexford in 1879, she originally studied painting at the Slade School before settling in France. A notable feature of her work was her experimental use of oriental lacquer. Her abstract modernist approach to furniture design was highly influential throughout Europe and further afield.

Existing alongside the cabinetmaker's productions was the traditional furniture made to satisfy the needs of rural households. This vernacular furniture was made by the local carpenter who relied on the use of cheap softwoods imported from the Baltic or indigenous gathered wood. Vernacular furniture peculiar to Ireland includes the twisted rope seated súgán chair, the one‐piece made dresser, and the settle bed.

Bibliography

Kinmouth, C. , Irish Country Furniture 1700–1950 (1993)
Knight of Glin , Irish Furniture (1978)

Kim Mawhinney