Posts Tagged ‘deco de table baroque’

Art Deco European Furniture: ITALIAN CABINET, WALNUT EASY CHAIR, ITALIAN BUFFET, SWEDISH CHAIR, BELGIAN DESK, ITALIAN COFFEE TABLE

TREMENDOUS UPHEAVALS came about
in Europe in the wake of World War 1. The need for change was keenly felt by architects and designers from Italy to Belgium and the Netherlands, and from Germany to Scandinavia.
At the heart of this longing for change lay a functionalist ideology and a desire for art to accommodate the exciting technological advances of the early 20th century Mass-produced, functional furniture designs became the order of the day, a philosophy that was realized by Alvar Aalto in Finland and with the formation in 1919 of the Bauhaus by Walter Gropius. Internationally acclaimed, the Bauhaus sought to
bring together the talents of creative artists, designers, and craftsmen, to create prototype designs suitable for industrial mass production (see p.426).
Although the Modernist Bauhaus style prevailed in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, there were also architects and designers working in a more decorative manner. Using vibrant colours, and drawing on the Rococo and Biedermeier styles for inspiration, German Art Deco furniture exhibited Oriental touches in its use of lacquer, together with Cubist detailing. Bruno Paul’s “Room for a Gentleman”, shown at Macy’s department store in New York in 1928, was typical of the
restrained form of Art Deco that was pursued by these German designers. The room contained lacquered furniture with inlay work, and a rug with a geometric design. Many German and Austrian – mainly Jewish – designers emigrated to America in the late 1.920s and early I 930s, and joined Paul Frankl (see p.397) in developing the Art Deco style there.
NORTHERN EUROPEAN TRENDS It was in the Netherlands that the concept of abstraction was first applied to furniture design. At the helm of this revolutionary artistic idea was the avant-garde De Stijl group, formed
in 1917 by the painters Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian. The functionalist furniture designed by the group was conspicuously absent from the 1925 Paris Exhibition. The Dutch pavilion there was designed by J.E Staal, a member of the Amsterdam School, which favoured the use of theatrical, expressionist, and Oriental motifs in furniture designs. Among the exhibits was furniture by C.A. Lion Cachet, designed for a Dutch ocean liner. He used dark tropical woods inlaid with ivory and lighter woods in traditional-shaped pieces with Oriental decoration and parchment panels. Jaap Gidding’s cinema and theatre interiors also followed the French Art Deco style. The Tuschinski cinema in Amsterdam (1918-21) was typical, with its decorative, opulent interior, and special light effects.
In Scandinavia, Art Deco took a more classical turn with an emphasis on elegance, proportion, luxurious materials, and hand-crafting. In 1930, British writer, Morton Shand, defined the Swedish restrained Neoclassical style prevalent at the 1925 Paris
Exhibition as a “line characterized by its slender and almost elfin grace”. Exhibiting a similar style, Otto Meyer’s and Jacob Petersen’s graceful, curving chairs crafted out A sycamore and
mahogany were superbly set off by the batik wall-covering of Ebbe Sadolin in the Danish pavilion.
ITALIAN BALANCE
Italian furniture designers struggled to find a balance between the demand for classical elegance and the language of the sophisticated modern style.
Although ill at case with the display of sumptuous luxury that was the hallmark of French Art Deco, Italian cabinets, tables, writing desks, and chairs made full use of the beauty of lustrous local and exotic timbers. Many of them were embellished with bronze mounts, or lightly carved or
inlaid patterns of flower baskets, garlands, or geometric motifs that were typical of Art Deco.
The Italian version of Art Deco reached its fullest expression in the hands of the innovative architect Gio Ponti. He successfully managed to combine the functional, geometric, spare structure promoted by the Wiener Werkstatte designers with the sophisticated and elegant refinements of the French Art Deco style.

ITALIAN COFFEE TABLE
This fine Italian coffee table has a rectangular glass-topped surface on tapering plank legs. It has been crafted from bird’s-eye maple and ebony veneer. Exotic wood veneers, such as the ebony used in this piece, were commonly used
in European Art Deco furniture. The dark ebony highlights the simple geometric structure of the coffee table.
This Swiss walnut desk has a rectangular top with rounded corners. The central drawer and two flanking cabinets have decorative “English-style” handles, and the whole piece is raised
on square feet. The grain of the walnut has been highlighted, providing additional visual interest. c.1925.
BELGIAN DESK
Designed by De Coene Freres, this Belgian desk has four drawers, tapering legs, and nickel feet, and is covered in black lacquer. The sleek black design demonstrates a relinquishing of unnecessary decoration in favour of pure functionality. c. 1930.
SWEDISH CHAIR
This Swedish Art Deco chair is upholstered in brown leather and supported upon tapering legs, with two slightly splayed rear legs, and curvilinear arm rests. The backrest has a
central panel with burr wood and satinwood details. c.1920.
This bridge chair is one of a pair designed by De Coene Freres. The curved armrests form a continuous “U” shape with the bowed seat frame. The chair is upholstered in a red, checked fabric and has tapering front legs.

The rectilinear structure of the buffet is emphasized by the austere placement
of the doors and drawers.
The ivory inlay used for the drawer pulls is a typical Art Deco detail.
ITALIAN BUFFET
The shelf structure of this Italian buffet is characteristic of Art Deco design, combining clean lines and asymmetry with a luxurious and decorative burr wood finish. The shelf structure contains a mirror on a case with four small drawers and a twin
cabinet door enclosing an adjustable shelf. Subtle, inlaid handles are attached to the four drawers and the cabinet doors. The geometric shape is typical of Italian Art Deco, which took its lead from the Wiener Werlkstatte. The use of exotic timber is more typical of the French style.
The burr wood veneer
makes a boldly
luxurious statement
ITALIAN CABINET
This rectangular Ulrich Guglielmo cabinet has two doors and is supported on a square plinth lined with goat parchment. The doors have ivory mounts and the plinth is veneered with kingwood. Round ebony knobs, with gilded bronze mountings and keys, are attached to the 14 interior drawers. c.1930.
WALNUT EASY CHAIR
This continental walnut easy chair is upholstered in cream, a popular colour in Art Deco furniture design. The chair has broad, curving armrests, each supported on three vertical fluted rods, and moulded sledge-like block feet.

Arita blue-and-white wares
Almost all early Japanese porcelain was produced in Arita on Kyushu, the westernmost of the main Japanese islands and, significantly, the closest to Korea. It is most unlikely that the manufacture of porcelain would have developed in Japan as early as this without the know-how of Korean potters, who were brought to Japan when Toyotomi Hideyoshi returned from his invasion of Korea at the end of the 16th century. Early Arita porcelain is generally, if superficially, classified into three main types: Arita blue and white, Imari, and Kakicmon.
A Ming-style blue-and-white dish
This large dish is a fairly faithful rendition of late Ming kraak porcelain Emblems used by the Chinese as decorative motifs, including the “Eight Precious Objects” of the scholar (a musical stone, jewels, a coin, a pair of books, an open tied lozenge and a closed tied lozenge, and the artemisia leaf), were often copied by the Japanese. The artemisia leaf can be seen in this dish in the broad panels in the top right corner. (c. 1660-80; diam. 40cmll6in, value H)
DOMESTIC WARES
The earliest Arita wares wore crude-bodied, heavily potted porcelain, casually decorated in blue and white, and were generally not exported. These wares were clearly influenced by both Korean blue-and-white and imported late Ming porcelain. By the mid-17th century the Arita potters were producing a more refined and broader range of objects for the newly established export market, as well as for the domestic market. The type of decoration on these later wares was complex, combining natural themes with geometric patterns; dishes or bowls featured leaf or flower forms and, more rarely, bird or animal shapes. The underglaze blue used ranges from a poor-quality grey or blackish blue through to a bright purplish blue. Wares made for the domestic
EXPORT WARES
In 1647 the civil war in China between the Dynasty and the invading
disrupted the well-established trade between Japan and Europe. The Japanese were persuaded by Dutch East India Company to supply - white wares in the style of either the Chinese kraak porcelain or the Transitional
decorated with semi-botanical subjects narrative themes applied in a mechanical These are not close copies but loose
Japanese decorators were hampered by she they had to work from wooden models of originals supplied by the Dutch.
Wares produced at this time included
northern European metal or ceramic forms example the Enghalskrug (narrow-necked
or Kugelbauchkrug (bulbous globular rank:_
and the Birnkrug (pear-shaped tankard
specifically Chinese shapes as the kendi a
drinking vessel) and the klapmuts (a wide-dish) were also made. The trade with Europe continued until the kilns in China were reestablished in 1683, after which the Dutch mainly
returned to their patronage of Chinese porcelain. which was much less expensive than Japanese wares. However, porcelain made in the kilns at Arita continued to be exported to the West until the mid-18th century
market include small dishes and c.1640 Japanese wares include The third type of blue-and-white solely for the export market.