Posts Tagged ‘Ludwig Mies’

After World War I, furniture designers combined luxury and practicality in their products, and created both traditional types of furniture and innovative forms. In France, traditional Art Deco furniture was typified by elegant styles looking back to the 18th or 19th centuries, using inlay and exotic woods. After 1925 French makers started to incorporate the “new” materials
that were part of the Modernist aesthetic, such as chromium, aluminium, and tubular steel — as advocated by the innovative German Bauhaus, whose industrial designers created functional furniture for mass production. In the USA, designers were influenced by both traditional and Modern European Art Deco, using materials such as laminated wood and chromed metal.

In the early 20th century, Dutch, German, and
Scandinavian furniture designers were at the forefront of the Modern movement. Designing specifically for Machine production, they rejected ornament and experimented with the new materials of tubular steel, aluminium, chromium, and preformed plywood, aiming to create standardized, functional furniture accessible to all markets.
THE NETHERLANDS
Among the earliest furniture designs inspired by the new machine aesthetic ere those of Gerrit Rietveld 1888-1964). From c.1918 Rietveld was associated with the Dutch magazine De Stijl (Style), whose contributors, a group of avant-garde architects, painters, designers, and theorists, aimed
to create a new “universal” art based on lines, geometric shapes, primary colours, and black and white. Rietveld’s “Red-Blue” chair, designed in 1918, is one of the best-known expressions of De Stijl ideas. Its straightforward construction meant that it was highly suitable for mass production. Versions made before 1923 are stained, varnished, or limed, reflecting Rietveld’s traditional training in carpentry. Only after this date was the chair painted in red, blue, black, and yellow. From c.1918 Rietveld’s furniture designs were constructed from linear wooden elements; from the mid-1920s they featured flat Wooden planes. Rietveld produced his own furniture until 1924, when he sold his business to his assistant Gerard van der Groenekan. Rights to the designs were sold in 1971 to the Italian furniture company Cassina, which still reproduces them today.
GERMANY
Most of the well-known furniture designers in Germany in the inter-war period were associated with the Bauhaus. Founded in 1919 in Weimar by the architect Walter Gropius (1883– 1969), the Bauhaus was one of the first schools to train artists and craftsmen to design high-quality goods specifically for industrial production. It is particularly renowned for the functional, geometric style of its products and its experimentation with new Materials such as tubular steel and plywood.
The best-known furniture designs associated with the Bauhaus were those produced by the Hungarian-born architect Marcel Breuer (1902-81), head of the school’s carpentry workshop from 1925 to 1928. His earliest designs feature linear wooden components, similar in
style to Rietveld’s furniture. However, by c.1925, Breuer was designing chairs with tubular steel frames, and his “Wassily” chair (1925) was one of the first tubular steel pieces to be produced on a large scale. Designs including the “Wassily” chair and the tubular steel-framed, cantilevered “B32″ chair (1926) were manufactured by such firms as Standard-Mobel Lengyel & Co. in Berlin and Thonet in Vienna. In 1932 Breuer began to design aluminium furniture for the Wohnbedarf furnishings stores in Switzerland; since aluminium is weaker than steel, these designs are more complex in construction than his tubular steel pieces. In 1935 Breuer emigrated to Britain, where he met Jack Pritchard (b. 1899), owner of Isokon (1932-9), which produced furniture in the Modern style and promoted the use of plywood. For Isokon, Breuer designed the “Long Chair”, a sculptural plywood reclining chair that moulded to the position of the body, and lightweight tables and chairs created from single sheets of cut and moulded plywood.
The avant-garde architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969), artistic director of the Bauhaus from 1930 to 1933, designed cantilevered tubular steel furniture for mass production by the firm of Berliner Metallgewerbe
from 1927 to 1931. Many of his other designs, although functional in appearance, were in fact handmade for the luxury market. A notable example is his padded leather and chrome “Barcelona” chair and stool, designed for
the German pavilion at the 1929 International Exhibition in arcelona. With a curved X-frame inspired by Classical furniture, the chair was designed as a “throne” for King Alfonso XIII of Spain for the opening ceremony of the exhibition. Original Berliner Metallgewerbe models are exceptionally rare and valuable today, but since 1947-8 the chair has been mass-produced by the American firm of Knoll, and these reproductions are more accessible to collectors.
SCANDINAVIA
In the 1920s and 1930s, Scandinavia was less industrialized than the rest of Europe or the USA, and
its craft tradition was still highly evident in furniture and interior design. This tradition continued even with the advent of Modernism, Scandinavian designers preferring curving forms and wood to the angular shapes and tubular steel favoured by their German peers. This is well illustrated by the furniture designed by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto (1898-1976), who from from 1929 experimented with plywood for such items as chairs and trolleys, and in 1933 patented a method of bending wood to make stacking stools. Like other Modernist furniture of the period, Aalto’s designs are simple in construction, with no surface decoration, although they may be painted in bright primary colours. His furniture was produced from 1930 to 1933 by the firm of Otto Korhonen in Turku and from 1935 by his own manufacturing company, Artek, in Helsinki. Aalto’s versatile furniture, especially his stacking stools, proved particularly popular in Britain, where it was imported and distributed by Finmar Ltd (est. 1934-5).

•    COLLECTING original 1920s and 1930s pieces are rarer and more valuable than recent versions; many designs were sold to large furniture companies from the 1940s and have been in continuous production since
Gerrit Rietveld
•    CONSTRUCTION linear elements were typical before the early 1920s; planar designs thereafter
•    COLOURS primary colours, plus black and white; early versions of “Red-Blue” chair are unpainted
Marcel Breuer
MATERIALS tubular steel, aluminium, or bent and
laminated plywood; leather arid cane for seats
•    CONSTRUCTION simple contours
construction; chairs and tables made after 1925 have runners rather than feet; Isokon side-chairs and tables are made from single sheets of cut plywood

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
•    MATERIALS tubular steel combined with padded leather upholstery, raffia, or glass
•    CONSTRUCTION Some chairs are cantilevered; the “Barcelona” chair and stool have a distinctive X-frame; careful hand-finishing is typical
•    COLLECTING on early, handmade “Barcelona” chairs the top rail is in bent chromed steel with lap joints and chrome-headed bolts; on later, mass-produced pieces (after 1947-8) the top rail is of cut and welded stainless steel
Alvar Aalto
•    MATERIALS woods, especially plywood, bent laminated (which may flake), and solid birch
Marks
Some Finnish furniture is marked “Aalto Mobley, Svensk Kvalitet Sprodurt”; most pieces have an applied metal label bearing a model number