Modern furniture is often defined as furniture influenced by modernism. This refers to furniture produced from the late 19th century up to the present day.
Prior to this, furniture had traditionally been made from dark, carved wood such as dark mahogany, with rich patterned fabrics.
The influence of modernism produced modern furniture made from polished metals with simple lines, giving a lighter look.
Contemporary furniture designers nowadays continue to evolve, always seeking new materials and simplistic looks. This gives the modern look of chic, clean and elegant furniture.
The origins of these designs were well before the 1960’s and were not produced until the mid 20th century, yet they are still seen as contemporary, modern furniture.
The Bauhaus School was a German design school responsible for some of the most modern architectural and furniture designs of the 20th Century. It ran from 1919 through to 1933 and was founded by the architect Walter Gropius Weimar.
Born in Berlin in 1883, Walter Gropius Weimar was the son of a building advisor to the German government.
Gropius founded the Bauhaus school of design, where the students were taught to create modern looking furniture and architecture using innovative materials.
When the Nazi party rose to power in the thirties, Gropius left his native Germany for Britain and then America.
Bauhaus remains an important movement in the field of design and the furniture inspired by the Bauhaus movement is still produced and sought after today.
If you have a keen interest in modern furniture design, then you will have heard of Ettore Sottsass. Unfortunately, Sotsass passed away on 31st December 2007 and as a result, there has been a resurgence in discussion of Memphis Design. Here we pay tribute to the life of Ettore Sottsass.
Born in September 1917, Sottsass grew up in Milan with his architect father. He graduated in 1939 with a degree in architecture himself but joined the Italiam military and spent most of World War II in a Yugoslavian concentration camp. After the war, he set up an Italian architectural design studio back in Milan.
In 1959, he began working as a design consultant, designing Olivetti technical equipment such as typewriters and calculators and their office furniture. He won Italy’s highest design award for his redesign of the Olivetti computer in 1959 by adding blocks of colour and lowering the machine so workers could see each other over the top.
At the grand age of 64, Sottsass joined forces with a group of 30-something designers in 1981 to form the Memphis Group. They launched with a collection of just 40 items, including amongst others, furniture, lighting and ceramics. Their iconic, colourful designs made history attracting many famous clients such as Knoll International, Esprit and the Italian furniture company Poltronova. In 2006, the Los Angeles Museum of Art exhibited his work in the US and in 2007 the London Design Museum held the Ettore Sottsass: Work in Progress exhibition.
Ettore Sottsass will be sorely missed as a great modern furniture designer.
Contemporary furniture designers are always looking to produce their sleek, simple lines with new materials. Polished metals and bright colours give a visually pleasing look to chic, simple rooms of a modern design.
When new materials such as steel were first used, they were considered shocking by some and pioneering by others. Combined with plastic, these new creations, first produced in the late 20th century, were completely different to anything used before.
Modern furniture designers moved away from dark, carved wood with patterned fabric to steel, molded plywood and plastics. They combined the relatively new disciplines of technology and art, using new materials and innovative methods. They used solid blocks of plain colour without any pattern or markings.
German art, Japanese simplicity and eastern philosophy were all cited as early influences on the first modern furniture designers such as Charles and Ray Eames, Eileen Gray and Lilly Reich. These contemporary furniture designers made mass production possible, bringing their modern designs to the masses.
The Eames Lounge chair has created much debate among experts surrounding its place within the environment. It’s is argued that chair doesn’t sit well, if you pardon the pun, when grouped together with its brethren. Instead the chair is best seen as a solitary icon, standing proud without another to detract from its style.
As the Eames Lounge Chair is a furniture piece of such quality, it did suffer from being copied in the Nineties. The subject of plagiarism has since been addressed through legal measures; ensuring that its classic, iconic design is preserved so that is the sole domain of the Eames Lounge Chair.
The chair is actually very difficult to assemble anyway, which has made it very difficult to copy. To stave of future copies, the chair has been identified legally has having the following characteristics.
• The Eames Lounge Chair has smooth, moulded, curved shells
• The shells are visible from the underside, from the rear, the sides and below the chair.
• The edges of the shell are exposed from the front.
• The moulded shells are in the shape of a flattened ‘U’.
• The moulded shells have cushioned opholstery.
• The moulded shells come with buttons that form creases in the upholstery.
• The read of the chair has two moulded shells which are connected to two exposed bars, angled so that they tilt the upper moulded shell forward of the lower shell.
• The angled bars are spaced away from the moulded shells.
• The armrests are upholstered and they extend downwards into the chair itself, connecting the two back shells to the moulded seat.