Northwest Woodworking Studio Forum

1. Steve1
   Member

   I'm a huge fan of old European furniture, the real classic stuff, like Louis XV and XVI, and early French Empire. Most people find this stuff too fussy and/or ornate. To my eye, much of the Stickley style is too geometric, and for Arts and Crafts styles I'm much more likely to lean to Greene and Greene for example. So here's a question for anyone out there, can good design be recognized without the context? If one were not conversant with Chinese furniture for example, would it be obvious which were great pieces and which were not? Or any other unfamiliar style?

   This question arises as I read some older books (1930's-1940's) on furniture design and style. There is, to me, a lot of bias in the writing, for example describing French Empire as a degenerate form of the high style court furniture of the Louis'.

   So an alternative question is this: Is it still possible to design and build a drop dead gorgeous French Empire piece or would it be destined to be only duplication or pastiche? Can you only look back or can you go back?

   Now my brain hurts...

   Steve Warburton

   Posted 6 months ago #

2. Gary Rogowski
   Administrator

   Witold Rybczynski postulates in his short book, The Look of Architecture, that form follows fashion. That no design work is timeless. It is of a time and place and culture and setting. Take the Taj Mahal and place it in New York City or Paris and it is remarkable but out of its contexts, religious, cultural, and symbolic. It is therefore almost incomprehensible without its "neighborhood".

   Yet, we of this muddled design era, keep returning to old styles, older cultures, past glories, or misremembered glories as if they had something to finally offer us this time around.

   I don't fear the pastiche, the potpourri. We are born with eyes and see the world through them. We also filter what we see through the lens of our culture, our bias.
   I say steal from the best sources. Then design and build for the future. Let the critics to come judge us as to whether our Neo-Empire or Neo-Art Deco or Neo-Neo-Classical is worthy.

   Posted 6 months ago #

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