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Philosophy of Furniture
| Article
# : |
19592 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1991 |
1,086 Words |
| Author
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Karen S. Chambers
Karen S. Chambers is a craft writer, critic, and curator
currently based in New York. |
It used to be that if you needed a chair or a table, you went to a furniture showroom, picked out what you wanted, and had it delivered from the warehouse or factory.
Furniture is still bought that way, but today there's a new option: art and studio furniture. This kind of furniture fulfills functional needs, but it can also be judged as artwork. We may find it in a fashionable or a funky gallery or in its creator's studio. We may have seen it in a museum. The furnituremaker of the 1990s could be a skilled cabinetmaker trained through a traditional apprenticeship or a graduate of one of a number of programs at universities and art schools across the country. He, or often she, could be a conceptual artist, a sculptor, or an architect.
Generally speaking, art furniture implies that the object has content beyond function, that it has a further conceptual basis. Studio furniture applies more to the products of makers working in small shops, usually within a craft tradition. Both are handmade, but not necessarily by the artist or artisan who "signs" the piece, and handmade may allow for machine work. Neither art nor studio furniture is mass-produced, although it may not be one of a kind, being produced in a limited edition, a restricted number of pieces, or open production, usually in response to orders and in a relatively small number when compared with industry.
At the American Craft Museum recently one could see a comfortable-looking upholstered leather club chair, factorymade, designed by Dakota Jackson, a magician turned furnituremaker and now designer; a rustic chair made of twigs by broadcaster-now-craftsman Daniel Mack in a reprise of a traditional genre; and former car customizer Alex Locadia's room setting with menacing black leather chaises and animalistic stereo speakers, which looked like something from outer space. This work, plus that of eight other furnituremakers, was included in Explorations II: The New Furniture.
Elegant Chests
The recent International Contemporary Furniture Fair showed everything from the brazenly comic "Bra Chair" by Tev Vaughn for Public Domain, with its silk taffeta corset laced up the back and cone-breasted backrest, to the elegant chests and tables by British designer Johnny Grey, meticulously handcrafted by Alastair Knowlden. Italian manufacturer Palazzetti introduced the Maverick Collection, which included designs by American craftsman Thomas Hucker. Perky designs by the team of Lyn Godley
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