1920`s American Chairs - Art nouveau, Art Deco, Crafts Movement
American Chairs About 1890-1940 - Art nouveau, Art Deco, Crafts Movement
Grand Rapids, Michigan, became the centre of the furniture industry, with Chicago as a breeding ground of reformist designers including Frank Lloyd Wright who stressed the need for good furniture that could be mass-produced with machinery and sold at reasonable prices.
In the 1890s there was a reaction against the historicism of the past half-century. American designers absorbed the principles of the Arts and Crafts Movement (see p. 68) and added touches from art nouveau (see p. 196), to which style C. Rohlf’s elaborately carved chairs, around 1898, were, perhaps, nearest.
In 1894, D.W. Kendall designed for the Phoenix Furniture Co. an oak armchair with cane seat and flat arms that proved popular well into the 1920s. Simply-made chairs, sold off from a Spanish mission in California, inspired J.P. McHugh, who worked in oak and ash; E. Hubbard at the Ryecroft Community, East Aurora; Gustav Stickley at his Craftsman Workshops, Eastwood. Comfort was catered for with club easy chairs and deeply sprung ‘Davenport’ sofas.
Following World War 1, industrial design created the cantilevered, tubular steel chair, but a public preference for something glamorous was catered for with Art Moderne (see p. 275) which, at its best, combined traditional craftsmanship with modern streamlining. The low sofa and easy chair with deeply
Right rocking chair, New York, about 1890.
Oak reclining chair, designed by Frank Lloyd I right, about 1902.
sprung seats and backs, padded arms and minimal feet, took the term ‘fully upholstered’ to the point where woodwork was seldom visible. A sofa designed by the Spanish surrealist Dali, inspired by the lips of the American sex symbol, Mae West, is a classic example of the high Art Moderne style.
Crafts Movement: Native hardwoods such as oak, ash. Cane, rush for- Folk weaves for upholstery.
Industrial Design: Tubular metal, mainly steel. Serviceable upholstery fabrics.
Art Moderne: Exotic woods and expensive textiles.
Crafts Movement: Construction frankly exposed to view. Some makers, influenced by Wright, abandoned conventional joints in favour of screwing sections together.
Industrial Design: When steel tubes took the place of timber, traditional methods were supplanted by metalwork techniques such as welding, bending.
Art Moderne: Traditional joints - mortise-and-tenon, dovetail - though often cut by machine.
Crafts Movement: Exposed construction sometimes exploited as decoration, for instance butterfly joints and dowel ends stained by Rohlfs in contrasting colours. Carving was used by some craftsmen, but rejected by the puritanical.
Industrial Design: Puritanism of a slightly different kind saw decoration as superfluous, but often achieved - almost by accident - a decorative effect from elegant lines and fine proportions.
Art Moderne: Essentially a decorative style, exploiting every available means to achieve its ends - disastrously so at the lower end of the market.
Crafts Movement: Veneers little used. Coloured stains, green expecially, as well as the usual browns. Varnish on cheaper lines, wax on up-market products.
Industrial Design: Chromium plating on tubular steel. Cellulose sprays on 1930s woodwork.
Art Moderne: Veneered panels often used to face the fronts of arms on sofas and easy chairs upholstered in futuristic patterns popular in the jazz age.
Best buys: Mission chairs, especially Roycroft, Stickley - but go for good craftsmanship rather than labels. Many opportunities in Art Moderne seating that needs re-upholstery.
CRAFT MOVEMENT
Craft Movement chairs are often difficult to date because some designs, such as Kendall’s, remained in production for 30 years. Chairs by Stickley are often labelled and can still be bought at reasonable prices.
Tags: armchair, Art Deco, Art Moderne, arts and crafts, CHAIRS, CONSTRUCTION, Dali, surrealist dali, upholstery, upholstery fabrics