French Boucle Hand Beaded Alpaca Wool Throw
2010s French Modern Quilts and Blankets
Alpaca
People Also Browsed
Antique 19th Century English William IV Torchères
Wood, Mahogany
Early 20th Century Czech Arts and Crafts Pedestals
Wood
Antique 19th Century Chinese Furniture
Wood
Antique 19th Century Italian Planters and Jardinieres
Wood
Early 20th Century European Arts and Crafts Pedestals
Brass
Antique 19th Century Italian Coat Racks and Stands
Metal, Iron
Antique 19th Century Unknown Rustic Planters and Jardinieres
Wood, Twig
Antique 15th Century and Earlier Peruvian Pre-Columbian Antiquities
Textile
Antique 19th Century European Rustic Planters and Jardinieres
Twig
Antique 18th Century European Rococo Wall Mirrors
Other
Antique 15th Century and Earlier Pre-Columbian Antiquities
Early 20th Century Burkinabe Primitive Masks
Wood
Antique 15th Century and Earlier Peruvian Pre-Columbian Tapestries
Textile
Antique 15th Century and Earlier Pre-Columbian Antiquities
Textile
Antique 15th Century and Earlier Peruvian Pre-Columbian Antiquities
Textile
Early 20th Century American Art Deco End Tables
Steel, Chrome
A Close Look at modern Furniture
The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw sweeping social change and major scientific advances — both of which contributed to a new aesthetic: modernism. Rejecting the rigidity of Victorian artistic conventions, modernists sought a new means of expression. References to the natural world and ornate classical embellishments gave way to the sleek simplicity of the Machine Age. Architect Philip Johnson characterized the hallmarks of modernism as “machine-like simplicity, smoothness or surface [and] avoidance of ornament.”
Early practitioners of modernist design include the De Stijl (“The Style”) group, founded in the Netherlands in 1917, and the Bauhaus School, founded two years later in Germany.
Followers of both groups produced sleek, spare designs — many of which became icons of daily life in the 20th century. The modernists rejected both natural and historical references and relied primarily on industrial materials such as metal, glass, plywood, and, later, plastics. While Bauhaus principals Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe created furniture from mass-produced, chrome-plated steel, American visionaries like Charles and Ray Eames worked in materials as novel as molded plywood and fiberglass. Today, Breuer’s Wassily chair, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair — crafted with his romantic partner, designer Lilly Reich — and the Eames lounge chair are emblems of progressive design and vintage originals are prized cornerstones of collections.
It’s difficult to overstate the influence that modernism continues to wield over designers and architects — and equally difficult to overstate how revolutionary it was when it first appeared a century ago. But because modernist furniture designs are so simple, they can blend in seamlessly with just about any type of décor. Don’t overlook them.