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Traditional Furniture: traditional furniture carved or inlaid furniture, frequently intended for two-dimensional display against a large area of solid wall, would look ridiculous backed up against a glass wall or standing free in the middle of the room. Consequently, architects and furniture designers developed new, clean-lined, sculptural furniture, often with a "floating" look, that could be arranged to stand in open space and be seen advantageously from all sides. Such furniture often had a pedestal base, allowing it to be used in any arrangement in domestic or other surroundings. Breuer and Mies, trained in Germany, designed their furniture in steel, while Scandinavian craftsmen such as Hans Wegner and Finn Juhl and the Americans Saarinen and Charles Eames used molded and bent plywood and other woods to produce pieces of great sophistication and sculptured beauty in the handcraft tradition, although modified for machine manufacture. Upholstery materials were usually sturdy leather, wool, cotton, or vinyl.
Some of the early factories produced nearly all the standard furniture forms; others specialized in one or more, but whether their product was a full line or limited, it was sold in wholesale quantities to a new type of merchant, the retail furniture dealer. At first he referred to his establishment as a furniture or cabinet warehouse and later as a furniture store. If located in one of the larger cities he might also have his own factory but he was essentially a middle man and with his coming, direct contact between the maker and user of a piece of furniture ended. |
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