Design of the 20th Century

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Wassily Chair, designed by Marcel Breuer around 1925. Sold for €510 via Henry’s Auktionshaus (August 2022). Originally from the Netherlands, Berlin-based industrial designer Hella Jongerius is famous for her belief in “long-termism” and is outspoken about the fact that “there’s too much shit design” in the world today. Her work is typically known for mixing traditional craft techniques with modern technologies. Jongerius set up her first studio – Jongeriuslab ¬– in Rotterdam in 1993, where she mixed independent projects with work for major clients such as airline KLM and the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York. Since 2012, she has served as art director for rug company Danskina, as well as being art director of colours and materials for Vitra since 2007. Recent projects include a major exhibition at the Design Museum in London, which looked at the designer’s research into the possibilities of colour. Chairs like these stand apart as impeccable mixes of practicality and aesthetics. They ensure that the sitter or fan can enjoy the benefits of quality design, and turn the everyday act of sitting into an art. To help you do the same, we have collated 25 of the Most Famous Chair Designs of All Time to help you ease into luxurious, sophisticated, and engineered refinement. urn:lcp:designof20thcent0000fiel:epub:29d96ea8-7a58-448b-bbdb-c81c23dc72cc Foldoutcount 0 Identifier designof20thcent0000fiel Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t18m5pt2n Invoice 1652 Isbn 9783836541060 Artist-turned-furniture designer and architect Eileen Gray is arguably one of the most underrated designers of the 20th century. It was only really later in life that she received recognition for her classic designs such as the leather and tubular steel Bibendum Chair and the E-1027 glass and tubular steel table. Born in the Irish market town of Enniscorthy, Gray spent her childhood in London and was among the first women to be admitted to the Slade, where she took up painting in 1898 before doing an apprenticeship in a London lacquer workshop. After opening her own gallery in 1922 in Paris, she moved into furniture and worked closely with many of the outstanding figures of the modern movement, including Le Corbusier and J.J.P Oud. Gray later moved into architecture, again encouraged by Le Corbusier and J.J.P Oud. She designed two houses in the Alpes Maritimes, one at Roquebrune which was built from 1926-1929, and the other at Castellar, built from 1932-1934. After World War Two, and right up to her death in 1976, she continued to work as a designer on major projects such as the Cultural and Social Centre. Today, her work is rightly preserved as part of the archives at major, international institutions such as the V&A and MoMa.

Left: Joost Schmidt - Poster for the 1923 Bauhaus Exhibition in Weimar, 1923.Captions, via Creative Commons / Right: A. M. Cassandre - Normandie, 1935. Images via widewalls.ch Ocr ABBYY FineReader 11.0 (Extended OCR) Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.11 Ocr_module_version 0.0.14 Old_pallet IA17483 Openlibrary_edition Left: Shepard Fairey - Obama Posters - Progress / Center: Shepard Fairey - Vote / Right: Shepard Fairey - Hope. Captions, via Creative Commons From the Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman, to the Le Corbusier Grand Confort and the Arne Jacobsen Egg Chair, the evolution of the coveted chair – a chair that goes beyond mere function – has gathered significant pace over the past century. Shifts significant enough to challenge the status quo don’t come around often, but in 1974, when Beverly Johnson appeared on the cover of [American] Vogue’s [August issue], it was a landmark moment. It had taken more than eight decades, but finally, a person of colour was fronting the world’s foremost fashion magazine,” Vogue’s Janelle Okwodu wrote in 2016.By the latter part of the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution was slowly developing, particularly in England, and machinery was increasingly producing many objects of interior decoration, modifying their form to suit the new methods and reducing the price to make them available to new markets, a situation envisaged by Wedgwood. The less affluent of the middle classes became the largest section of consumers, and manufacture was increasingly directed toward catering to their tastes. In the early years of the 19th century a new concept was beginning to take shape—the notion of eclecticism, which propounded that any style was as good as another. This led to the idea that styles could legitimately be mixed together. In this way Horace Walpole’s nightmare of a garden-seat—Gothic at one end and Chinese at the other—became, in principle, an accomplished fact: one firm, for instance, made a classical urn on a Gothic base. By the 1830s there was a revival of Rococo, to be seen in the porcelain of the period and the chairs of John Belter of New York, and there was something called the “Louis XIV” style, which that monarch would have found difficulty in recognizing. Throughout this period there was a limited amount of pseudo-Chinese decoration, principally on pottery and porcelain and papier-mâché. After 1853, when Commodore Matthew C. Perry of the U.S. Navy reopened Japan to Western trade and influence, a new kind of Japanese art began to be exported, such as the vases of unprecedented ugliness decorated in Tokyo and called Satsuma, or enormous, grossly over-decorated vases from Seto in Owari (presently Aichi Prefecture), none of which would have found a buyer in the Japanese home-market. A series of museum-worthy designs have transformed homes, offices, and living areas into desirable spaces whose interest and excitement extends beyond the drabness of functionality. Innovations in engineering, design, and materials all contributing to the seated revolution. Originally designed by Antonio Bonet, Juan Kurchan, and Jorge Ferrari-Hardoy in Buenos Aires in 1938, it was Knoll Associates who acquired US production rights of the stretched fabric chair and made it famous worldwide when it was featured in their eponymous catalogue from 1947 to 1951. It’s so popular that it has a range of imitators and is also known as the Hardoy Chair, Safari Chair, and Wing Chair. Keep that in mind when searching Invaluable for it. In France, where there was a sounder tradition and Gothic had not been influential for centuries, 19th century taste was not quite so debased as in England. A light and amusing version of Gothic known as the Troubadour style made its appearance in the 1830s, perhaps an international tribute to the contemporary fame of Sir Walter Scott. Rococo was revived as the Pompadour style, and there was a neo-Renaissance period, with furniture designs based on 16th-century Italian work. On the whole, the furniture of the second empire (1852–70) was very acceptable in design, although these pieces were based largely on the 18th century; these styles harmonized well with the contemporaneous music of Jacques Offenbach and the brilliance of the court of Napoleon III.

This volume tells this fascinating story, combining the history of modern design movements with a chronological review of 80 top designers, from Otto Wagner at the end of the 19th century to Jasper Morrison, a young designer making an impact today. In between you'll find profiles of some of the most influential creative minds of the 20th century, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Eero Saarinen, and many others. The book is as beautiful to look at as it is exciting to read. It contains more than 580 full-color photos covering a wide range of objects that include furniture, glass, ceramics, metalware, industrial products, and household appliances. For anyone loving the 20th century design movements, this book truly is a must-have. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2020-01-16 07:02:48 Associated-names Fiell, Peter Boxid IA1762319 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier Susan Kare is widely considered to be one of the pioneers of computer-based iconography. She began her career at Apple in the 1980s, working as the screen graphics and digital font designer for the original Macintosh computer. It was while she was at Apple that Kare arguably helped to shape what the language of user interfaces looks like today. Her archive of graph paper drawings showing her ideas for the original Macintosh interface were recently acquired by the Museum of MoMA, and shown as part of its exhibition This is for Everyone: Design Experiments for The Common Good, as well as featuring in the Design Museum’s 2017 exhibition on pioneering Californian design. Neoclassicism predominated in France till the rise of Napoleon, when to Roman styles were added Egyptian motifs from his Egyptian campaign of 1798. This was known in France as the Empire style, after the First Empire of France (1804–14), and in England as Regency, for the period (1811–20) when George III was too deranged to rule. Furniture design, for the most part light and graceful during the early part of the Neoclassical period in France, had become more consciously luxurious as the Revolution was approached. During the Empire period it became massive, imposing, dark, and pompous. The usual vocabulary of classical ornament is to be found in both Empire and Regency, with some modifications from earlier times. The cabriole leg of the Rococo style became straight, and curves tended to disappear in all furniture. Symmetry of ornament replaced the asymmetrical curves. In England, in the latter part of the 18th century, porcelain became less and less fashionable, and its place was taken by the cream-coloured earthenware (creamware) of Josiah Wedgwood, and by his jasper and basaltes stonewares, all admirably adapted to the new style. Greek vase-shapes and classical ornament were commonly used in the decoration of Wedgwood wares of all kinds. In England, the work of Thomas Hope, a wealthy amateur architect, gained much attention through the publication of his Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (1807). He enlarged and decorated his London home in Duchess Street, Portland Place, and also his country house, Deepdene, in Dorking, Surrey, with somewhat heavy and pedantic design that was at variance with the general trend of the time but influenced later work. The 19th century was an age of eclecticism. Decorators introduced the custom of having a different style for each room—“Gothic,” “Elizabethan,” or “Old English” for the dining-room; “Queen Anne,” “Chippendale,” or “Louis XVI” for the drawing-room; with pseudo-Elizabethan furniture for the library. Design reached its nadir with the Great Exhibition of 1851, in London, the low-water mark in the history of European taste in interior decoration, from which there was no conceivable direction except upward.Influenced by the constructivist theories of the De Stijl Movement and more plainly, a bicycle frame, Marcel Breur’s Wassily Chair changed the course of furniture design. It’s more sculptural than his B32/Cesca and the deconstructed club chair looked like an abstract piece of art compared to other chairs in the 1920s, making it seem as futuristic then as it still does today. For additional style kudos, it also appeared in Frasier Crane’s eclectic apartment. Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999) Photo by Paul Gutmann, Archives Charlotte Perriand (courtesy of Cassina) Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2020-06-15 13:04:32 Associated-names Fiell, Peter Boxid IA1829809 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier Charlotte J. Fiell (born 1965) studied at the British Institute, Florence and at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, London, where she received a BA (Hons) in the History of Drawing and Printmaking with Material Science. She later trained with Sothby's Educational Studies, also in London. Together the Fiells run a design consultancy in London specializing in the sale, acquisition, study and promotion of design artefacts. They have lectured widely, curated a number of exhibitions and written numerous articles and books on design and designers, including Taschen's Charles Rennie Macintosh, William Morris, 1000 Chairs, Design of the 20th Century and Industrial Design A-Z. They have also edited the six-volume Decorative Art series published by Taschen GmbH Art and design are both influenced by the politics, rise of technology, and the atmosphere of various periods. The produced pieces, poster works, or even the innovations of typography are all linked to the thoughts and challenges the various societies face. The economical, social, political, and cultural factors need to be understood as guides which help designers produce pieces which communicate with its public. Understanding aspects of the history of design assists us not only in the analyzing of both the historical and contemporary context but as an inspiration for future designers as well. The reference to the past and some of its revolutionary ideas gives depth to the piece. At times, the past may be on purposely challenged by new and progressive thoughts that are in constant demand.

The use of propaganda, that had became popular during the period of the war, had put in focus the national pride and political views in early poster design works. During the 60s, the hippie movement not only influenced the fashion and wearable art pieces, but it also helped to shape the psychedelic style of poster and painting pieces. The use of provocative language, the shift in the presentation of women, along with the use of the anti-war slogans, were all consequences of the demonstrations and the changes in the world. By Aimée McLaughlin February 5, 2018 6:21 pm February 9, 2018 9:47 am Margaret Calvert (1936-present) Photograph by Steve Speller A tan leather and chromed Butterfly chair after a design by Antonio Bonet, Juan Kurchan and Jorge Hardoy. Sold for R6,000 via Strauss & Co (June 2022).

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For a short course in modern design, Design of the 20th Century may be all you need. The curator-authors have made perfect, compact sense of a freewheeling century and the figures who defined its styles."