THE CULT OF PERIOD FURNITURE

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 179, 19 October 1927, Page 7

THE CULT OF PERIOD FURNITURE

TT is a remarkable thing that at A at the present time, when everybody is encouraged to express his or her own individuality as clearly as possible, we have only just begun to produce distinctive 20th century furniture. Every other period has its own easily reegonisbale furniture, from the solid, heavily-carved Elizabethan coffers and chairs, down to the hideous, but characteristic, “suites” of the Victorian era.

The old craftsmen of Cromwell’s time, or any other bygone age, did not, of course, deliberately set out to produce period furniture. They made the things that were most suited to the ordinary, everyday needs of the time, so that the Tudor period, for instance, when houses were draughty and inconvenient, has left behind heavy carved screens, high-backed chairs and huge coffers, into which all sorts of household goods could be stowed. As houses grew more convenient, furniture became lighter and more ornate.

In the Victorian age, when solid comfort was far higher in public estimation than artistic merit, the big, ugly, padded armchairs and sofas were high in favour, and the old furniture was banished to attics, or sold to poorer folk.

The form of furniture in which this present age excels is in the basket chairs-

Never before can there have been such a variety of cane chairs in all shapes and sizes, from the little tubshaped chairs, so useful for the garden, to the long, luxurious affairs beloved by the sybarite, with a space for a tumbler to fit securely in one arm and a pocket for books in the other. These, like the heavy oak chairs of the Tudors, are produced to fit the needs of the period, which in 1927 is for gardens and verandahs.