Cubism in Furniture

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 191, 2 November 1927, Page 7

Cubism in Furniture

Some Interior Decorations

THE word Cubism covers a style which consists for the most part of straight lines. But Cubism is really more than this. It is a discipline, an effort to see straightly, to avoid decoration for the sake to decoration. It is a protest against the trival and superfluous, and, if not against manners, at least against mannerisms.

A GOOD deal o£ Cubism, carried into interior decoration, meets with the comment, ‘ but there is nothing in it,” or that it is cold and uncomfortable, On the other hand, a person accustomed to Cubism can hardly bear the circumlocutory furniture of which the chief aim is that it should be difi ferent from the last, and that chiefly by j means of decoration. One of the distinguishing features of Cubism, as now interpreted in Paris and ! elsewhere, is the war waged by it against portable property. Prom mid-. Victorian times onward, house-fittings almost all became portable. Cupboards ceased to be and huge mahogany wardrobes stuck out into the rooms. The alcoves of shelves of Georgian houses gave place to projecting shelves. Even fireplaces were crowned with prominent overmantels, which looked as though they could be packed up and carried away. The kit'ehen dresser became the only fixed piece of furniture, and that seemed almost an accident. Cubism, with its very simple- straight lines, depends almost entirely upon proportions. To be effective, its lights and shadows must be properly distributed. That is to say that the contents of the room as well as the room itself must be taken into consideration. As it is hard to see the simplest things, and as useless decoration catches the untrained eye more than dignity of line, the Cubist designer sets to work to make it impossible for the uninitiated to destroy the effect of his skilfully planned volumes. Everything that can be fixed is fixed. Portable property is reduced to a minimum and, not least important, house and rooms are given a feeling of permanence which has been lost for some decades. Very often the table is fixed in Cubist dining rooms. Dining room tables are rarely moved in any case, but the fixed position of them allows of variety in their supports. “Legs,” for instance, can be exchanged for triangles or mere blocks of wood. There is no necessity to do this, but the necessity for variety. Desks, sideboards, shelves, drawers, are either built in or built on to the walls. In a Cubist dining room two rectangular alcoves on either side of the fireplace not only give the suggestion of “lift,” which is really the object of the overmantle, but they can be used to contain books or to hold glass or china. Fifty years ago, their places would probably have been taken by pictures, which served very largely as wallpaper in a generation that felt an open space to be unfriendly. Similarly, big pieces of furniture, such as divans or couches, are often fixed under the newer schemes. Here again the couch is apt to be in the same place under any circumstances. ARTIST ARCHITECTS Being built in adds amazingly to the interest of the room and does not interfere with its convenience. Cubist architects, such as M. djo-bourgeois, set sideboards, writing tables, drawers in a fixed position against the walls. They are designed to harmonise with the proportion of the rooms, and harmonise with it as furniture bought apart from it could never do. Actually onlv the chairs are easily movable, and even the big chairs are made very heavy, as though to prevent this contingency. Almost nowhere is there a curve. Sometimes there is a door arch, sometimes a curved line in the window; plates and dishes have their usual curves, but the curve is really only used to set off the straight. Of the" curved decoration, to which most furniture is subject, there is not a trace. In the search for new and simple effects new and simple materials are used." Angles and straight lines do not suit a flowery simpering carpet. Matting, pile, felt, cork, lino are all used, but they also are subjected to the angular treatment. Squares or triangles of colour are used irregularly upon them, always with an eye to the general balance of the room. Where the furniture emphasises the heaviness of its angularity, or the carpet shows a number of apparently arbitrary squares, the whole is pulled together by a neat regularity in the curtain pattern, also designed by the artist and architect of the whole. Chair covers are made of fine raffia, very often in the natural colouring, though this can be varied indefinitely. ALUMINIUM FURNITURE A new material for furniture frames is aluminium, no less. There is nothing to disguise the metal. You can see the screws by which it is held together. It may be combined with leather or pegamoid. Here colour comes in, and the cubist designer generally likes rather bright colours. Orange or red, a good speckled bright green, like skin, sometimes a plain white parchment in White frames, these

are all open to the cubist room. Decoration has come of itself, though it may be given a push by the artist. Similarly, lights are made very decorative. The shape of the lamp—sometimes it is only a pane of glass—is a matter of lesser importance. It is the patch of light, the way in which it is distributed, which makes for the decorative element. Many of the new cubist rooms seem extreme to the person who does not like sudden changes. But they form standards which may be departed from according to individual taste. Their great merit is their austerity, their discarding of fat in exchange for muscle. They strike the eye by their new forms, and even if the eye does not immediately respond, its curiosity is stimulated and it looks at the oldaccustomed things and sees them perhaps for the first time for years, and then judges and appraises them. Moreover they induce a renewed taste for the old stabilities in housing—plenty of cupboards, plenty of shelves, plenty of fixtures, which are not even fixtures but part of the house. —Muriel Harris.