Furniture dates back to the earliest civilizations in human history. In fact, the first humans used structured materials to support their lifestyle. They fashioned a rudimentary furniture for use in their dwellings. The first furniture is evidence of architectural development which occurred thousands of years before the birth of Christ.
Furniture generally refers to movable items designed to support different human activities including seating (e.g., tables, chairs), eating (Tables, chairs), and sleeping (beds). A few examples of prehistoric furniture include stone and ceramic objects. The earliest types of furniture were made from wood because it was the most commonly available resource. Wood is composed of living and dead organic substances combined as one substance. The living material contains carbon, while the dead material is composed of bones, teeth, and other materials that decay.
Furniture became a popular investment for many people during the Medieval Times. During this time period, various pieces of furniture types including tables, chairs, drawers, cabinets, chests, and drawers were crafted from different natural resources. Most of the wooden furniture types have intricate designs such as the larder. Larder usually consists of two-drawer wooden chest with a single drawer at the bottom part of the chest.
In order to store food, various wooden storage buildings were built. One example of a storage building is the arbor. Arbors are usually circular in shape and holding anywhere from two to five seating or dining chairs. Since the seating and dining furniture is circular, arbors were usually placed on the sides of the buildings where people could sit to eat or store food.
There are two common types of ancient furniture; the Renaissance furniture and the Georgian furniture. The Renaissance furniture has simple and elegant designs using dark colored woods. These furniture types are usually made from oak, cherry, walnut, teak, or mahogany. On the other hand, the Georgian furniture is more decorative using rich dark brown colored woods.
Columbus style furniture is another example of fine ancient furniture made from fine hardwoods such as oak, maple, walnut, and cherry. In addition to fine hardwoods, the city of Columbus also uses soft woods like hazel, pine, elm, maple, chestnut, and cedar. The finest examples of Columbus style furniture can be seen in the Columbus Museum of Art. The Columbus Museum is located in the former Eastern Market Place of the city and houses one of the largest collection of American and European furniture.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art also houses one of the largest collections of European furniture, which includes furniture belonging to the renaissance period, the baroque period, the classic period, and the Middle Ages. This museum also uses rare wood such as the Cedarwood and Heart Pine, which is only found in the Metro Museum of Art. In addition, a section of the museum showcases contemporary art created in wood.
One of the best examples of ancient and contemporary furniture is the chair called the dinette, which was designed by the French king Louis XIV. Dinette chairs were originally made of wood and used in medieval European dining halls. A very interesting detail about dinette chairs is that their legs would bend backwards before they are lifted to the height you can see from the floor. The chair was first created to fit an average sized person. However, during the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte, the design was modified and it became possible for the average person to have a chair like this.
Dining room chairs and tables were no longer simply rectangular. This happened during the post-Reformation era, when the Protestant Church demanded that all furniture is created in squares similar to the Roman columns. Soon after, furniture makers started using more elaborate shapes such as trapezoids, ovals and rectangles. However, the shape of a table still remained rectangular even though most furniture makers now wanted to use more elaborate table bases. A trapezoid-shaped table would look very attractive on a round table and an oval’s shape would be more suitable for a square table.
The last part of this article will focus on the last two types of ancient furniture commonly found in the US – the Tudor and the Colonial Period. Both of these families used very intricate designs with extremely unique construction methods. Tudor furniture is often referred to as a “Gothic” style due to its heavily carved detailed work. The Colonial period furniture style is considered to be the most beautiful and elegant period of furniture ever made and this can be seen in its materials, such as the walnut that was used for making the chairs and tables.
In conclusion, it can be said that the art nouveau furniture design is not entirely a modern invention. It actually came directly from the French culture where the basics of furniture construction were already being applied from texture of the seventeenth century. The chair described above is a perfect example of how the French used simple woods to produce intricate and beautiful furniture. The history of art nouveau furniture is not as clear-cut as most people think. But the similarities between the history of the chair and the art nouveau style of furniture design are enough to prove that they are related by history and by the necessity of usage.
