Design History

This complete overview of contemporary studio furniture celebrates the achievements of an international selection of designers producing works of individual artistic expression that sit as comfortably in museums as they do in domestic settings. Featuring more than 400 exemplars, from finely finished tables and chairs made from natural materials to experimental furniture that straddles the boundary between craft and art, this is the only comprehensive survey of its kind.

Contemporary Chinese Furniture Design is the first definitive book on contemporary Chinese furniture, introducing the work of leading designers and design studios. It explains how the 'New Wave' of Chinese furniture designers are looking back to their cultural roots and revitalizing traditional forms, materials and techniques in order to produce interesting and exciting contemporary furniture that is 100% Chinese.

In a work that spans 4,500 years, 70 experts chart across six volumes the changing cultural framework within which furniture was designed, produced, and used in Western Europe. The six volumes cover: 1 - Antiquity (2500 BCE - 500 CE); 2 - Middle Ages and Renaissance (500 - 1500); 3 - Age of Exploration (1500 - 1700); 4 - Age of Enlightenment (1700 - 1800); 5 - Age of Empire and Industry (1800 - 1900); 6 - Modern Age (1900 - present).

An Illustrated Guide to Furniture History provides upper-level students and instructors with an alternative visual analytical approach to learning about furniture history from Antiquity to Postmodernism. Moving chronologically through key periods in furniture history and interior design, such as the Renaissance, the Arts and Crafts Movement, and Modernism, it traverses Europe to America to present a comprehensive foundational guide to the history of furniture design.

During the Progressive Era a largely forgotten activist and teacher named Louise Brigham became a pioneer of sustainable furniture design. With her ingenious system for building inexpensive but sturdy "box furniture" out of recycled materials, she aimed to bring good design to the urban working class. As Antoinette LaFarge shows, Brigham forged a singular career for herself that embraced working in the American and European settlement movements, publishing a book of box furniture designs, running carpentry workshops in New York, and founding a company that offered some of the earliest ready-to-assemble furniture in the United States.

In recent years, there has been a great deal of interest in "design classics"-that is, specific pieces of 20th century furniture-both in their increased availability and affordability through re-issues, and in their widespread re-interpretation by contemporary designers and artists. Focusing on chairs, where this phenomenon is most evident, this book critically examines this significant aspect of contemporary design practice. It places the works within their wider historical and cultural context, and considers the boundaries between art and design.

Twentieth-Century Furniture is an authoritative, passionate and beautifully illustrated guide to the multifarious talents of international furniture designers and manufacturers of the past 100 years, and revels in the intrinsic beauty of skilfully crafted pieces. The explosion in styles, initiated by technical progress and fashions in architecture, design and interiors, is catalogued in this chronological overview of the century's masterpieces.