IMPORTANCE &

EVOLUTION OF
FURNITURE

-INTERIOR DESIGN
 The Importance of Furniture when
planning Interior Design
Furniture Identifies Room Function
Furniture States Flow of Movement
Furniture Affects Visual Balance
Furniture Describes Your Style

Furniture Design
History
Furniture design has been a part of the human
experience since the beginning of history. The
furniture design timeline outlines just some of
the different periods of furniture design and
gives you a basic overview of the timeline of
furniture design history.
Furniture Design Timeline
Neolithic Period
Furniture:
Beginning of human
civilization -natural objects
as rudimentary pieces of
furniture
Tree stumps as seats,
rocks used as rudimentary
tables, and mossy areas
used for sleeping.
Earliest evidence for the
existence of constructed
furniture -Venus
figurine-Gagarinosite
inRussia, goddess in a
sitting position, on a
throne.
A excavated site dating from 3100-2500 BC in Skara Brae,
Orkney uncovered a range of stone furniture. Due to a
shortage of wood in Orkney, the people of Skara Brae were
forced to build with stone, a readily available material that
could be turned into items for use within the household.
Each house was equipped with an extensive assortment of
stone furniture, ranging from cupboards, dressers and beds to
shelves and stone seats.
The stone dresser was regarded as the most important as it
symbolically faced the entrance in each house and is therefore
the first item that was seen when entering a house .
Ancient Egyptian Furniture:

Ancient Egyptian furniture - excavated and various sites-gilded

bed and chairs and boxes.
Two severe sides to the furniture excavated, the intricate gold
gilded ornate furniture -tombs of the Pharaohs and the simple
chairs, tables and baskets -ordinary Egyptians.
Scarcity of wood necessitated innovation in construction
techniques-
Scarf joints to join two shorter pieces together and form a longer
beam
Ancient Greek Furniture:
Historical knowledge of Greek furniture is derived from various
sources, includingliterature, terracotta, sculptures, statuettes,
and painted vases.
A common technique was to construct the main sections of the
furniture with cheap solid wood, then apply a veneer using an
expensive wood, such as maple or ebony
Greek furniture construction also made use of dowelsand
tenonsfor joining the wooden parts of a piece together
Wood was shaped by carving, steam treatment, and the lathe,
and furniture is known to have been decorated with ivory,
Characteristic of this
tortoise shell, glass, gold or other precious materials.
early furniture were
highly influenced by
the furniture of the
ancient Egyptians with
a stiff, rectangular,
and unflattering
shape. In the 4th and
5th centuries, once
the Greeks developed
their own style,
Medieval Furniture:
Stark and somewhat crude furniture styles.
Ornate wood carvings on the border of chairs and canopy
beds, garish structural layouts and colours that are basically
grey, beige or black.
Forms were mainly square or rectangular with very little in the
way of curved lines or circular forms.
Usually heavy,oak, and ornamented with carved designs.
Renaissance Furniture:

Italian Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth century

marked a rebirth in furniture design
designs distinctly different from Medieval times
-characterized by opulent, often gilded designs that
frequently incorporated a profusion of floral, vegetal and
scrolling ornamentation.
The aim of these pieces were often to showcase the skills of
the craftsmen who made them.
Jacobean Furniture:
After the Renaissance -gradual change to a less ornamented,
quieter style of furniture.
In Britain table legs, for example became straighter and
narrower than were typical of earlier pieces and instead spiral
turned legs became typical of this period.
In general furniture profiles became lower and more rectangular.
More ornate, characterized by intricate carved stretchers and
colourful upholstery with tasselled trim.
Jacobean Furniture:

These pieces were generally sturdy and heavily carved, many

with turned legs and bun feet.
The earliest American-made piece of furniture is a chest made
by Nicholas Disbrowe around 1660. Uncompromisingly
rectangular, its distinctively carved frame-and-panel
construction, although very reminiscent of earlier British Age of
Oak pieces, is already recognizable as a distinct American style.
Many other early Colonial era pieces, such as wainscot chairs and
Rococo Furniture:
In the eighteenth century, furniture design began to develop
rapidly, the Rococo and Neoclassicism were commonplace
throughout Western Europe.
In reality the term
'18th-century
furniture' therefore
refers to a wide
variety of styles
including William
and Mary, Queen
Anne, Georgian,
Chippendale,
Hepplewhite,
Sheraton, Adam,
Regency, Federal,
and the French
While seperate, all 18th-century furniture, whether American,
periods of the
British,
several or French shared a similar style of construction that is
Louis,
distinct from
Directoire, andthe subsequent mass-produced furniture of the 19th
century.
Empire. Eighteenth-century furniture is commonly thought of as
representing the golden age of the highly trained master
cabinetmaker, trained in the craft of furniture design which
Revival Furniture:
With increasing working populations in cities, the rise of a
new class of wealthy of furniture buyers, together with the
arrival of mass-production and the demise of the individual
craftsman-designer, the gradual progression of furniture
styles that had developed through the previous centuries
was replaced by a raft of imitation or revival styles.
These concurrent revival styles, including Gothic revival,
Neoclassicism and Rococo revival became easy and
inexpensive to manufacture as technology developed
during the industrial revolution.
The nineteenth
century is usually
defined by
concurrentrevival
styles,
includingGothic,
Neoclassicism,
Rococo, and the
EastHaven Movement
Art Nouveau Furniture:

The name "Art Nouveau" is French for 'new art', and it

emerged in the late 19th century in Paris.
The style was said to be influenced strongly by the lithographs
of Czech artist Alphonse Mucha, whose flat imagery with strong
curved lines was seen as a move away from the academic art
of the time.
Art Nouveau furniture used lines and curves as graphical
ornamentation and hard woods and iron were commonly used
 Bauhaus Furniture:
Because of the greater availability
of a wider array of materials than
ever before, and because of an
ever-expanding awareness of
historical and cross-cultural
aesthetics, 20th-century furniture is
perhaps more diverse, in terms of
style, than all the centuries that
preceded it.
The first three-quarters of the
twentieth century saw styles such The Bauhaus school was
as Art Deco, De Stijl, Bauhaus, founded by Walter Gropius in
Wiener Werkstatte, and Vienna all Weimar in 1919. In spite of its
work to some degree within the name, and the fact that its
Modernist idiom. founder was an architect, the
Bauhaus was founded with the
idea of creating a 'total' work
of art in which all arts,
including furniture would
eventually be brought
together. The furniture designs
that emerged from the
Art Deco Furniture:
The Art Deco movement began in Paris in the 1920s and it
represented elegance, glamour, functionality and modernity.
Art deco's linear symmetry was a distinct departure from
the flowing asymmetrical organic curves of its predecessor
style art nouveau.
Art deco experienced a decline in popularity during the late
1930s and early 1940s when it began to be derided as
presenting a false image of luxury, eventually the style was
ended by the austerities of World War II
Modern Furniture:
Born from the Bauhaus and Art Deco streamline
styles came the post WWII Modern style using
materials developed during the war including
laminated plywood, plastics and fibreglass.
In modern
furniture the dark
gilded, carved
wood and richly
patterned fabrics
gave way to the
glittering simplicity
and geometry of This interest in new and innovative
polished metal. materials and methods produced a
The forms of certain blending of the disciplines of
modern furniture technology and art.
sought newness, The use of new materials, such as
originality, steel in its many forms; moulded
technical plywood and plastics, were formative
innovation, and in the creation of these new designs.
ultimately They were considered pioneering,
conveyed the even shocking at the time especially
present and the in contrast to what came before.