John Smith, Senior Lecturer,
University of Tasmania
Curator
Many people collect, or at least covet, quality period furniture, or antiques, as they are generically known. But antiques encompass far more than just furniture. A smaller proportion of those same people may also invest in quality contemporary design. One might be forgiven for assuming it is easier and safer - from an investment standpoint at least - to collect antiques rather than contemporary furniture. The main criterion required is a combination of sufficient cash (antiques are expensive) coupled with the test of time that provides confirmation of an object's value. By this time-honoured practice, the good tends to be retained and handed down as heirlooms, whereas the bad is generally discarded along the way. Sometimes though, the bad (if ugly and rare enough) is valued for its own perverse eccentricity.
This is not to say that collecting does not require skill. A discerning eye for the best quality and authenticity based upon sound historical knowledge is essential. Confidence in one’s own judgement is required - raw courage is not. To invest in the contemporary requires all of the above, in addition to the courage of one’s own conviction to predict the antiques of the future by making, and backing, a quality judgement-call today.
The former is driven by educated hindsight - the latter by an informed foresight. Architects will quite often dress their building interiors (at least for the magazine photo-shoot) with ‘modern’ furniture. But it is more typically Modernist furniture rather than truly contemporary - that is, ‘of today’. The examples by Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto, Mies van der Rohe or Marcel Breuer that we see so much of in contemporary magazines, are now around fifty to eighty years old in design. These classics are now attaining the marque of antique.
Those connoisseurs who seek out the ‘antique’ at the expense of the ‘contemporary’ often forget that Chippendale, Sheraton and Hepplewhite were the cutting-edge designers of their day. The current day equivalents would be the international designer superstars such as Philippe Starck, Ron Arad or Australia's own Marc Newson. If we are to live as confident and mature citizens of the twenty-first century then we ought to be primarily reflecting on the ‘contemporary’ in our choices of furniture and other products. It is interesting, and even peculiar, that many manufacturers still persist in producing period-based furniture, and for a market that still wants it! These are usually poor watered-down imitations of the original, and could not be described as period inspired by any stretch of the imagination, but only as period influenced - definitely no stretching required. Yet alternatively we still do not choose such a ‘period’ orientation in our other selections for daily use such as our clothing, household utensils, means of transport or even social etiquette. An exception to this rule perhaps would be that ‘faux’ still markedly persists in some of our (non-architect designed) domestic architecture - for instance in the form of Spanish arches, Roman columns and mock Tudor facades.
Such ‘period’ choices are usually the result of a mixture of misguided romantic nostalgia and an increasing fear of, and anxiety about, change.
Designers are not immune to such insecurities. The 1990s for example, was very much a decade of uncertainty in design. Perhaps it was something to do with the approaching spectre of the new millennium and all that it entailed that saw us collectively approach it looking backwards in anxious disillusionment. Initially we saw the preference for 50s- inspired design, reflecting the desire for the more confident times of the immediate post-war boom period. Then, as the 90s progressed we moved through the 60s Pop era and onward into the Funk of the 70s. Once we had worked through the ‘greed is good’ and the ‘sharp black box' mentality of the 80s, then this ‘retro’ phenomenon must surely catch up with itself. But now where? Hopefully not locked into the Groundhog Day of the 1990s.
Looking back, though, is not such a bad thing to do, so long as it is done reflectively and with some honest objectivity rather than with blind homage and through servitudinal reverence. The former is simply being respectfully historical whereas the latter retro-fadism is merely hysterical.
Contemporary designers however, do not often look back very far into history. This is perhaps understandable, as it is the excitement of looking forwards towards possible futures that drives the design process to a large extent, together with the opportunities that new materials and technologies present.
But the basics of furniture functions have not changed all that much, at least from a fundamentally ergonomic point of view. We still sit at tables to eat or write, relax in chairs and couches, sleep in beds and display some things on shelves and store others in cupboards. Our writing desk may now be a computer console, our journal a laptop and our travel-diary an electronic-organiser. But the physical and psychological connectivity to domestic furniture objects can still teach us something about the human condition at a given time in history.
By leaping several centuries backwards and confronting the furniture styles within the Allport Collection, the gauntlet has been thrown to this group of selected contemporary designers. Their challenge
is to reflect, to interpret and then to re-invent. The content and meaning of the designs within this collection were, in their own time, inextricably inter-woven into the fabric of their society's values. The contexture of the weaving of materials with form - of the physical function with psychological need or desire - can thus be re-read differently and re-contextualised to fit the purposes of the present. The same or similar timbers may be repeated but the form reinvigorated - or the materials may change but the general proportion and scale be maintained in its new form. Or perhaps the broad concept behind the original object is the only remaining link to the past, but it is updated to make sense in a twenty-first century context.
The associated function and related technology may change also, such as playing cards being replaced by a computer-game. However, in this case, the role of ‘play’ as entertainment remains the common thread. The former was once incorporated into a table as a ‘secret’ function to conceal, from daytime public view, the ‘sinful’ act of night-time gambling. But the computer game is open to public view at any time, and in almost any place.
When new technology first finds its way into the home environment we do not always know quite how to deal with it. For instance, when ‘radiograms’ and televisions entered the living room they were initially concealed in wooden boxes, out of view when not in use, to disguise them as relatively nondescript furniture cabinets. But now the ‘wide-screen’ is a piece of high-tech furniture in its own right taking centre-stage in the home. Who knows what the future may bring? Perhaps we'll have the option of having an electronic chip implanted in our heads to be able to receive broadcast images directly into the brain. Then the wide-screen may seem terribly quaint and outmoded. After all we are already familiar with cosmetic implants. This has already been taken to new extremes. For example, textured ceramic implants are being placed under the skin by some to create decorative, Braille like patterning on the skin’s surface, as an extension to the practice of body adornment.
Activities such as food preparation and dining were separated far more in the eighteenth century, when the Chippendales, Hepplewhites and Sheratons prevailed, or later during the Regency period and even up to the days of Victoria. Servants provided both the intervention and the connection between the cooking, which was hidden from view, and serving in the dining room for the social rituals of entertaining.
These days the kitchen is the exposed ‘heart’ of the home in our open-plan interiors, and the cook/host is the star - having been coached by a plethora of television cooking programs with celebrity chefs. In fact not only has the TV taught the home cook; the teacher and his/her digital medium have now become the dining centrepiece in many people's lifestyles. The very dining-table is fast becoming obsolete as we eat off of our laps in front of the TV. The ‘dining-room’ itself may one day soon become as extinct as the dodoburger. We are the ‘laptop’ generation.
Our first years of the new millennium have not quite been reduced to the dining ritual in Stanley Kubrick's 2001 - A Space Odyssey of sipping different, bland pureed renditions of fusion cuisines (identified only by their colour) through a straw. Nevertheless it is far removed from the once-grand elegance of the revered banquet or formal black-tie dinner party. The kitchen-table or bar for 4-6 people is becoming the norm rather than the dining table that caters for 12-16.
Some needs generated by social ritual have disappeared altogether into history and from our current perspective may seem quite odd or even amusing. One such example is the delicate fire-screen set on a tall stand, designed to protect ladies’ make-up and larded hair from melting horribly through an excess of heat from the open hearth fire. These days not only is the open
hearth a rarity, but the pursuit of personal beauty has also changed radically, with the cosmetic surgeon’s scalpel sometimes replacing the heavy mask of make-up once worn as the norm. Nowadays one can remodel the face altogether in order to mask personal insecurities in our quest for the perfect TV face. After all, who knows when it may turn up on some reality TV program? In the recent past, we only had to worry about having clean underwear in case of an unfortunate road accident.
As our lifestyles change, so too do the requirements of our furniture. But the goal of interpreting these needs in a manner that adds a sense of quality and relevance to our lives persists. And as lifestyles move on, the furniture and related home products remain as visual historical documents of their time.
Critically examining the furniture, interiors and aesthetic ambience of times past - as seen through the gem of a time-capsule that is the Allport Collection of fine furniture, books and paintings - can inform us on how quality objects can help to instil a sense of quality in attitude and social behaviour.
Whilst the domestic rituals, the associated furniture and the related social conventions may have changed, the overall objectives remain constant. In summary, I cannot do better than to reiterate George Hepplewhite's words:
To unite elegance and utility, and blend the useful with the agreeable, has ever been considered a difficult, but an honourable task.1
1 A. Hepplewhite and Co., The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Guide (1787) quoted in Nicholas A Brawer, British Compaign Furniture:Elegance Under Canvas, 1740-1914 (New York, Abrams, 2001)-, p17.
