Featured Old curvy design vs new straight design...

After getting my old chaise longue with all its curves and bends (below), I have to say that I prefer furniture with curves. Obviously, it's all up to preference, but lets compare:

The curved furniture over yesteryear:


The wood is constructed in a way that looks almost magical. Wood is not supposed to bend like that, but due to great woodwork, it can do that. It seems now that I want furniture with curves, bent legs, and some carved designs. Just looks so much nicer IMO.

Compare to the straight furniture of today:

I have to say that the lounge above looks extremely boring. Where is the style? Where is the quality of construction? I find most modern furniture these days looks like that—straight, lacking in style, and trying to have this simple and elegant look but looking more like a cheap toy.

Just a thought.

 

I'm the Victorian furniture guy, so OF COURSE I agree with you! 1,000%!!

 

Just MHO but... I find modern (mass produced) furniture to be overly referential to the past. Don't see much innovation.

Debora

 

Yes, boring. The trouble with design since World War II is that modernism is the only thing that fits academia's narrative, so we're just subjected to one form of modernism (or postmodernism, or whatever) after another. By way of example, new library designs I've seen are basically just re-arranging the 1950s. Variations on plate glass and flat roofs. Again. Of course, furniture design follows suit. Modernism endures decade after decade at least partially because of one underlying factor: It's cheap.

Curvy, Victorian-type designs, though beloved by many in spite of their lack of hipness, will always be "conservative" and "boojie" to academia.

 

Not necessarily, The Shakers for example took function to a whole other level, elegant.
They didn't mean to but, they did.

 

It is taking function to a place never before seen and never after equaled.
It is the only known 100% American-designed furniture, perfectly proportioned, flawless workmanship, and minimalist design.
It is not familiar at all with the depression prices in brown furniture, it still commands premium prices in the antique furniture market.
My only piece of Shaker below, not real comfy but, pretty to look at.

Cane seated tilter, Canterbury NH 1830s

 

I have always lusted for a Shaker work-stand from Enfield NH but considering the prices they fetch, I can keep on lusting! 40k and UP! for a WORKSTAND!!

Single drawer work stand, Enfield NH 1830s



Absolutely positively dead on balls PERFECT proportions.

 

I think the distinction is not so much curved versus straight lines (the lovely Shaker piece above has very straight lines) as it is well-designed, or designed at all, versus poorly designed or mass-market imitation design.
There have been great modernist designers; but poor imitations of them, or poor imitations of Victorian design, are just dreck.
Or I think of George Nakashima designs. Designed, and thought-out; but one can't just slap a slab of wood on top of a random base and have something as good as his.

 

JMHO.
depends on the philosophy you have. when you have a house in the cool elegance of Bauhaus and/or Mies van der Rohe then I'd rather go for the "boring" stuff with a bit of Le Corbusier furniture thrown in - his chaiselongues and chairs are amizingly comfy.
whole other situation if I had a Haussmann.