Surrounded by the most innovative gadgetry, leading fast-paced lives in a high-tech world, Americans have been furnishing their homes in French provincial or colonial.
Until recently. Look at local design innovators: Level 6 at Carson Pirie Scott, the home furnishings floor at Marshall Field`s, Barry Bursak`s City at 213 W. Institute Pl., Eurostyle in Niles and Oakbrook Mall, Ambienti in Highland Park, Chiasso on Chestnut St. Given their abundance of delightfully spunky, beautifully crafted, colorful home furnishings made in America and abroad, it would appear that contemporary design has come of age.
Contemporary interiors historically have been celebrated by a very small group. The chairs designed by architects Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier that have become 20th Century classics used to carry a highbrow connotation. For one thing, these beautifully designed pieces of chrome, steel and leather were never inexpensive. And they were not widely understood.
Of course, there have been spurts of popularity for what was considered the most modern of the day. Nearly every decade had its characteristic contemporary style, most notably `30s Deco, the strange amoeboid shapes of the `50s, Scandinavian in the `60s.
The mention of contemporary still brings visions of teak to many. But that and other stereotypical, even forbidding images that have persisted
–contemporary design seemed to intimidate those who favored the coziness of, perhaps, 18th Century–are being altered significantly.
The shift began in 1981: Along came the Memphis group with its eye-popping collection of furniture spotlighting pizazzy color in bizarre juxtapositions, odd shapes that sometimes appeared to defy gravity. It was punk funk designed by an international consortium spearheaded by Ettore Sottsass Jr., who once designed Olivetti typewriters. The design world was stunned by the razzle-dazzle, the eccentricity of the show. So much of it was theater. Some even called it art. Critics lambasted it and chortled that it would never go beyond fad.
Few in the home furnishings industry are laughing today. Even American manufacturers, who have not been known for drama in their biannual furniture introductions in High Point, N.C., are acknowledging the impact of Memphis. Moreover, since its debut Memphis has become tamer and much less expensive;
the idea of spending $30,000 or so on a dressing table whose mirrored top soared like a skyscraper and was ornamentalized to what some might consider wretched excess was a bit much (even though it was the brainchild of Postmodernist guru, architect Michael Graves).
”Memphis changed our approach to design by totally opening the eye to what a table is supposed to look like, what a chair is supposed to look like,” says interior designer Dale Carol Anderson, who also designs furniture. ”It made us rethink design, and I applaud that. The industry needed it.”
What may not have even occurred to the industry is that it needed a new buzzword, something snappy, something fresh. The media suggested it last year: ”Eurostyle.”
Since the early `70s the Italians have been most responsible for changing the face of design, for being its pacesetters. The major home-fashion headlines are made in Milan. Now other European countries have emerged with their own jolts of color, and this look called Eurostyle is being billed as the new International Style. In the shelter magazines we`ve seen it typified by the slouchy sofa with flipflop pillows, by lots of leather and lacquer and wondrous futuristic lights, some robotlike, featuring tiny Halogen bulbs that pack a wallop of power while conserving energy.
The new designs are a mixed bag, not only in style but in function, given the advent of ”KD”–”knockdown furniture.” KD designs come in kits and can be broken down (for moving, storage, whatever) once they`re assembled. (KD`s prices have been knocked down, too.)
Eurostyle is insouciant, large scale and luxurious (including some influences of the exquisite cabinetry of the French Deco movement), saucy but with grids and cubes that recall some of the starkness of the Bauhaus. And it sometimes has Neoclassical touches, utilizing a soft palette, marble, lyre chairs and Postmodern columns.
The influence of Postmodernism cannot be ignored. ”With the whole school of Postmodern architecture,” says New York products and interiors designer Jena Hall, ”are many spinoffs–Neoclassical, New Wave. They`re all opposed to the very strict, disciplined, form-follows-function
characteristics, the lack of ornamentation of the International School.”
Color and ornamentation preached by Postmodernist practitioners who were eschewing the less-is-more philosophy of glass-and-steel disciples of Mies also have influenced the design of contemporary furniture. Many of the architects have designed their own furniture and accessories–everything from candlesticks to dinner plates. There`s a collection of plates for Swid Powell, for example, designed by such heavies as Robert Venturi, Stanley Tigerman and Charles Gwathmey and Robert Siegel.
The art furniture movement, which is very strong in Chicago, also is part of this contemporary design trend and one that proudly bears a made-in-America label. The one-of-a-kind or limited edition pieces are designed by artists, interior designers, architects and sculptors who may have had no experience in furniture design. Some of the pieces are being displayed in galleries.
Indeed, there has been an impressive renaissance of architect-designed furniture, such as the early 20th Century work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Viennese school, the darling of whom is Josef Hoffman. There`s also a renewed enthusiasm for Mies and Le Corbusier, sometimes shown in a new context (innovative Chicago designer Jon Cockrell, for example, traded a lilac linen for traditional leather upholstery on Mies chairs for a suburban client). Knoll International, Atelier International and Ecart International are among the firms that have been offering the designs of these and forgotten modern masters such as Eileen Gray and Robert Mallet-Stevens. And fine Art Deco furniture perhaps never has been more appreciated, although masterpieces of the creme de la creme of cabinetmakers such as Jacques-Emille Ruhlmann are quite pricey.
As all of these movements have been taking place a most significant statistic popped up in furniture industry analyses and market surveys. In the last four years, the share of the market for contemporary furnishings has jumped from near oblivion–2 percent–to 20 percent.
”Contemporary design is outpacing traditional, early American, and English,” says Fred AuWerter, who six months ago opened Ambienti, a Highland Park store specializing in contemporary home furnishings and design services. ”According to a manufacturers` journal, it appears to be the number one design shipped out of North Carolina today.”
Some attribute this piqued interest to the growing sophistication of the American consumer. ”The consumer is more educated,” says Walter Kaye, former president of Wickes, who heads two Eurostyle stores and is planning six or seven additional stores for the Chicago area. ”The majority (of buyers of contemporary fur
nishings) are in the age bracket identified as yuppie. Well over 60 percent have a two-income household, can afford what they want and know what they want. They want to express themselves.”
Says Dale Carol Anderson, who has offices in Glencoe and Chicago,
”There`s an understanding now that contemporary doesn`t have to be just glass and chrome, straight lines. There`s an okayness to combining
contemporary with wonderful antiques. I`ve always loved doing it. People today want light, bright and airy, they don`t want somber. I think that`s a reflection of world conditions.”
New construction and renovation of old buildings also have boosted the appeal of contemporary furnishings. ”As the buildings we know and reside in are becoming more technologically streamlined and updated in design and insulation, we need more open, simply designed furniture that is more straightforward and sophisticated,” says AuWerter. ”Many of the newly built condominiums and townhouses specify contemporary furnishings.”
The current contemporary design ”is more interesting, more cheerful,”
says Cockrell. ”During the `70s, contemporary design was pretty dull. Everything was responding to the International Style. There was little leeway for a piece of furniture to have personality.
”A lot of my work is based on what I`ve been exposed to in my life–the Jetsons, rock `n` roll music, television, nuclear bombs, missiles. There`s a certain tension; a lot of my furniture sits on points. We`re seeing a lot of rules discarded and a new set of standards created.”
”Modern itself has changed,” says furniture designer Milo Baughman of Winston Salem, N.C. Baughman`s chief account is Thayer Coggin, and he recently completed a line of contemporary furniture for Woodard. ”It`s more approachable today, more appealing. For a long time good modern tended to appeal to the rich Bohemians. It had a kind of intellectual ingredient. To some degree the clean contemporary of the `50s, `60s, `70s, even Scandinavian modern, was identified with eggheads. You had to be a college professor to understand it–or at least to live in a contemporary house.”
Baughman believes contemporary styles began to be a little less physically and psychologically intimidating about 15 years ago. ”People started thinking less rigidly in terms of style. They found that they could mix traditional with modern.
”For a long time, people who were WASPS, the aspiring up-and-coming middle class who lived in suburbs in Middle America, thought that contemporary was not quite nice. A woman told me years ago that she thought people who had modern furniture were Communists. But with yuppies there has been a change of attitude.”
”When we first started talking about contemporary design, everybody looked at us like we were crazy,” says Philadelphian Barbara Tiffany, who with her husband, Robert, designs for Atlantic Furniture Manufacturing Co. Inc. ”But we believed people wanted furniture that was clean, that offered sculptural design. I think manufacturers believed that consumers on a limited budget were looking for pleats, buttons and bows, skirts and any elements they felt would add more value to a piece. A lot of young people don`t like that. Yet what was available was so terribly expensive. Once the so-called
`lifestyle furniture`–butcher block, foam–started becoming acceptable, that paved the way.”
But Memphis added the spark.
”The spontaneity of Memphis is so great,” says Tiffany. ”Whether you like the stuff or not is irrelevant; the fact that it shakes you up and makes you look at what you`re doing in a different way is significant.”
”Good modern still is not a blue-collar style by any means,” says Baughman, ”but within the range there now is a wonderful diversity that didn`t used to be there. In the `50s you could identify modern easily. It fit into various stereotypes. Today it`s more difficult to make a tight definition.”
Color is part of the story. Consumers are becoming more comfortable with it. ”With our long dismal winters we need to be cheered up,” says Kaye.
”I`m thinking of doing my windows in peach, seafoam and whites, to give consumers something exciting to look at.”
”People who enjoy contemporary design are those interested in the time in which they live,” Cockrell says. ”In a decade of self-awareness, the environment of home and office are a clue to who and what we are. Contemporary design lets us know what the current mind is thinking. The traditionally minded tend to rework old themes. Neither approach is right or wrong; both are valid. But the most engaging approach is to come up with new solutions to old problems.”
Still, most manufacturers, retailers and designers are realistic in their assessment of this current love affair with contemporary design. ”It`s strong now,” says Kaye, ”and I think it will continue to be. It may even get up to 30 percent (of the entire market), but we`ll count our blessings if we do that well.”
