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European Furniture - Why we love it!
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Why are European designers and manufacturers so respected? European modern designers and their European furniture buying public are well respected for their innovative, trend setting style. The world market for modern and contemporary furniture is hungry for design and manufacturing excellence and has historically looked to Europe to provide it - indeed it continues to do so. The question is - why? Why are they so respected? Isn't it true that the designers from non western European countries are just as skilled and prolific as their European peers? What makes them different? and why is this difference so important to world opinion? One can not really answer this question without some reference to the Bauhaus movement - Originally a German school of design, that produced some of the greatest and most recognizable names in design history. These names: Mies Van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius, Lilly Reich, Le Corbusier etc. could be said to be the forefathers of an age. Quite possibly some of the greatest influences on the modern aesthetic, Spanning disciplines (architecture and furniture most notably) and continents - their look is still sought after and much admired more than 60 years after the school was closed. For more information about the Bauhaus School - see our editorial on the subject. From this prestigious beginning the European design movement emerged. Although the movement was founded on the principles of utilitarian minimalism - and the forms that it produced were a shocking departure from what had come before it - the tremendous wealth of European design heritage could not help but be an influence. Nothing is created in a vacuum and this is just as true for something new and fresh, as for something familiar and predictable. Europe already had great leather workers, carpenters and metal smiths - now these exceptional artisans trained in skills that had been passed on for dozens of generations - were to extend their already famous abilities to incorporate these new materials and styles. Indeed many of the great modern classic furnture masterpieces, are quite clearly inspired by these artisans as much as by their other influences; for they could never have been produced without them. For example the steel frame and tufted leather cushions of the Barcelona Chair were and still are technically difficult and time consuming to create, and to produce them to the high levels of quality demanded by the designers and their patrons, required skill levels well above and beyond the capabilities of modern automation, because even today these have to be made by expert hands. The presence of these other great talents was an inspiration to the generations of designers, who learned to both employ the skills of the artisans available to them, and even to learn directly from them to produce their own pieces. Indeed they were so steeped in the culture of artisanship, that many designers - particularly of the Bauhaus and Art Nouveau periods, were hungry to personnally learn and invent new techniques, seeking out and quickly mastering even the most difficult processes. Perhaps more important even than this is the tremendous artistic heritage of Europe itself, and the resource that the art and artists themselves presented to these designers. Some designers such as Isamu Noguchi began as artists themselves, studying with famous mentors, they learned from some of the greatest minds and hands of the millenium. A saprophytic relationship existed and continues to exist between manufacturer and patron. This long history of manufacturing excellence, was supported and indeed was made possible by the wealth and taste of this audience, and in return it was to educate that audience. Over centuries - this relationship has produced an exceptionally demanding buying public, and outstandingly proficient artisans. These factors and Europe's own natural tendencies towards artisanal excellence - produced a tremendously competitive environment. This contributed to the creation of skills and markets for exotic items, treatments and materials that might be considered by other audiences to be ostentatious or excessively pedantic. For example today's European buyers are still the only people to demand 4 - 6mm thick leather hides. They shun 'corrected' leathers and insist dogmatically upon naturally superior hides. The average buyer is informed and educated to a level that is really anything but average... and they are willing to pay for their exotic tastes. They believe in supporting their expensive artisans at a time when the whole world is turning to cheaper mass production facilities in the East. In doing so they are supporting both time honored traditions and the innovation that arises from it. |
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