Vintage Furniture

Vintage Furniture is an authoritative and beautifully illustrated guide to the most iconic and groundbreaking designs since the turn of the twentieth century. This fascinating story is accompanied by photographs of classic furniture in period settings as well as in specially commissioned illustrations. More than 250 color photographs demonstrate the materials, technical accomplishments and exquisite workmanship that make vintage furniture designs so enduring, both in condition and in popularity. The Early Modernism chapter covers the first decades of the twentieth century, including the crafts-inspired offerings of Michael Thonet and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and the work of Bauhaus visionaries. The Scandinavians 'Good Design for All' movement began in the 1930s and exemplified the ethos of beautiful wood, organic shapes and simplicity of design by such luminaries as Alvar Aalto, Arne Jacobsen and Hans Wegner. Mid-Century Modernism embraces the 1940s and 1950s, the era when new materials, such as nylon and polyethylene, fiberglass and foam rubber, began to be utilized and plywood was molded into increasingly fluid shapes. Characterized by exuberance and experimentation, the 1960s and 1970s brought designs influenced by Pop and Post-Modernism. Fashion rather than function ruled, but by the 1980s, Late Modernism emerged; an appreciation of craftsmanship merged with the latest advances in technology to create furniture with a powerful new sense of shape and style. New Millennium, typified by a continuing progression towards ergonomics combined with a return to natural forms, became evident in the work of designers operating in the early years of the twenty-first century. Each of the six chapters ends with a key icons feature showing at-a-glance the important shapes, materials and designs that defined the age. Vintage Furniture concludes with a collecting guide, offering information on how to tell the genuine article from a reproduction, how to bid at auctions, buying for pleasure or investment, along with a directory of sources and shops and a glossary on the most collectible and important designers.Sweet, Fay is the author of 'Vintage Furniture', published 2007 under ISBN 9781851495573 and ISBN 1851495576.