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 Furniture
- There are three powerful and often opposing forces at work when
we plan a room of our own: the demands of comfort; the demands of
practicality; and the tug of style. The successful resolution of all
three defines a perfect room but is far harder to achieve than you
might imagine.
The decoration of a living room and furniture forces
us to face all these issues at once. Unlike bedrooms, which are private
domains, or bathrooms and kitchens, where function dictates a basic
level of practicality, living rooms and furniture
are the space through which we can express something about ourselves
to other people. Style is at a premium, on show, for all to see. This
is the room, above all others, that sets the scene for our lives and
tells our story to an audience.
Whatever interior decorators may tell you, the ideal combination of
furniture style, practicality and comfort is rare.
Making sacrifices to one or the other is inevitable. And using natural
materials for furniture will not exempt you from compromise. However, choosing a
natural material over a synthetic one may help you avoid the worst
excesses of fashion and is likely to afford a more long-lasting tactile
and visual pleasure in your interior.
 Furniture
- In a world dominated by technology, raw nature has never seemed
more alluring. Life is complicated, plastic, computerized. But, within
the walls of our owns homes we can create a heaven that brings us
back in touch with fundamental pleasures - the comforting solidity
of stone, the gentle grain of wood, the faint, clean animal scent
of tanned leather, the tender brush of cashmere.
This powerful pull of the natural goes with a taste for furniture
that minimize clutter and accentuate sensual appeal. ‘Honest’
craftsmanship, with its distaste for the overwrought, is back in fashion,
and the words of Victorian proponents of the Arts and Crafts movement,
who were themselves in reaction against mass production and fussy
ornament, again right true. ‘Employ only those forms and materials
which make for simplicity, individuality and dignity of effect’,
urged American furniture maker and theorist, Gustav Stickley. Architect
and designer Charles Voysey spoke for them all when he opined, ‘Carving
richly veined marbles and finely figured wood furniture is only the action of
irreverence and conceit. We ought to respect nature’s veining
too much to allow of our chopping it up with man-made pattern.’
After the chintzy excesses of the 1980s and the rigour of cutting-edge
minimalism, we seem to be finding a middle ground much in the Arts
and Crafts tradition, where natural materials speak for themselves
and comfort and fashion co-exist. |
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