1. Renaissance furniture (15th century to17th century)

From the late15th century, Renaissance architecture replaced Gothic architecture, and the resulting Renaissance furniture prevailed throughout the European continent. Until the beginning of17th century, a new baroque furniture gradually evolved on this basis. At the same time, furniture in some places in Asia and Africa has also formed its own unique style, such as Ming Dynasty furniture in China.

(1) During the Italian Renaissance (1400 ~ 1650), in order to meet the increasing needs of social communication and reception, furniture was arranged against the wall, busts, paintings and decorations were arranged along the wall, and the horizontal line was emphasized, so that the wall formed the center of composition.

The characteristics of Italian Renaissance furniture are: generally linear, characterized by classical relief patterns, many pieces of furniture placed on low bases, chairs with cushions, and diversified furniture parts. In addition to a small amount of oak, shirt wood and cypress wood, only walnut is used to save wood, and silk with large patterns is used as the decoration of the chair seat.

(2) The furniture of Spanish Renaissance (1400 ~ 1600) is primitive, characterized by heavy proportion, rectangular form, simple structure, lack of decoration with architectural details, iron brackets and brackets, exposed nails, large size, masculinity and bright colors (often covering up low-level technology). Walnut is used more than pine, and the patterns are short chisels and geometric patterns. The legs and feet are tilted in a figure of eight, decorated with iron and silver roses, stars and shells.

(3) Characteristics of French Renaissance furniture (1485 ~ 1643): massiness. The relief with clear outline is made of polished oak or walnut, and ebony veneer appears in the later stage. The chair has a back like a throne, straight handrails, legs twisted into spheres, spirals or railings, and legs decorated with buns or Dutch whirlpools. Joinery, tortoiseshell, gold-plated metal, mother-of-pearl and ivory inlaid with colored wood, and some furniture made in Spain. Gryphon's winged monsters, prisms, grotesque figures, women's pillars and furniture joints are all hidden.

Renaissance furniture style: Italy first transplanted the cornices, semi-columns, pedestals and other detailed forms of classical Greek and Roman architecture into furniture decoration, and the architectural modeling also influenced the furniture modeling.

The main characteristics of Renaissance furniture are: heavy and dignified appearance, concise and rigorous lines, harmonious facade proportion and classical architectural decoration. Renaissance furniture has been popular in Europe for nearly two centuries. Generally speaking, the early decoration was simple and simple, and then it gradually became gorgeous and beautiful. In addition, different countries also have their own characteristics. For example, France adopts complicated carving decoration, which is rich and luxurious (Figure 6); Britain combined the Renaissance style with its traditional simple and rigid style, forming a simple and rigorous style. Renaissance furniture in northern Europe developed slowly, and actually blended the late Gothic structure and Renaissance decoration.

Second, baroque furniture (17th century to18th century)

(1) French baroque style, also known as French Louis XIV style, is characterized by majestic, exaggerated and heavy classical forms, and elegance is more important than comfort. Although cushions are used, the combination of straight lines and partial arc curves and the characteristics of rectangular symmetrical structure are adopted. Oak, walnut, some European forged wood and pear wood are used, and mottled wood and goose's foot shovel wood are embedded. The lower part of the furniture has diagonal braces. There are carvings, inlays, gilded or partially gilded or silvered, inlays, paintings and paintings. During the development of this period, straight legs were changed into curved legs, and the desktop was inlaid with marble and stone. The high armchair, a narrow platform with snail legs, was lined with carefully carved lower supports against the wall. Decorative patterns include the rising sun-shaped pins embedded with precious stones, rays around the head, double L-shapes in the oval, masks of the god of the forest, C-shaped curves, dolphins, sphinxes, lion heads and claws, sheep heads or turtles, olive leaves, diamond-shaped flowers, fruits, butterflies, dwarf palms and water lily leaves, human fables, ancient weapons and so on.

(2) Queen Anne style (1702 ~ 17 14): The furniture is light and beautiful, with excellent workmanship and no strong lines, and its shape is suitable for human body. The edges of the chair back, legs and surface are all curved, with comfortable cushions, and walnut with fine wood grain from France and Italy is used as veneer. Commonly used wood is elm, beech, yew and fruit tree.

Baroque furniture: 17- 18 century furniture popular in Europe and America. Baroque style was born out of Renaissance style, but contrary to Renaissance rational classicism, it is a passionate romantic style. After the Renaissance, Italian architecture in the17th century was in a complex contradiction. Some small and medium-sized churches, city squares and garden villas pursue novel and complex shapes, characterized by curves and cambered surfaces, such as gorgeous broken gables, scroll decorations, portrait columns, deep plaster lines, twisted rotating parts and overturned sculptures, highlighting dynamic factors such as fountains and pools, which broke the classical architecture and Renaissance. "Baroque" was originally Portuguese "baroque", which means that jewelers use it to describe the smooth, round, uneven and twisted surface of pearls. The pursuit of sports and exaggeration of scale have formed a very strong and peculiar masculine decoration style. And it corresponds to the feminine style of the subsequent "Rococo".

The main feature of baroque furniture is to emphasize strength, change and movement. The gorgeous cloth cover of the sofa cooperates with exquisite carving, and the noble shape and floor decoration are integrated into one, with elegant temperament. It emphasizes the comprehensiveness of architectural painting, sculpture and indoor environment, and highlights the characteristics of exaggeration, romance, passion, irrationality, illusion and fantasy. Break the balance, the plane is changeable, and emphasize the level and depth. The use of various colors of marble, precious stones, bronze, gold and other gorgeous and spectacular decorations broke through some procedures and principles of Renaissance classicism.

Baroque style house and furniture design has real life and rich emotions, which is more suitable for the functional and spiritual needs of life. Baroque furniture is characterized by relatively concentrated decorative details, simplifying unnecessary parts and emphasizing the overall structure. The overall modeling and decorative style of furniture is strictly unified with Baroque architecture, interior furnishings, walls, doors and windows, creating a harmonious overall effect of architecture and furniture. Baroque-style furniture is gorgeous in shape, which expresses the boldness and enthusiasm of life.

Baroque furniture, with the romantic spirit as the design starting point, is endowed with a kind and soft lyrical artistic conception and pursues a jumping decorative style, which sets off a magnificent, vivid, enthusiastic and unrestrained artistic effect. Baroque furniture uses varied curved surfaces, uses various decorations, carries out large-area carving, gold foil veneer and gold paint, and applies a large number of fabrics to cover sitting and lying furniture. Complex spatial combination and strong layout tone, with strong comfort and delicate and warm tone treatment, express the lyrical color of each piece of furniture, and very successfully express the artistic effect of passion and romance.

3. Rococo furniture (from18th century to18th century)

(1) The characteristics of French Louis XV furniture: the furniture is exquisite and elegant, in line with the proportion of the human body, emphasizing curves, especially the legs of the furniture, which are lighter and easier to move without rungs; Walnut, mahogany, fruit trees are all used, as well as rattan. Polyurethane products and straws; Gorgeous decoration includes carving, inlaying, gilding, painting, color decoration and gilding. In the early days, many new furniture were introduced or mass-produced, and soft-colored fabrics were used to decorate furniture. These patterns include asymmetrical broken curves, flowers, twisted vortex decorations, shells, China's art deco style, musical instruments (violins, horns and drums), symbols of love (Cupid holding a bow and sword), garlands, shepherd's scenes, trophy decorations (decorative arrangement of activity symbols), flowers and animals.

(2) Georges in early England (1714 ~1750): before 1730, it was a strong baroque style, and after1730, rococo style became popular, mainly with fine carvings, inlaid ornaments and gilded gypsum. Decorative patterns include lion's head, mask, eagle's head and spread wings, shell, Greek god mask, architectural stigma, cracked gables and so on.

(3) George's later period and Windsor Chair. It was not until 1750 that painted furniture became popular. Straight furniture, small-scale beautiful decorative lines, tapered straight legs and no rungs are widely used in furniture, and some furniture parts are too slim.

It is worth mentioning that at this time, a chair was popular in Windsor, England, and became one of the representatives of British and American country furniture after being improved and popularized in the United States.

Rococo-style furniture: Rococo period originated in France in the18th century, and initially rose to oppose the red tape art of the court.

Rococo Rococo is a word that evolved from French rocaille. Its original intention is an indoor decoration made of shells and pebbles.

Rococo style, like Ming furniture in China, is famous for its smooth lines and beautiful shapes. In contrast, the French classical furniture with baroque style in Louis XIV period was characterized by carving, which was related to the bravery and fighting of King Louis XIV at that time, and reflected the power in furniture through carving.

Rococo style is more feminine, and the most obvious feature is the chair legs based on ballet. You can see the exquisite elegance, the rhythmic beauty that blends into the furniture. Louis XVI experienced historical changes, so it abandoned the complexity of Louis XIV and Louis XV, and turned the curve of furniture into a straight line, leaving only the design of grooves.

In the neoclassical period, even the grooves were omitted, leaving only a straight line. After the changes of the times, French classical furniture has been influenced by political and economic development. However, Rococo style is still the most representative style of French classical furniture, recognized and respected by people all over the world, and it is also a symbol of human identity and taste.

Rococo style is characterized by bright colors, exquisite decoration and exquisite furniture, unlike Baroque style with strong colors and rich decoration.

The characteristics of rococo decoration are: delicate and gentle, often using asymmetric techniques, like to use arcs and S-shaped lines, especially like to use shells, eddies and rocks as decorative themes, winding grass and flowers, lingering and winding into one. The ceiling and the wall are sometimes connected by curved surfaces, and murals are arranged at the corners.

In order to imitate the natural form, indoor buildings are often made into asymmetric shapes, which vary greatly, but sometimes they are artificial. Indoor wall painting, love to use bright light colors such as light green, pink, rose red and so on. And most of the feet are gold. Indoor dado boards are sometimes made of wooden boards and sometimes made into exquisite frames. There is a circle of lace around the frame, and the middle is often lined with light-colored oriental brocade.

Rococo style reflects the life interest of the court nobles in Louis XV period of France, which was once popular in Europe.

4. Neoclassical furniture (1mid-8th century to1mid-9th century)

The furniture in this period is called neoclassical furniture, which is different from the definition of neoclassical furniture in our modern decoration style. Furniture in neoclassicism period generally refers to the improvement of Baroque and Rococo styles, removing too much useless luxury decoration and returning to the classical style of historical furniture.

(1) Features of furniture in the period of Louis XVI in France: the classical influence is dominant, the furniture is lighter, more feminine and softer, considering the scale of human comfort, the furniture is symmetrical and has linear and geometric forms. Most furniture is painted, and cabinets and chests of drawers are rectangular. The metal ring on the box is decorated with a frame pattern around it, and the seat is equipped with a cushion and straight legs, which gradually tapers downwards and is in the shape of an arrow tube or a slender one.

(2) During the French Empire (1804 ~ 18 15), the furniture was curvy, magnificent in proportion and heavy in volume. Decorations include heavy plates, bronze brackets, inlaid gems, silver, bas-relief and gold plating. Vortex curves and a few decorative lines are widely used, and the appearance of furniture is symmetrical and even, dark. 18 10 years ago, mahogany was used, and later oak, beech, maple and lemon wood were used.

(3) British Regency Period (18LL ~ 1830): The comfort of design is the main criterion, and the form, lines, structure and surface decoration are very simple. Many parts are rectangular, with mahogany, ebony and Dalbergia as the main wood. Ornaments include small carvings, small convex lines, carved alloys, brass belts, lion feet, casters and metal wire grids on cabinet doors.

(4) The Victorian period (1830 ~ 190 1 year) was the representative of the chaotic style of19th century, and it made an indiscriminate integration of the furniture forms in history. Patterns include classical, rococo, Gothic, Renaissance, Eastern Turkey, etc. Design tends to degenerate. After 1880, all the furniture was made by machines, and new materials and technologies were adopted, such as metal pipes, cast iron, bent wood and laminated plates. The chair is equipped with spiral springs, and the decoration includes inlaying, painting, gold plating, carving and so on. Use mahogany, oak, dragon wood, ebony, etc. The parts are heavy and the furniture has comfortable curves and rounded corners.

Neoclassical furniture style: French neoclassical furniture matured in Louis XVI period, so it is also called Louis XVI furniture. It soon spread to Italy, Germany and Spain. Neo-classical furniture is characterized by taking thin straight lines as the modeling keynote, pursuing the harmony of the overall proportion, not making too many details, and showing the classical spirit of paying attention to rationality, paying attention to moderation, clear structure and rigorous context. Most of the furniture adopts square or round legs that contract up and down, and the frame part of the cabinet is decorated with diamond or cone inlaid veneers made of precious wood such as mahogany.

Victorian furniture style:/kloc-the representative of chaotic style in the 0/9th century, which combines the furniture forms in history indiscriminately. Patterns include classical, rococo, Gothic, Renaissance, Eastern Turkey, etc. Design tends to degenerate. After 1880, all the furniture was made by machines, and new materials and technologies were adopted, such as metal pipes, cast iron, bent wood and laminated plates. The chair is equipped with spiral springs, and the decoration includes inlaying, painting, gold plating, carving and so on. Use mahogany, oak, dragon wood, ebony, etc. The parts are heavy and the furniture has comfortable curves and rounded corners. Perhaps it is the mixed reference of various styles that led to the emergence of a comfortable high-back chair in this period, which bears the imprint of Victorian life and is called the Victorian chair, and has been in use ever since.

Five, modern style furniture

(1) Art Nouveau style

Time:1A style of architecture, fine arts and practical arts popular in the late 9th and early 20th centuries.

Location: centered on Belgium, it is popular in continental Europe.

Features: It embodies the trend of simplification and purification of modern architectural interior design.

Representative figures: Horta and Wilder.

Art Nouveau movement is a break from the past historical style, which embodies a nostalgic trend and eclectic chaos. Art Nouveau rejected another trend of western art-naturalism. Advocates of Art Nouveau are keen to show gorgeous and exquisite decorations. Art nouveau artists actually worship nature, but they worship the warm and vigorous natural vitality, which is difficult to convey by copying its superficial form.

The most typical patterns of Art Nouveau movement are abstracted from natural vegetation, mostly flowing forms and winding lines, full of internal vitality.

In interior design, Horta likes to use twisted lines like vines. This undulating and powerful line has become a representative feature of the Belgian Art Nouveau movement, which is called "Belgian line" or "whip line". The residence designed by Horta at Turin Road 12 is a classic work of Art Nouveau.

Another representative of the French Art Nouveau movement is Germad, whose most influential works are designed for the Paris subway, which is called the subway style. The "subway style" is quite similar to the "Belgian Line", and the railings and lamp posts at the entrance of the subway adopt undulating and curly plant patterns. The coffee designed by Jimad is a typical Art Nouveau design. One school related to the Art Nouveau movement is the Vienna Separatist School. Its representative figure is MacIntosh, an architect and designer in Glasgow, England. He, his wife, sister-in-law and brother-in-law formed the famous "Glasgow Group" design team, engaged in furniture and interior decoration design.

If the main melody of Horta and Jimad is a curly and undulating "whip line", the main melody of MacIntosh is a tall, straight and thin vertical line, which can reflect the vertical vitality of plant growth. McIntosh designed a large number of furniture, tableware and other household products in his life. These products have a high-straight style and are the fusion of Gothic and Art Nouveau. Another representative of the Vienna Separatist School is Hoffman. Influenced by Macintosh, Hoffman liked regular vertical composition, gradually evolved into a square grid form, and formed his own style, so he was nicknamed "Chessboard Hoffman".

The Art Nouveau movement places great emphasis on the overall artistic environment, that is, any human factors in the human visual environment must be carefully designed to achieve harmonious and consistent results. Art Nouveau is still a decorative movement in essence, but it takes off its conservative and eclectic coat with abstract natural patterns and curves, which is one of the important steps in the process of simplification and purification of modern design. In particular, the straight lines and squares of the Vienna Separatist School foreshadowed the emergence of machine aesthetics and created very important conditions for the design to move towards modernism.

② Modernism

With the emergence and development of modern schools such as Art Nouveau, Cubism, de stijl and Constitutionalism, the so-called "machine aesthetics" is to use pure geometry to symbolize the efficiency and rationality of machines and reflect the essential characteristics of the industrial age. Among them, the designs of Monterian and Rittweld in de stijl have a great influence on modern design.

Monterian's oil paintings typically reflect De Steagall's visual language. He believes that painting is composed of lines and colors, so lines and colors are the essence of painting and should be allowed to exist independently. Only the simplest geometric form and the purest color composition are the most common and eternal paintings. In his works, only three primary color blocks and achromatic color's black, white and gray are used.

Ritveld's contribution is that he expanded de stijl art from plane to three-dimensional space, and created beautiful and practical buildings and furniture by using simple basic shapes and three primary colors. His works include red/blue chairs and Utrecht houses. The appearance of machine aesthetics provides theoretical conditions for the design to move towards modernism. Modernism was developed under the active promotion of German Gropius, Smith and French Corbusier.

1965438+In April 2009, Gropius established the National Institute of Architecture in Weimar, Germany, referred to as "Bauhaus". The word "Bauhaus" was coined by Gropius, which consists of the roots of German words "building" and "house". Bauhaus School is a merger of Weimar Art School and Craft School, aiming at cultivating new design talents.

Miss is the third headmaster of Bauhaus. His famous saying is "Less is more". 1929, he designed the German Pavilion and Barcelona Chair of the Barcelona World Expo, which became a milestone in modern architecture and design. 1932, the German Nazis closed Bauhaus, and Bauhaus's students and teachers left Germany, bringing Bauhaus's thoughts to other countries, especially the United States. In Germany, Bauhaus's products did not play a decisive role. The influence of Bauhaus lies not in its actual achievements, but in its spirit. Bauhaus's thought was once regarded as a classic of modernism. However, the limitations of Bauhaus are gradually recognized by people, for example, in order to pursue new and industrialized forms of expression, too much emphasis is placed on abstract geometric figures in design.

"Cube is God", no matter what products and materials are geometric modeling, which leads to formalism and sometimes even destroys the use function of products. Strict geometric modeling and the pursuit of industrial materials make products have a sense of indifference and lack of proper human touch. Bauhaus actively advocates the design for the general public, but because Bauhaus's design aesthetics is abstract and abstruse, it can only be appreciated by a few intellectuals and wealthy classes. The key of Bauhaus is the so-called "international style". Ignoring the historical context of various countries and nations, some designers misinterpreted the essence of Bauhaus and replaced creation with plagiarism, forming an "international style" with thousands of people. Square-box buildings with flat roofs, white walls and long windows are popular all over the world, which have a great influence on the architectural cultural traditions of various countries and are widely criticized.

Bauhaus attached great importance to function, and successively put forward such slogans as "form obeys function", "function comes first, form comes second", "house is a machine where people live" and "where function remains unchanged, form remains unchanged", which led to extreme functionalism and ignored people's demand for aesthetic feeling, which is also a reason why people criticized Bauhaus.

No matter how much people have reservations about Bauhaus, its great influence is indisputable. The elites gathered under the banner of Gropius have distinct personalities, but they have developed a powerful * * *. With firm beliefs, they spread Bauhaus's ideas in their respective places of work or teaching, and carried them forward.

(3) High-tech style

Time: 1960 to 1980.

Location: European and American countries.

Features: High-tech style not only adopts high technology in design, but also advocates the expression of new technology in aesthetics.

High-tech style originated from machine aesthetics in the 1920s and 1930s, which directly reflected the technical characteristics represented by machinery at that time. Many electronic products imitate the style of military communicators, that is, the so-called guerrilla style. The development of high-tech style can not be separated from the rapid development of high-tech represented by electronic industry since the end of 1950s.

The representative work of high-tech school is Pompidou National Art and Culture Center, designed by piano and Rogers in England. Pompidou Art and Culture Center not only showed the structure frankly, but also exposed all the equipment. On its east facade, it is covered with colorful "pipes", red is the traffic passage, green is the water supply system, blue is the air conditioning system, and yellow is the power supply system. To the west are several plexiglass dragons. One winding up from the stratum is an escalator, and there are several horizontal corridors.

The main feature of high-tech style in interior design and furniture design is to directly use products or materials produced for factories and laboratories to symbolize highly developed industrial technology. For example, wheelbarrows used by surgeons, metal supports used in warehouses and safety lights used in mines have all entered the home environment.

High-tech style is often criticized by people, because it pays too much attention to the embodiment of technology and the times and minimizes decoration, so it appears indifferent and lacks human touch.

(4) Postmodernism

Time: after 1965.

Location: European and American countries.

Postmodernism is a movement aimed at resisting modernism, which is widely embodied in literature, philosophy, criticism, architecture, design and other fields. Venturi published the book Complexity and Contradiction of Architecture, which became the earliest declaration of postmodernism. Aiming at the creed of modernism that "less is more", the slogan of "less is boring" is put forward, and a messy, complex, ambiguous, eclectic, symbolic and historical building is advocated.

He regards the bizarre and colorful secular architecture and design of Las Vegas as an outstanding representative of popular culture.

Postmodernism has three main characteristics: contextualism, fableism and decoration. The most influential organization of postmodernism in the field of design is the "Memphis" designer group in Italy. "Memphis" opposes all inherent concepts and casts life into a fixed pattern. "Memphis" has its own brand-new explanation of function. They believe that the meaning of function is not only material, but also cultural and spiritual. Products should not only have use value, but also have cultural connotation, which makes design a metaphor or symbol of a cultural system. The design of "Memphis" tries its best to express all kinds of personalized cultural connotations, from naive and funny to bizarre. In terms of color, I often deliberately break the law of color matching, and like to use some bright, funny and high-chroma colors, especially the gaudy colors such as pink and pink green.