Iron bedsteads were only one of several bedroom furnishing options in the 1890s.
The late 19th century was a period of strong and numerous opinions in the arts, including the art of furniture design. Both in Europe and the United States, householders, accustomed to buying from local merchants, began to see the impact of the Industrial Revolution in their homes. Some people became ardent supporters of industrialization and the uniformity of goods made available to all levels of society. Others just as enthusiastically championed the traditional craftsman. The wide range of furniture choices in the 1890s illustrates the conflicts in fashion. Does this Spark an idea?
Iron Bedsteads
The large-scale metalwork resulting from the Industrialization moved manufacturers to find new uses for previously scarce materials. From garden chairs to decorative hardware to iron bedsteads, designers reveled in creating new shapes and styles and the machines to cast them as iron became available in amounts that more than met basic needs.
Machine-Carved Furniture
A second sign of how enthusiastically designers explored the properties of new materials and machinery can be seen in the head- and footboards of machine-carved wooden bedsteads. Carving and pressed embossing of patterns became more and more elaborate as designers explored the capacities of new simultaneous-pattern-carving machinery and used heat, steam and pressure to make embossings similar to those of hand-carving available at reasonable prices for customers at all social strata.
Craftsman Created Furniture
Two major designers of the 1890s, Gustav Stickley and Charles Eastlake, reacted as had the Pre-Raphaelite movement in Britain at the sight of huge amounts of industrially produced furniture. Evoking the medieval guild tradition in Europe and the pioneer provider traditions of American westward movement, craftsman supporters stressed the beauty of individually created furniture pieces based on stunningly simple designs and good workmanship. Their response to the ugliness or poor quality of furniture for poor families, equally invoked by industrialized manufacturers, was expressed in attempts to forge a strictly American style of design, based on the importance of the link between simplicity and beauty. Well-made, they argued, outdistanced cheaply available every time.
Resolution
Perhaps one of the best signs of resolution between industrialized-plenty and singular-creation furniture camps has been the inclusion of furniture design in the art programs of many university graduate school programs. Commercial furniture companies offer work opportunities and substantial responsibility to designers willing to integrate artistically valid visual aims with the manufacturing and organizational requirements needed to make good-looking furniture widely available.
Tags: designers explored, furniture design