The Case for Pre-Industrial Design

What if the makers of beanbag chairs were dirty liars?

When we reprinted William H. Varnum’s book on furniture design last year,¹ I didn’t expect the design world would lash out at us. But it did.

After we released the book, I made a short video advertisement for it; you can watch it here. Sorry I’m speaking like I’m in the movie “His Girl Friday” in the ad; I tried to cram in all Varnum’s ideas into a minute of gabber, which ended up sounding like Fast Chrissy’s Used Car & Hair Gel Emporium.

Soon after the ad started running, critics began to pile on.

“Modernism challenged a lot of this with a great deal of success.”

“It's amazing how an Eames lounge chair follows very few of these rules yet it's popularity will continue to surpass anything that could be created by someone reading this.”

“Ornament is crime, or didn’t you know....”

“I’ve literally spent my whole professional career as a furniture designer rejecting most of these principles.”

So let’s talk about the difference in the old way of designing and the new. The old way is covered pretty well by my seemingly booger-sugar-fueled rant on Instagram. If that ad makes you twitch to watch (it does that to me), I’ve prepared a short white paper on Varnum’s “rules” that you can download here.

Basically it’s about mass (and how to divide it up), proportion, symmetry and the optional ornament.

Sounds basic, obvious and unoffensive. And it is.

Here are the main ideas behind contemporary furniture design and how I see them.

1. Functionality. Furniture should be designed for use. A pretty good way to say it is: ergonomics, comfort and utility over everything. This is why we have La-Z-Boy recliners and couches that look like someone glued together a bunch of whoopee cushions. I don’t buy the modernist argument that pre-industrial wing-back chairs and drop-front secretaries weren’t functional. They were incredibly functional (and durable). Usually this “functionality” argument is used to poop on pre-industrial ornament. OK, so you don’t like the 17^th- and 18^th-century aesthetic. I don’t like coffee tables that are shaped like a diseased kidney. I find the modernists’ functionality argument is empty.

2. Minimalism.² This is an extension of the functionality argument. Embellishment is the enemy. What this modernist argument ignores is that pre-industrial design also went through eras that eschewed ornament (see campaign furniture, for example). And vernacular pieces from the 11^th century onward make modernist minimalism look like a taffeta whorehouse. OK, so modernists don’t like ornament. Some pre-industrial designers didn’t like ornament, either.

3. Natural materials. Every time I read this, I want to barf out some of the microplastics I’ve consumed thanks to the modernist movement. I call bullshit on “natural materials.” Y’all made Adirondack chairs out of plastic. Beanbag chairs out of polystyrene. You gave us polyurethane (microplastics in suspension) and the godforsaken product called “bar top.”

4. Emphasis on materials. Oh, because pre-industrial furniture wasn’t made of materials? So pre-industrial furniture emphasized – I don’t know – gasses? Pre-industrial furniture was way more about materials than modernists ever will be. Those early jokers killed turtles to embellish their stuff. They messed around with the swim bladders of odd fishies to make glue (isinglass). Sorry, this is a dumb argument.

5. Balance and proportion. Again, ha. Just ha. Sometimes modernists crow that they utilize asymmetry, yet they do it in a way that emphasizes balance or harmony. My dudes, all furniture design is about balance and proportion – either the presence of it or the lack of it. Asymmetry appears all over Medieval stuff.

6. Geometric forms. You can answer this one. Do modernists really think that pre-industrial designers didn’t use geometric forms? They knew and used geometry like it was a second language. Modernists use a hexagon for something and get sticky pants because of it.

7. Bold accent colors. OK, modernists, read “The Shaker World” by John T. Kirk then talk to me about bold accent colors. Any historian of furniture, clothing or architecture will tell you that it’s modernists who live in the dull, lifeless void of muted colors with the occasional splash of titty pink.

I could go on, but sadly I am out of beer. Basically, modern/contemporary design can be boiled down to: Straight lines, no ornament and the occasionally bloated kidney/fetus/kangaroo’s wiener shape thrown in – just for funsies. And all that also was done before the Industrial Revolution, over and again. Well, except the wacky kidney thing. Y’all modernists can totally have that.

Don’t Say ‘Clean Lines’

One of Peter Follansbee’s pet peeves is the term “clean lines.” It’s often used to describe contemporary straight-line furniture that is void of ornament.

“Sometimes I think I have an idea what this phrase means, but I’ve become so impatient with it that now I just hear it & run the other way,” Peter writes. “If there’s clean lines, is there an opposite? Dirty lines?”