Art Nouveau furniture

The Art Nouveau movement owed much to the revolution in artistic taste inspired by the writings of John Ruskin and William Morris in late Victorian England. However, England did not prove to be a fertile seedbed for what is generally known as Art Nouveau, in that most of those designers who were imbued with Morris’s ideas turned their attention to what became the Arts and Crafts movement. Instead, Art Nouveau flourished particularly in continental Europe, with the greatest contributions, certainly as far as furniture design was concerned, being made in Belgium.

The guiding principle of Art Nouveau, as with Arts and Crafts, was that artists had a duty to involve themselves in the lives of ordinary people, especially where these had been cheapened by the industrialisation of society. This could be done by making objects that were both functional and beautiful, thus raising the spirits of people and breaking down class barriers. In practice, it was the growing middle class that had most to gain from such movements, especially in Belgium where the market for Art Nouveau design was driven by the growing wealth of a small country through industrialisation and colonial expansion.

The main characteristic of Belgian furniture of this period was its architectural quality, which is not surprising given that many of its exponents were also architects. They designed furniture to fit specific architectural environments, and the impact of many such pieces is lessened when taken away from those settings. The curves that are inherent in Art Nouveau furniture would match those of the internal and external décor of their buildings, and the design would extend to all aspects of a living space, including walls and floors.  

To the exponents of Art Nouveau, the importance of the curve lay largely in the fact that Nature abhors straight lines and Art Nouveau aimed to produce a stylised form of Naturalism.  Flower stems and heads are typical elements of Art Nouveau decoration, and their shapes and flows had a marked influence on furniture design in this idiom.

A prominent figure in Art Nouveau furniture design was Gustave Serrurier-Bovy (1858-1910), who gained his inspiration from English sources and imported furniture from the London store of Arthur Liberty. He soon developed his own style, based on movement and controlled curves. He also favoured the use of tropical woods, such as mahogany and citrus, that were available in Belgium as a result of that country’s ruthless exploitation of its Congo colony. He never used any surface ornament on his furniture, as he believed that this belonged to the window-panes and walls of a room. The controlled lines of his furniture speak for themselves.

Victor Horta (1861-1947) believed that all the elements of a house should harmonise to produce a unified whole, so when he built his own house in Brussels he also designed every piece of furniture that went into it. Curve and counter-curve were set against each other in perfect rhythm, typified by the rounded angles on his chairs and tables together with a restrained use of subtle moulding.  Horta was also careful in his choice of wood tones, so that the colours of his furniture harmonised with the door-frames and panelling of his rooms.

Henry Van de Velde (1863-1947) was more experimental. He developed a flowing line in his designs that resembled the movement of waves. This included using parallel elements, such as in chair backs and sides, that were both functional and decorative. He paid particular attention to the emotive effects of his pieces, again regarding furniture as an integral part of a space for living in. Van de Velde was a skilled painter, and he was greatly influenced by this background when designing pieces to fit a room, in that the shapes and proportions of everything in the room had to combine to make a pleasing whole.

Although Art Nouveau, in all its aspects, was a short-lived movement that would soon be overwhelmed by the brutalism of the 20^th century, it inspired many later designers who agreed with its principles, and it is possible to identify elements of Art Nouveau in some areas of modern design.

Victor Horta’s house in Brussels, mentioned above, is now the Musée Horta. Although most of the original pieces of furniture are no longer there, they have been replaced by similar pieces that retain the atmosphere that Horta wished to achieve.

© John Welford