Contemporary design vision for furniture towards Art Nouveau style heritage revival

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Lecturer at the Faculty of Applied Arts, Damietta University - Interior design and furniture department

Abstract

The end of the 19th century represented a period of change and instability. Traditional values were in a state of flowing when people were looking to the challenges of a new century.
The nineteenth century last period of time was characterized by political tension on the one hand  and modernization and urbanization on the other hand. It was an era of great industrial progress. Large and small cities were expanding dramatically  and scientific and medical discoveries were opening up new opportunities for growth and development in various fields. The poetic atmosphere that gave birth to the arts and crafts movement in Britain in the 1880s was the basis for a revolution against poor quality quantitative production resulting from the then modern industrial revolution. It was also responsible for the start of the birth of a new form of artistic expression, which started to appear in Europe in the 1890s and this art form is known as Art Nouveau. This name was taken from the name of a shop that opened the Sea graved Pinge in Paris in 1895. The content of this art form is to break the stressful history of the past and create a new form of art corresponding to the spirit of the times; hence the term of this Art means New Art. By the end of the 19th century, and Art Nouveau became a well-known artistic style. It was found in all forms of art from architecture and interior designs to posters, glass works, jewelry and sculpture, as well as furniture.
The researcher has made an application to a set of designs proposed for contemporary furniture, inspired by the Art Nouveau period, which carries in its contents the spirit of the new art and creates design vocabulary of the research output. The researcher has concluded this design vocabulary when studying the group which includes a design for a bedroom where this design merge with the lines of modernity in a tight harmony and the decorative surfaces converge withsoft and smooth surfaces.