Furniture as a Piece of Design and as a Piece of Decorative Arts

Abstract

Most of the time, when it comes to furniture developed until the early 20th century, furniture is referred to as a piece of Decorative Arts. However, when furniture is produced industrially it is already considered an object of Design. This division between furniture as a Decorative Art or as a work of Design is little discussed, although some manuals on history of design already cover periods prior to industrial production, putting that furniture and the one that is considered Design together in the same definition. A piece of furniture is constituted by several components that are organized in a system. That system can be analyzed on several domains, such as constructive, formal, functional, socio cultural, economic, semantic and symbolic. In one or more of these domains we can find a decorative art, but not in the piece of furniture as a whole. This study results from the observation of different pieces of furniture from different periods. Each piece of furniture is studied in its different domains allowing an intrinsic synthesis. Using this method of studying the piece of furniture we intend to question if furniture should be seen as a Decorative Art object or as a Design object.