Art Nouveau Furniture and Design
Furniture, glass and interiors from about 1890 to 1910 that turned plant stems, insects and flowing lines into structure and ornament.
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About
Art Nouveau set out to invent a modern ornament owing nothing to earlier historical styles, drawing instead on nature and Japanese prints. Its name came from Siegfried Bing's Paris shop, the Maison de l'Art Nouveau, opened in 1895. In Brussels, Victor Horta's Hôtel Tassel (1893–94) let iron columns and mosaic floors unfurl like tendrils. In Nancy, Émile Gallé and Louis Majorelle decorated cabinets with dragonflies, water lilies and umbels, and in 1901 the city's makers formally organised as the École de Nancy.
On furniture, look for the whiplash curve, legs that grow like stalks, floral marquetry in contrasting woods, and gilt-bronze mounts shaped as leaves. Each region had its own accent: Antoni Gaudí in Barcelona made bone-like chairs, Richard Riemerschmid in Germany preferred sturdy simplified forms, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Glasgow drew tall, straight-backed chairs. By around 1910 the curves were giving way to geometric modernism.
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