Traditional Design and the Aesthetic of Progress

When creating a new composition, be it art or design, the creator makes a series of aesthetic choices. Many of these choices are entirely conscious, but some are not. One, which I believe is largely unconscious in contemporary work, is the aesthetic of progress. This aesthetic choice is perhaps the most pervasive and widely used choice, and its continuous use has weakened certain fields. I believe that academic furniture design is one of those weakened fields.

When a designer uses the aesthetic of progress he/she makes the assumption that what is new is better. A new and previously unseen combination of design elements is “fresh.” New and uniquely individual compositions have become the hallmark brand of the designer. There is much to be valued in this type of aesthetic, as design fashions move their way through history. Changing styles also create a demand for new products by making older compositions obsolete. However, in the case of studio furniture, an aesthetic of progress isn’t always better.

Furniture is for most people a substantial investment, even with inexpensive imported furniture from which to choose. Studio furniture typically resides at the top price-point amongst new furniture. Only important historic pieces are sold for more money. However, it is indeed against the backdrop of antiques that I would like to compare studio furniture.

If one compares the design complexity of many antiques to current works, one will often find that historic designs are much more complex and required far greater labor to create than much of what is currently being made in the studio furniture area. If one compares the best antique work against the best work of today, the antique work is superior in almost every regard: better workmanship, better integration of design elements and a higher level of complexity. So how did antique work get so accomplished?

I have come to believe, not that the appreciation of antiques has grown, but that modern design and construction skills have gotten got worse. The reason modern design got worse is that culture has demanded new and interesting things. Artists and designers, in turn, increasingly responded to this expectation for several generations. The priority for newness, however, has gotten to the point that traditional skills and design methods are no longer taught. Instead, the educational priority in crafts is for experimentation. Experimentation is a fine thing, but I believe that students of craft should also learn the lessons of history. Traditional design required a development of skills that current curricula do not even approximate. I believe a lack of knowledge of traditional design negatively impacts future work.

About 5 years ago I began to gain a new respect for traditional design. My wife’s career relocation necessitated closing my studio. Because the move was temporary, it didn’t make sense to open another studio, just to lose that investment of work and money when we moved again. The break, however, gave me the opportunity to examine historic architecture in western Massachusetts where we lived. I quickly realized that I did not possess the ability to recreate much of the work I examined. It seemed almost impossible to understand the organization of complicated architectural ornaments, or even to comprehend the design method for a Victorian piece of furniture. The more I attempted to create work in the Victorian style, the more I realized that I actually knew very little about design. As the years have passed and I have become more educated about traditional design, some of the mystery has disappeared. However, I continue to be humbled by the high level of compositional ability that was considered mere competence in the previous era. In my current work, I am attempting to use what I have learned from traditional works to improve the overall quality of what I do in the studio. However, these attempts have met with resistance from the faculty advisors in my graduate school program. In my opinion, they are clearly dedicated to the aesthetic of progress and to the development of a personal style of work. My attempts to gain a design fluency that incorporates the lessons of history are met with comments like, “We’ve seen this before.”

So, is new always better? I suppose from a marketing standpoint that it could be, but it also may not. When it comes to furniture, often people want what helps them to feel comfortable at home, and this is not always something challenging and new. In addition, if the field is always looking to innovation without actually learning the tradition of our craft, how can a craftsman say that he/she is a master? I don’t argue that progress should be stopped in favor of a rear-looking copying of past creative efforts, but I think it’s also wrong to ignore the good lessons that can be learned from studying historical work. It seems particularly noteworthy to me that a history of crafts survey course is not even offered by my graduate department.

How ironic it seems that a field like contemporary crafts, that owes so much to traditional methods of handwork, should be so averse to historical study. I believe the craft field as a whole could use a renewed discussion about its relationship to traditional work. In my opinion, there is much to be gained by studying and understanding past designs.