There are few sadder sights than some of the pieces of furniture in the study collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum: some of those modernist items from the early years of the last century, once so smart, bright and shining, new materials once so glowing, pure lines once so crisply defined, now faded, scuffed and dowdy.
Their aging has been so less gracious than the sturdy solid timber tables and chairs of past centuries, whose marks, distortions and patina add to rather than detract from their appearance and attraction: their meaning enhanced rather than declined. Yet it is not only the solid timber work that matures in this way, Even the sophisticated cabinet work of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which too (unlike the early English oak table) were once sharp, bright and crisp but where now the ravages of time, use and dehumidified atmosphere have warped surfaces and opened up cracks, look, with the well polished care of the years, as if they have acquired a bloom rather than lost it.
What is it that determines whether an artefact will be capable of maturing over the years rather than aging, and what is it in our modern aesthetic, our manner of making and our philosophy or productive work that has lost us the ability (sometimes) to express our creative impulse in things that will have a positive participation in history’s progression? And which pieces from the work of current furniture designer makers will fare well or badly in this respect?
