[Anon], ‘The Art-Furniture Fever’

Art furniture was one of the commercial developments of the design reforms that had begun in the 1840s and continued throughout much of the nineteenth century. The concept of and interpretation of art furniture reflected both the idea of the involvement of artist or architect and craftsman, and the issue of considered placement within an interior. The label of ‘art-furniture’ was certainly in use by the early 1850s. Art furniture had two phases. Initially, it referred to the architect-designed products of a limited number of specialist companies employing a skilled workforce. Linked to the parallel Aesthetic movement, the bywords of early art furniture were taste, beauty, and individuality. The second phase, fully developed by the 1880s, saw the term ‘art furniture’ become a catch-all for a wide range of commercial furnishing products sold to a middle-class market across the United Kingdom and North America.