Researchers recently discovered that 44% of adults in the UK are unable to assemble flat-pack furniture, despite the apparently “easy to follow” instructions – 75% of Britons would prefer to pay someone else to build pieces from the likes of Ikea for them.
Spare a thought, then, for the anonymous 18th-century Mexican craftsmen who toiled for some 5,000 hours veneering a bureau with 7,000 pieces of mother of pearl. The magnificent piece is a highlight of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s (V&A) Dr Susan Weber Gallery, which opened on 1 December last year.
The gallery, which focuses on the last 600 years of furniture history, is on the top floor of the decorative art museum in a long, narrow, top-lit space formerly home to ceramics; one of the technical achievements is to control light levels. There is much else to admire in how the curators have made the study of tables, chairs and cabinets accessible.
More than 200 pieces of British and European furniture as well as American and Asian examples are on show. Co-curator Nick Humphrey is understandably proud of the fact that almost everything on display has come from the stores.
Computer terminals at either end of the gallery allow you to search the entire furniture collection.
The historical spine of the gallery is a chronological display highlighting 25 key pieces. One of the earliest is a medieval desk/cupboard that was probably made for the scriptorium of a monastery. It has been dated to around 1425 thanks to dendrochronological analysis (tree-ring dating).
Big names
Another piece in the central display is a 1902 chair designed by Carlo Bugatti, the father of the car designer. A welcome feature of the gallery is the biographical information about makers.
Bugatti senior designed ceramics, musical instruments, silverware and textiles but is best known for his furniture designs that reflected the art nouveau appreciation of nature, as well as motifs inspired by Islamic art.
Visitors can learn that, in New York, the Waldorf Astoria hotel’s Turkish Salon was furnished entirely with pieces by Bugatti senior. Although not intended as a gallery of greatest hits, items by well-known names are included.
Among them is Marcel Breuer’s Club Chair of 1925-26. The metal frame of the quintessentially Bauhaus chair was inspired by the frame of the designer’s bicycle.
One of the V&A’s newest acquisitions is Wooden Heap by Boris Dennler. This is an illusionistic object that seems to be no more than an artfully composed stack of wood, but consists of six identical drawer units that can be stacked without fixings in various configurations.
Wrapping around this central area are thematic displays exploring diverse materials used by furniture makers and techniques that include moulding, upholstery and digital manufacture as well as carving, marquetry, gilding and lacquer.
Large text panels explain techniques clearly and alongside there is equipment in showcases, while touchscreens provide digital labels supplemented by background material.
Innovative captions
The touchscreen technology comes into its own with photographs that provide 360-degree views of the furniture – because backs and bases of pieces are the most revealing for the expert.
This complete lack of conventional printed captions is not without risk. It relies on the technology to be glitch-free and visitors being comfortable interacting in this way. (A few didn’t seem to be convinced at the time of my visit.)
Birth of the flat-pack
The gallery also tells the stories of key designers and makers from furniture’s history besides Bugatti and Breuer. Among them are Thomas Chippendale, Eileen Gray, Grinling Gibbons and Frank Lloyd Wright.
David Roentgen was known throughout Europe for his luxurious marquetry furniture, which found favour in the courts of France and Russia through the patronage of Marie Antoinette and Catherine the Great.
The biographical detail reminds visitors that furniture making is a business with its share of ups and downs.
In the 1830s Michel Thonet began bending wood to create furniture. His first attempt resulted in bankruptcy.
Undeterred, he moved to Vienna and started again. He achieved global success when he started to pack his chairs in kit form, which made them simpler to distribute. Kits were then assembled by the retailers in their showrooms.
It worked: by 1930 more than 50 million of the Model No 14 or Viennese coffee house chairs had been sold.
There is a wealth of furniture displayed in other galleries across the V&A, but it is surprising to discover that this is the first gallery to be solely devoted to it in the museum. The adaptation of a space to display tables, chairs, screens and cabinets that was once all about ceramic tableware is impressive.
What could have been an exercise in open storage and information overload is, in fact, an object lesson in the best sense.
Caroline Worthington is the chief executive of Bexley Heritage Trust
Spare a thought, then, for the anonymous 18th-century Mexican craftsmen who toiled for some 5,000 hours veneering a bureau with 7,000 pieces of mother of pearl. The magnificent piece is a highlight of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s (V&A) Dr Susan Weber Gallery, which opened on 1 December last year.
The gallery, which focuses on the last 600 years of furniture history, is on the top floor of the decorative art museum in a long, narrow, top-lit space formerly home to ceramics; one of the technical achievements is to control light levels. There is much else to admire in how the curators have made the study of tables, chairs and cabinets accessible.
More than 200 pieces of British and European furniture as well as American and Asian examples are on show. Co-curator Nick Humphrey is understandably proud of the fact that almost everything on display has come from the stores.
Computer terminals at either end of the gallery allow you to search the entire furniture collection.
The historical spine of the gallery is a chronological display highlighting 25 key pieces. One of the earliest is a medieval desk/cupboard that was probably made for the scriptorium of a monastery. It has been dated to around 1425 thanks to dendrochronological analysis (tree-ring dating).
Big names
Another piece in the central display is a 1902 chair designed by Carlo Bugatti, the father of the car designer. A welcome feature of the gallery is the biographical information about makers.
Bugatti senior designed ceramics, musical instruments, silverware and textiles but is best known for his furniture designs that reflected the art nouveau appreciation of nature, as well as motifs inspired by Islamic art.
Visitors can learn that, in New York, the Waldorf Astoria hotel’s Turkish Salon was furnished entirely with pieces by Bugatti senior. Although not intended as a gallery of greatest hits, items by well-known names are included.
Among them is Marcel Breuer’s Club Chair of 1925-26. The metal frame of the quintessentially Bauhaus chair was inspired by the frame of the designer’s bicycle.
One of the V&A’s newest acquisitions is Wooden Heap by Boris Dennler. This is an illusionistic object that seems to be no more than an artfully composed stack of wood, but consists of six identical drawer units that can be stacked without fixings in various configurations.
Wrapping around this central area are thematic displays exploring diverse materials used by furniture makers and techniques that include moulding, upholstery and digital manufacture as well as carving, marquetry, gilding and lacquer.
Large text panels explain techniques clearly and alongside there is equipment in showcases, while touchscreens provide digital labels supplemented by background material.
Innovative captions
The touchscreen technology comes into its own with photographs that provide 360-degree views of the furniture – because backs and bases of pieces are the most revealing for the expert.
This complete lack of conventional printed captions is not without risk. It relies on the technology to be glitch-free and visitors being comfortable interacting in this way. (A few didn’t seem to be convinced at the time of my visit.)
Birth of the flat-pack
The gallery also tells the stories of key designers and makers from furniture’s history besides Bugatti and Breuer. Among them are Thomas Chippendale, Eileen Gray, Grinling Gibbons and Frank Lloyd Wright.
David Roentgen was known throughout Europe for his luxurious marquetry furniture, which found favour in the courts of France and Russia through the patronage of Marie Antoinette and Catherine the Great.
The biographical detail reminds visitors that furniture making is a business with its share of ups and downs.
In the 1830s Michel Thonet began bending wood to create furniture. His first attempt resulted in bankruptcy.
Undeterred, he moved to Vienna and started again. He achieved global success when he started to pack his chairs in kit form, which made them simpler to distribute. Kits were then assembled by the retailers in their showrooms.
It worked: by 1930 more than 50 million of the Model No 14 or Viennese coffee house chairs had been sold.
There is a wealth of furniture displayed in other galleries across the V&A, but it is surprising to discover that this is the first gallery to be solely devoted to it in the museum. The adaptation of a space to display tables, chairs, screens and cabinets that was once all about ceramic tableware is impressive.
What could have been an exercise in open storage and information overload is, in fact, an object lesson in the best sense.
Caroline Worthington is the chief executive of Bexley Heritage Trust
Project data
- Cost Undisclosed
- Main funder American Friends of the V&A
- Curators Nick Humphrey; Leela Meinertas
- Exhibition design Nord Architecture
- Digital interactives AllofUs
- Display cases ClickNetherfield
