The artist comments on furniture design

Re: The First Point is Silly, Too

Jesse Cloud

Reductio ad absurdum is a weak philosophical argument, but I don't think that's what Michael was trying to do and its certainly not a valid way to attack the concept.

I think he is simply stating an empirical observation. Most everyone feels that at some point adding more features makes something too busy. Michael feels that for him more than three major design elements detracts from the beauty of a piece. I agree with him.

If you prefer four or ten or fifty, thats your choice. When I look at Baroque era pieces, I have trouble seeing the piece as a whole, but maybe that wasn't what they were after.

My art critic agrees

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

Particularly students tend to add what they can to a piece of furniture until it becomes cluttered. My art critic friend wants each design element to achieve a purpose. Those added because it seems that more is better get comments like "what is that all about". And furthermore, they should be of the same style and not a smorgasbord selection from a furniture design class.

Re: The artist comments on furniture design

Brian Holcombe

It's important to understand and appreciate historical architectural dictum.

It's also important to throw that dictum out of the window whenever it suits your purpose.

There is some agreement cross culture, so one can argue for it being universal to a minor degree. However, often enough these hard set rules on proportion and other things are often ascribed after the fact. Golden ratio is a fine example, it's applied often enough after the fact that people tend to find where it works and say 'hey look, they used it'.

My opinion is that an experienced eye created those designs and likely knew what they wanted as they set out their goal, and probably were not sitting there carefully working it into the golden ratio.

I made a bed a few years back rigorously adhering to architectural proportion. I made the same bed improving upon the design recently, I didn't even bother checking the scale...I think my second version is considerably better than the first.

'Abrams Art History book' doesn't quite

Chuck Nickerson

narrow it down for me. Which book is this?

TIA