Furniture Designed

I'm A Motivated Modernist According To Stylefinder Quiz

Curious what kind of style you have in furniture? 

Furniture Brands has just launched an eerily accurate and beautiful StyleFinder Quiz that helps define what you're looking for in furniture

I'm a "motivated modernist," which apparently means I like hip contemporary stuff but I'm not married to brand names. Which is just totally and completely true about me. I like quality pieces but also knock offs and quirky vintage stuff, and I'm also definitely more attracted to modern style than to traditional looks. Not bad.

I haven't added the badge yet, but you can do all the social media stuff — Twitter, Facebook — and of course email it to friends.

I also took it a couple more times, just to see how many results I could get.  Different answers for different, uh, answers. Click on the image or link to try yours out.

5 Furniture Tips For Thanksgiving

1. If you're hosting dinner, protect your dining table with a cloth, table runner, placements, plastic tarps, whatever it takes.

2. Make sure you have plenty of full-size dining chairs (even if you have to borrow some or they don't all match.) Nobody wants to see Grandpa trying to balance on your old bar stool because there aren't enough real chairs.

3. Choose fun, festive holiday decorations that won't damage your furniture. Or your dignity. (If you don't have too much dignity, we like the cartoon turkey chair cover idea.)

4. Take notes for next year. If the kids are outgrowing the little kids table or somebody ends up sitting on the couch trying to balance a plate on their knee, don't wait until next November to do something about it.

5. Finally, if you're shopping for furniture on Black Friday, bring your measuring tape, a list of exactly what you're looking for, a clear idea about how much you're hoping to spend, comfy shoes, gatorade and maybe some kind of shield or helmet.

Have a great Thanksgiving holiday.

9 Ways To Get Inspired

Great design often builds on the past in one way or another. But to build on great designs of the past, you have to be able to find them.

Unfortunately, some of the greatest decorative arts collections in America aren't really available online (Winterthur, for example, has been very slow to make their collections available online, although check out Peak of Chic's recent visit for some idea of what we're all missing.)

So, we thought we'd gather a few of our favorite online furniture design history resources in one link-rich post. Whatever style you're looking for, we hope you'll find some amazing ideas and inspirations.

1. Brooklyn Museum. Next time you're in New York, skip the Manhattan museums and head to Brooklyn to see the "open collection" at the Brooklyn Museum. It's like a cross between an exhibit and a warehouse and it's an amazing mix of high art and popular culture from many different time periods. And an amazing amount of the collection is available through the Brooklyn Museum's Decorative Arts Open Collection Web Site. Our favorite highlight: an Art Deco office with a secret Prohibition-proof hidden bar.

Contemporary Chrome

Chrome started to appear in home design in the early 20th century. This 1929 antique modern chair is part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. (By the way, the Met's web site has a nice essay about design from 1929-1950.)

With mid-century modern being so in style these days, chrome and other shiny metal pieces are getting trendier, as well.

Today, chrome and other shiny metal finishes are used more as accent pieces, a bit of shine, but you have lots of choices when you're looking for chrome to fit into your space.

Chesterfield Sofas, Return Of A Great

Several people in the know this year commented on hip new reinterpretations of a classic sofa style: the chesterfield.

The chesterfield is a great classic sofa design from the 19th century (most people agree it was named after an Earl of Chesterfield in the 1800s).

The chesterfield sofa is usually considered a fairly formal style. With it's tufted upholstery and nail-head trim, it seems made for a library. Or a lord's sitting room. But this year, chesterfields have been showing up in all kinds of great new places.

The Whitney Museum in New York featured two 20-foot chesterfields at their annual summer party.

If you're looking for some great ways to fit a classic chesterfield into your modern space, Apartment Therapy featured a great look at chesterfields in modern spaces.

You sometimes hear people describe a classic chesterfield as having arms and back the same height, and that's certainly not unusual, but chesterfields might also have a higher back and lower arms. This is also a great time to look for a chesterfield in a new more modern fabric (maybe something lighter and softer).

A Color Comeback?

The Huffington Post is weighing in on furniture fashion trends for fall in Cathy Whitlock's article "Is Red the New Beige?"

I don't know if red is the new beige (gray might be!), but flashes of color do seem to be popping up all over, as Whitlock points out. 

Whitlock also mentions Alexa Hampton's great new pieces for Hickory Chair for those of us looking for something fresh and new in a more neutral pallette.

Curvaceous Ideas

Sometimes we think of modern and contemporary furniture as being all about sharp angles and straight lines, but DesignsDelight made a great point recently about the curvaceous lines of contemporary furniture.

They have some cool examples, and we'd add Henredon's Capelle Chairside Table and this groovy but classic end table.

Curvy contemporary pieces like Hickory Chair's Dee Sofa bring needed warmth and luxury into what could otherwise be a stark, modern space.
 

Is Overstuffed Over?

The other day a new post from the blog PadStyle (that name makes me think of the noodle dish Pad Thai, but it's about home decor, you know, your home is your "pad"), anyway, they suggested that oversized and overstuffed furniture designs are falling out of fashion in favor of trimmer, smaller pieces with more busy patterns.

On the one hand, I'm skeptical. Even in a time of economic downsizing, the newer homes built in recent years can't actually shrink, and they require large furniture that's in proportion to their large rooms.

Then again, I was looking at this elegant but heavily decorated bar cabinet today and noticed the way it's displayed with those trim, modern wingback chairs.

Makes trimmer and sleeker look pretty luxurious.

And then, I noticed that Jennifer Boles over at the Peak of Chic blog was lamenting some great 1980s fabrics that aren't available any more.

Trends from the '80s are certainly making a comeback in clothes (check out this Glamour magazine fall fashion slide show. It's full of '80s hits like neon pink, off-the-shoulder looks, big shoulder pads and ankle boots.) Maybe Jennifer's '80s home decor dreams can come true.

And maybe we wouldn't miss the overstuffed couches and giant club chairs that have been in style in recent years if they're replaced with pieces covered in a rich, wonderful patterns reminiscent of great '80s looks in home decor.