#HTE

A History of Furniture, Condensed Into Easy-to-Digest GIFs

As Christopher Schwarz wisely pointed out in our interview with him, it is generally rich people who determine our furniture design cues. In other words, if you go to a museum and see a chair from ancient Egypt, or the Renaissance, or the Art Deco period, it’s a piece of furniture that belonged to a rich person. That’s why it survived long enough to make it into the museum. The stuff that poor people sat on generally makes it into the MoMA.

Which means that any “History of Furniture” class or exhibition is really a “History of Rich People’s Furniture,” at least until you reach the Mid-Century Modern period, and since there have always been more poor people than rich people, is not really representative of furniture that most humans experienced.

So it would be silly, would it not, to assemble facile GIFs that condense the History of Furniture down into 15 frames.

Silly, but still fun to watch. So here it is (put together, bizarrely enough, by Angie’s List). Happy Friday, folks.

Chairs

Dining Sets

Sofas

Desks

Beds