1 May 2009 - 15:26Nostalgia at the Milan Furniture Fair

Chains by James Stuart Duncan

At the Milan Furniture Fair and in design magazines everywhere today we see the romance of the past. We see the return of Shaker furniture, steamer trunks and just about everything else, from 18^th century French chairs to 1950s, 60s and 70s classics. Many of these pieces are reinterpreted, but the references to the past are very up-front. Nostalgia is back in vogue.

Parchment Dresser by James Stuart Duncan

I want to reflect a bit on nostalgia, to look back, but not nostalgically, on the history of nostalgia itself. In centuries past nostalgia or homesickness, was thought to be a true disease. Swiss mercenaries in France and Italy so missed their mountain homes that they become depressed and sick. Since the late 19^th century, no one has seriously considered nostalgia a medical condition, but the term survives as a romantic way of thinking about the past. While the term nostalgia still has its old connotations of the love a lost home, today it refers more generally to a longing for an idealised version of the past — but not necessarily a past that we have experienced. So, for example, the New England village where I spent my childhood summers, was designed in the 19^th century to look like an idealised version of a white clapboard colonial village of the late 17^th century. And my grandmother’s nineteenth century American antiques were, like the village, nostalgic references to the goodness of our colonial fathers’ way of life.

Actually, the idea of nostalgia, if not the word itself, goes back to time immemorial. The Rome of the Caesars looked back longingly at the glories of ancient Greece and Roman houses and public buildings were decorated in the Greek style. Many would claim that the idea of nostalgia can be traced back to the Old Testament and the idea of the fall from grace in Paradise. People have always looked back longingly at earlier times. Feelings of loss and nostalgia for the past were particularly acute in the 19^th century as the industrial revolution swept away much of traditional material life and culture. And so Gothic Revival in architecture was a nostalgic longing for the community and faith of the middle ages and the Arts and Crafts movement a nostalgia for preindustrial design.

Back to the Milan Fair. It strikes me that we are seeing a different type of nostalgia. Neo-Gothic design referred to a loss of faith and community. Arts and Crafts referred to lost craftsmanship in the face of standardised machine production. Today, nostalgia in design is an ironic and playful form of nostalgia that refers largely to images of 18^th century France, 19^th century America, or 20^th century Europe. Although it is clearly an exaggeration, the contemporary world has been called a place where everything is an image. And that these images refer only to other images. The move to nostalgia at the Milan Fair offers a hall of mirrors, where images of the past and present reflect off each other offering themselves up not as an idealized past, but as an exciting future that understands that the past is irrecoverable except as inspiration.

Karton Art Design

Shaker by Ercol

Shaker by James Stuart Duncan