Home Decorative Style:

Chests, Cupboards and Chairsfrom Tyrol and Vorarlberg

Joiner at the BenchUpper Bavaria,Late 18th century

Man and Environment

Furniture takes a pre- eminent position in

the design of living and utility rooms. The selection of" furniture for storing and keeping things"( chests andwardrobes) as well as" supporting furniture"( chairs)from western Austria( Tyrol and Vorarlberg) in theroom display, which has been arranged as a" study col-lection", can be regarded as an example of a regionallyand socially differentiated chapter in the culturalhistory of types, forms, and motifs.

These pieces of furniture were usuallymanufactured by rural master craftsmen: carpenters,wood turners, cartwrights, and especially joiners. Withthe flourishing of towns and their guilds, models oftown life came to the countryside. With this, a de-velopment started which led to the formation of acharacteristic estate culture, reflected in the housingand cultural styles of country towns and villages in theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries. From themiddle of the nineteenth century, estate- based culturewas gradually replaced by new forms of living andcultural styles of the industrial era.

Our ethnographic interest today con-centrates on the cultural significance of pieces of fur-niture as articles of daily use that are predeterminedfor specific purposes( manufacture, form, and function)and as indicators of collective attitudes.