In the XVIII century, the Rococo style spread throughout Europe. It was the style of high society, people who preferred to spend all the time at entertainment. Soft, muffled colors, elegant buildings resembling caskets or candy boxes, mirrors, mobile screens came into fashion. This direction and furniture affected.
Previous style, Baroque (article “Baroque furniture”), was famous for massiveness, thoroughness, splendor, solemnity. Furniture of the Rococo era became completely different. All of it, whether it is furniture for palaces or equipment for restaurants, has completely lost linearity. Now there were curves, often asymmetric lines in fashion. For decoration, gilded bronze overlays were used. The most famous master of this era was the Englishman Thomas Chippendale, who created a new direction in furniture art, which began to be called him. Chippendale made furniture made of red wood, gave it light, plastic shapes, widely used openwork backs, which almost no one had previously done. It was in the Rococo era that the evolution of such a piece of furniture familiar to us has completely ended as a chair.
The east had a considerable influence on Chippendale’s furniture art. Just in the XVIII century in Europe, the fashion for all eastern. The sofa is borrowed from Turkey, which in Europe was known in several versions. One of the names of the sofa-Ottomanka-clearly indicates its Turkish origin related to the Turks-Tutomans. Mobile screens are borrowed from China, a completely unusual piece of furniture for modernity. With it, in the buildings of the Rococo era, it was possible to visually change any room, experiment with its forms and sizes.
But the Europeans themselves at that time came up with a lot of new. Secretors, chests of drawers, various kinds of bureaus, offices, etc. D. became an integral belonging of a house in this century, whose owners tried to comply with fashion. In the XVIII century, restaurants appeared in Europe, their popularity is constantly growing, and now furniture workers make chairs for restaurants in full accordance with the style of the Rococo era – with thin bent legs, openwork backs decorated with gilded lining.
Back in the previous century, Europeans met a new direction in art – the creation of gardens and parks. Naturally, in a huge garden, the area of which could be measured in dozens of square kilometers, it was impossible to do without furniture. In vast garden and park complexes, such as Versailles in France or Sheremetyevo in Russia, arbors were built that protected people from the scorching sun or suddenly flying pouring rain. In the gazebos, chairs, tables, benches, stools were placed – all of them were also made in the fashion of the Rococo era. Graceful furniture for the garden, upholstered with a fabric of upholstered colors – light blue, pink, gold – at first glance it might seem to be a toy – after all, the very meaning of the Rococo style consisted in a constant game. He tried to distract a person from life problems and help him plunge into the atmosphere of endless fun. If I may say so, the roco style is similar in spirit to modern glamor.
In the end, this is what destroyed the Rococo era. In France, the former cradle of this style, the great French bourgeois revolution mercilessly dared the layer of society for which this style was created, and then only individual masters turned to the creative heritage of Rococo.