Tuesday 9 October 2012

halltree and hutch

We were passing through the town of Kelkheim, in the midst of the conurbations of Wiesbaden and Frankfurt/Main yet still buffered by farmland and with a detectable difference in character that is not always preserved in suburbia. I thought that this modernist water element in the market square was intriguing—water erupting out of and cascading down a verdigris chest of drawers.
It was not until later did I realize that this public fountain was a connect to the town’s living traditions of carpentry and furniture-making. For unbroken generations, I understand, the community’s talent was a nexus for the furniture business, bringing together quality materials, craftsmanship and shrewd entrepreneurship, having the foresight to equip a population on the transition from rural to city living with affordable furnishings, together. The characteristic pieces of the town’s workshops reflect the equally sensible and canny coming together that mark the era of industrialization, Grรผnderzeit, the Founding Epoch, that created the need for such a profusion in homes and homewares for workers and their families that flocked to the factories seeking work. The furniture is massive and monumental but with an elegance like the architecture of the time, functional and adorned with elements and embellishments of historic movements. The styles prefixed with “neo-,” like Neo-Gothic, Neo-Classic, Neo-Baroque were developed then. It is interesting to appreciate how trends and traditions contribute to one another.