The origins of modernist design can be traced back to the Industrial Revolution and the birth of mechanized production. The length of time a piece took to create was often a measure of its value and desirability. Prior to the modernist design movement, there was an emphasis on furniture as an ornament.

The goal of modern design was to capture timeless beauty in spare precision. Modernist design was able to strip down decorative elements and focus on the design of the object in order to save time, money, material, and labour. With the machine aesthetic, modern furniture easily came to promote factory modules, which emphasized the time-managing, efficient ideals of the period. It is perhaps the most fundamental contrast between the two periods of design that in 1900 the Decorative Arts possessed .' 'Today industrial design is functionally motivated and follows the same principles as modern architecture: machine-like simplicity, smoothness of surface, avoidance of ornament . As Philip Johnson, the founder of the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art articulates: This shift from decorative to minimalist principles of design can be attributed to the introduction of new technology, changes in philosophy, and the influences of the principles of architecture. The forms of furniture evolved from visually heavy to visually light. Dark or gilded carved wood and richly patterned fabrics gave way to the glittering simplicity and geometry of polished metal. There was an opposition to the decorative arts, which included Art Nouveau, Neoclassical, and Victorian styles. It was a tremendous departure from all furniture design that had gone before it.

Post- World War II ideals of cutting excess, commodification, and practicality of materials in design heavily influenced the aesthetic of the furniture. Modern furniture refers to furniture produced from the late 19th century through the present that is influenced by modernism.

Three versions of Marcel Breuer's ' Wassily Chair'

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