Is it only ornamental? And why are they usually webbed feet (or at least they are in my experience)?
Cuz looks cool
People used to take pride in their work, and there was a time when consumers valued quality over price point.
You’re never going to walk into a charity shop and find a 100 year old chipboard IKEA wardrobe. Shit is literally made to fall apart and have to be re-bought.
The average worker wasn’t buying a table with carved feet 100 years ago. You’re experiencing survivorship bias.
I don’t know. IKEA makes some great shit. They’re not the problem imo, Wayfair and other crap is far worse
It totally depends what you buy. IKEA definitely does sell crap, so does every other furniture chain store, but not everything is crap. Really depends on what you look at specifically.
Because it’s cool.
It’s known that the more wealth you acquire, the stronger your foot fetish becomes.
It’s known.
Not a problem, just cast yourself in a movie if you have the urge to suck toes (or say the n word).
My n Tarantino
Okay so there are layers to this question:
Why does antique furniture usually have carved feet?
First, antique furniture tends to be the fancy stuff for rich people. Modest furniture made out of a few boards for the unwashed masses usually isn’t considered for preservation, but the fancy shit rich people bought got kept.
Rich people tend to like to show off how rich they are. And one way to do that up until fairly recently was through furniture. Maybe you use exotic wood, but even if you don’t do that you pay a woodworker to waste his life carving useless intricate details like pineapple newel posts or ornate table legs.
The claw-clutching-a-ball design apparently comes from China, it’s supposed to be a dragon’s foot clutching a jewel. The British adopted it in the Queen Anne period because it’s ornate, fancy and
foreignexotic. Rich people get to brag that they got their table, or a taste for the style, “during their travels.” Ball-and-claw feet specificall would fall out of fashion with the Chippendale era though fancy schmancyness would hit an all time maximum, and then the industrial revolution happened.It used to take a skilled artisan to make carvings like that with a chisel. Now, we have duplicating machines that can batch them out dozens at a time. This episode of the New Yankee Workshop shows this off. When building his Lowboy, Norm doesn’t even try to carve cabriole legs, he buys them from a company that makes them, and we get a little footage of the factory. This is why you don’t see the Zuckerbergs of the world showing off ostentatious carved furniture: ornate carvings are commodity items now. You can buy furniture with cabriole legs and arch cornices at any of those big warehouses out by the highway with a “Going out of business forever” sign out front.
Is it only ornamental?
95% yes. Speaking as a woodworker I can tell you, people overwhelmingly like looking at tapered legs. Our own legs taper, so we tend to copy that. From fancy cabriole legs to simple shaker furniture. A flared foot of any kind is mostly ornamental because again our own feet flare out, but there is a bit of a practical purpose: A larger surface area with a rounded edge is easier to slide across the floor than a small, sharply edged end of a board. It doesn’t tend to dig in as much, particularly on carpet. Also, the rounded features are more difficult to chip and splinter.
Why are they usually webbed feet?
It’s meant to be a dragon’s foot, so somewhere between reptilian and birdlike. It is also furniture, not a statue, so it’s rather stylized and not very anatomical. Edit to add, sharp, deep crevices like you get between, say, the fingers of a balled fist, are difficult to carve; The deeper and thinner the crevice, the longer, thinner and more delicate a tool is required to carve it. A craftsman may design around the limitation of the tools he has by, say, making webbed feet rather than trying and failing to do distinct toes.
The claw clutching a pearl is just one variant of countless others. We have furniture from ancient Egypt and Rome which has legs carved as animal feet, so it is not a tradition that stems from the British via China.
I agree with all of this except the part about making things pretty being a waste. Beauty has its own value, although far too often for pieces like this it was more for bragging rights as you said.
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Also plenty of craftsmen make beautiful shit without being rich. Bragging rights is a weird way to say creative effort in that sense.
The artist never gets rich, but his efforts still costs more than the basic stuff.
The artist sometimes gets rich.
Gotta do that from time to time so the others can dream on 😁
Kind of my point, but a set of a dozen chairs like that isn’t so much about creativity as it is cost. Still beautiful imo, although i still prefer more minimalist styles in furniture.
Are you yourself a craftsman?
I craft many things, however I only display my wealth with ostentatious hats I obtain from a madman.
Yeah, see: when you’re looking at these highly ornate antiques, it’s not the wealth of the craftsman on display; it’s the wealth of his customer.
Well tickle me with a feather. Not every nice thing is a cynical display.
When it comes to rich people, pretty much yes it is.
I have been rendered incapable of seeing beauty in ostentatious displays of wealth.
I fucking love it when a specialist with relevant expertise who also happens to be a good writer gives a full on contextual breakdown that’s super accessible, well organized, well informed and a pleasure to read, on a topic I never even thought about. It’s the stuff lemmy dreams are made of.
Me too, but the uber-pessimism spoils it for me.
Don’t mistake me for a scholar, now. I’m a guy with a thickness planer in his backyard shed that’s read a couple books and watched a lot of videos about building furniture. I’m confident I could defend the rank of “enthusiast.”
That said, it is something I liked about Reddit. You could post “Left-handed theoretical psycho-ornithologists of Reddit…” and you’d get at least a few credible answers.
Oh man we certainly do struggle. It’s like all the tools they make for actually doing theoretical psycho-ornithology are right handed! You know what I mean?
Wait a minute! What tools? You’re supposed to be doing theory! You’re a field psycho-ornithologist, aren’t you?
You know, chalk… markers…
Actually, we use quills a surprising amount of the time!
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To be fair the arts & crafts movement priced itself out of the mainstream.
***edit: why tf am I being downvoted for sharing objective fact about the Arts & Crafts movements at the turn of the century? While it transitioned into more of an upscale art in Britain, it did transition into more mainstream mission style in America, yet ultimately World War 1 ended the Arts & Crafts movement in both nations. Eff you turds for downvoting objective fact you anti-intellectual turds. I’m as progressive and anti-corporate as it gets, you undereducated morons.
***edit 2: the parent comment to mine from iamnotafish with 109 upvotes is unequivocally wrong. British/American society did have those problems in the mid-1800s. The Arts & Crafts movement directly intentionally arose as a humanistic pushback against that exact sort of corporate dehumanization.
So here we have an example of a common .ml and others of the tankie triad technique. Come in, make a big fuss about something and the evils of capital society, then bail when they get pushback, in this case even deleting the account.
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That artistry still exists but it costs more. The “products we buy” are cheap mass maufactued products that sell to a broad market. It’s not just a pennies here and there difference.
Although, that can be a reason cheap products become basically disposable and that’s completely lame, agreed.
I 100% guarantee that kind of company would lose customers doing that. Other kinds do add more and more stuff. Compare modern smartphones and cars to older ones.
For all it’s flaws, the present economy is actually very good at making exactly what people want to buy.
the present economy is actually very good at making exactly what people want to buy
Don’t take this personally, but that’s bullshit.
Look at cars and phones as an example. Manufacturers decide what the customers want and then push it on us. No one asked for a phone that doesn’t have a replaceable battery, doesn’t have a headphone jack, has microbezels, is covered in glass so if you drop it you have to buy a new one, or you have to buy a case to wrap it in. No one asked for a car that is sending all of your data to the manufacturer, has a huge-ass touch screen that can’t be customized in any way, has features that don’t work while the car is in motion, lets your insurance company know when you accelerate too quickly, and plays ads when you are at a stoplight.
I’ve been looking at getting a new washer and even those are terrible and require connecting the appliance to a wireless network and installing an app on your phone to get full functionality.
There are VERY few manufacturers of anything out there that actually give a shit about what the consumer really wants, and instead will provide the minimum needed to get the consumer to buy while providing the maximum return for investors.
Consumers are far more cost conscious than they say. A lot of consumers will go for a cheaper product rather than pay more for certain options.
It is the reason why most planes aren’t first class only. The majority of flyers would rather have a cheaper ticket than leg room.
Okay, so this got long, but only because you made so many separate points.
No one asked for a phone that doesn’t have a replaceable battery
Pretty much necessary for waterproofing, makes the design a bit simpler, and most people DGAF about e-waste.
has microbezels, is covered in glass so if you drop it you have to buy a new one, or you have to buy a case to wrap it in.
All aesthetic features that are popular, even if people aren’t aware of where the wow comes from exactly.
The headphone jack is the only forced example here.
No one asked for a car that is sending all of your data to the manufacturer
You’re not the customer, and most people have no problem with being the product. Which is really dumb of them, but true.
has a huge-ass touch screen that can’t be customized in any way,
It’s still a new enough trend that I’m not sure where it sits, but it does come with the advantage of displaying whatever menus you want really directly.
has features that don’t work while the car is in motion,
Liability, I assume.
lets your insurance company know when you accelerate too quickly, and plays ads when you are at a stoplight.
Again, you’re not the customer.
I’ve been looking at getting a new washer and even those are terrible and require connecting the appliance to a wireless network and installing an app on your phone to get full functionality.
Ditto. Most consumers either don’t know/care or actually like whatever shitty “smart” feature. And aren’t tracking their cybersecurity very closely.
In a nutshell:
There are VERY few manufacturers of anything out there that actually give a shit about what
the consumerBob Robertson and CanadaPlus really want,Again, you’re not the customer
I don’t want to create an entire thread arguing because I believe that you value your viewpoints as much as I value mine, but I think this might be the main area where our viewpoints diverge because when I’m buying something, then yes, I am the customer. And when I buy something then my expectation is that I will then own that something and I will do with it as I please.
Yeah. That wasn’t a normative statement, just a descriptive one. We should be the customer, we just economically aren’t. I bet you and me buy the same kind of stuff.
The points I was arguing against in OP are that everything is built worse than it used to be, and that it’s because some group can just decide so unilaterally for personal gain. Some stuff is worse, some stuff is better, but it’s true that regulations haven’t kept pace with technology this century.
Nothing you typed is true. Bob Robertson is right about every point. And I will piggyback off of him and continue to prove him right and you wrong if necessary.
Nothing is being produced for the consumer anymore. We are the Mark. I broke a little plastic gear for turning the chute on my snowblower and cannot buy a 30¢ chunk of replacement plastic. They told us the internet being recategorized as a luxury service instead of a utility service would improve service. It’s gone up in price 5-10x in the fifteen years since, Sucka. Everything is trying to transition you to a subscription service so you will own nothing and be happy, Sucka. Stop carrying water as a useful idiot, Sucka.
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That’s not really a fair rubric. If they add unnecessary stuff it’s bloat, if they don’t it’s cynical cost cutting.
If you were buying your own Chipotle 20 years ago I assume you know what I mean about old cars with manual everything and maybe a radio. The economy cars of the 20th century aren’t even around for me to experience anymore, because they literally fell apart!
I’m still driving mine and would be very reluctant to swap it for a modern enshittified car. I sometimes think of homebrewing my next car (DIY EV conversion of an older ICE car) rather than put up with any manufacturer’s offerings. Who knows.
Good for you. What model?
I’d love it if I ever got the opportunity to experience one. It was kind of a significant thing for a while.
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What about it?
All I said is that they build what people will buy. Sometimes, people are short-sighted about what they buy. And maybe more importantly, landfilling is totally free in most cities, and externalities are not something markets handle well. That’s also why we’re making one-use containers out of our most permanent materials.
People absolutely did that stuff way back when, too. Incandescent lightbulbs are a debated but famous example.
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Yes, there was broad appeal for fine handcrafted goods after the Industrial Revolution, so much that craftsmen were successful enough to make better livings selling higher-priced goods, just as it is today. It was a bit ironic that the Arts & Crafts movement started out “for the people / against industrialization” but soon became high-priced goods for the affluent.
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Or they spent more time on a single piece.
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Yes, top craftsmen would get deeper into their craft for their own personal interests and their previous commercial success afforded them the luxury to become more like—or essentially—fine artists.
Eff you turds for downvoting objective fact you anti-intellectual turds. I’m as progressive and anti-corporate as it gets, you undereducated morons.
Lemmy can suck like that. If you post something that can be misconstrued outside of our tiny Overton window, you get downvotes. Lots and lots of downvotes.
Yes. They shouldn’t even have to purity test like in the second sentence.
We progressives are great at purity tests. IMO it’s part of the reason big tent populists do better than us.
Identity is a strong motivator. Unfortunately, way stronger than any abstract social good.
Your edits make me want to downvote you way more than the initial comment does.
hey man you go ahead and do whatever makes you feel smug n superior inside
No legitimately you’re whining so much about fake internet points and it couldn’t have been after more than a downvote or 2. Just like…care less what other people think dude. It’s fake internet point. It doesn’t matter.
I had seven dislikes from stablegeniuses mad about objective history, go be smug n stablegenius somewhere else plz. I don’t care about dislikes, I’m pissed about straightup Idiocracy, frito.
Calling others smug is clearly projection at this point.
You’ve come across as an unpleasant person and earned every down vote.
Bro I typed that the Arts & Crafts movement priced itself out of the mainstream.
So sorry this happened to you, I hope you can someday recover from this trauma.
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You’re right, this is silly. Appreciate it.
And negative on Vance Land - Louisiana. Very similar gun culture lol
Turn off downvotes for yourself. Much better experience. I never know unless someone is rude then I block them.
***edit: why tf am I being downvoted for sharing objective fact about the Arts & Crafts movements at the turn of the century?
My guess is that it’s because Arts & Crafts is a foundational form of modernism and is thus kinda the opposite, stylistically speaking, of carving ornate feet like OP pictured.
Nah bro. In the US arts & crafts morphed into mission style, which was just straight flat planks at right angles for practical purposes, which I believe is what you are referencing. As I’d mentioned above, in Britain arts & crafts veered heavily toward the affluent with its high craftsmanship. Arts & Crafts also developed into the ornate art styles of Art Nouveau and Art Deco.
Arts & Crafts also developed into the ornate art styles of Art Nouveau and Art Deco.
Those are still modernism! They may be more ornate than than a Mondrian painting or something, but they sure aren’t “ball and claw foot” ornate.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_Crafts_movement :
Some consider that it is the root of the Modern Style, a British expression of what later came to be called the Art Nouveau movement.[4] Others consider that it is the incarnation of Art Nouveau in England.[5]
Also, for that matter, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Nouveau :
The term Art Nouveau was first used in the 1880s in the Belgian journal L’Art Moderne to describe the work of Les Vingt, twenty painters and sculptors seeking reform through art. The name was popularized by the Maison de l’Art Nouveau (‘House of the New Art’), an art gallery opened in Paris in 1895 by the Franco-German art dealer Siegfried Bing. In Britain, the French term Art Nouveau was commonly used, while in France, it was often called by the term Style moderne (akin to the British term Modern Style), or Style 1900.[9] In France, it was also sometimes called Style Jules Verne (after the novelist Jules Verne), Style Métro (after Hector Guimard’s iron and glass subway entrances), Art Belle Époque, or Art fin de siècle.[10]
Art Nouveau is known by different names in different languages: Jugendstil in German, Stile Liberty in Italian, Modernisme in Catalan, and also known as the Modern Style in English.
Jfc your links agree with everything I’ve typed here. I know justabit about modern art movements. And that foot carving pictured in my opinion is strongly reminiscent of nouveau/deco sculpture and imagery.
Did they? People want to spend $100 on a chair, but a nice carved and finished one by hand will take 20 hours to make and $50 in supplies.
I wouldn’t say they priced themselves out, it’s more that you can’t economy-of-scale a small business in your living room. You can’t beat Amazon at its own game.
Yes and no. Part of the issue is that more people wanted more stuff cheaper. These items were expensive, and paying for a few more hours of work didn’t substantially effect the price, so they did it. Now, that amount of added work would probably cost the same as the enitre item before it’s done, so they don’t do it.
When price becomes the primary component of shopping, items become cheaper and craft work becomes (as a ratio to the total cost) more expensive. It’s not worth the effort unless you’re paying thousands of dollars for it, which those items are still being made but we aren’t the customers for them.
Because look at those cute little footsies
Decorative flourish for the most part. A lot of that old stuff was crafted by hand rather than a machine so it tends not to be designed for mass production.
A foot like this is a blend of decorative and functional, imo.
You end up with more surface area than if you had just gone with a straight column, and that helps with stability, slightly lessens the pressure.
Many modern tables or desks have… much less ornate footpad type structures, if the thing itself is quite heavy, or intended to hold a decent amount of weight.
Of course… I have no way of knowing if this old… desk? table? whatever it is, was intentionally designed with that in mind, but the function is still there, at least to some degree.
The metal ones were quite often mass produced by casting, like in claw-foot bathtubs. Probably in imitation of older artisanal pieces, which were already antiques in, say, 1910.
Casting I would say is kind of a separate deal. You can still find somewhat ornate cast things today, although more often it’s injection molded plastic coated in paint.
You could do this kind of thing with wood in a CNC machine, but more often it’s just some straight cut or moulded particle board stuff with no life in it.
That design is known as “Ball and Claw”. It likely originated in the east with some symbolism, but when it went west, craftsman thought it looked cool and started copying it with minor changes.
More info: https://www.furniturelibrary.com/use-of-the-ball-claw-design-motif/
Thanks! I find the mythological aspect of it fascinating. I’m sure there’re other interpretatios, but from the site you shared
Almost all historical sources believe that the Ball & Claw design was derived from the Chinese: a dragon’s claw grasping a crystal ball, or a pearl, or sometimes a scared, flaming jewel. In Chinese mythology, the dragon (Emperor) would be guarding (with the triple claw foot) the symbol (ball – for wisdom, or purity) from evil forces trying to steal it.
Another interpretation is that the ball symbolizes a polished river stone being held firmly by a crane, who stands diligently over her nest. Resting on one leg, with the stone held in mid air by the other, the mother crane watches over her young and would quickly awaken if she were to fall asleep and drop the stone.
Pfft, look at this person giving an actual answer. Jokes, opinions and political rants only. /s
Cause it’s freakin cool
Because they have legs.
…what about their legs? They don’t need those…
Looks like wood is back on the menu, boys!
Lol 😂
Also because SURVIVING antique stuff is still here because it is fancy and well made.
Plenty of cheap shit was made at the same time and long ago burned in the trash pile.
With all 4.5 children inhaling the lead paint fumes wafting off of it, or something like that. Ahh, the old days.
They are the children of Baba Yaga’s house.
Fables vibes
Because it hurts less when you hit your foot against it when going to the toilet during the night
As for why webbed, because it was easier than carving the toes out completely, and probably more stable.
I agree that stability, durability and ease of manufacture were the likely reasons.They probably weren’t intended to be seen as webbed feet though. More likely they’re meant to depict taloned claws clutching a sphere.
