Antiques and the Arts Book Review


Cast Iron Furniture
By Georg Himmelheber
Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd., distributed by Antique Collectors' Club Ltd, Market Street Industrial Park, Wappingers Falls, N.Y., 12590, 1996, pp. 235, $150, hardcover.

Georg Himmelheber, a former curator of the Bavarian National Museum in Munich, examines cast iron furniture from Roman times to Art Nouveau while focusing intently on Nineteenth Century production. "It has taken more than fifteen years of research to bring together the examples presented here," writes the author. "It is hoped that this book will contribute towards filling in the many gaps that still exist in our knowlege of the subject." Himmelheber's comprehensive, scholarly effort has no doubt accomplished just that. After a brief introduction offering a general decorative history of iron, the author launches into a more detailed history of seating, chests and cupboards, and beds, and wrought iron in the Rococo period. The Nineteenth Century is highlighted with a look at Prussian classicist Karl Friedrich Schinkel, who began the wrought iron trend in Germany in 1816. Neo-Gothic cast-iron furniture moves the reader to England, the US and the rest of Europe as designs were created and copied all over the globe in a frenzy of industry. Explorations of naturalism, registered British furniture models, Rococo and Renaissance Revival designs, and "Iron in the House" and "on the Street" precede what is the most intriguing section of Cast-Iron Furniture: the plates. Some 145 pages of black and white images of cast-iron creations from circa 250 A.D. to approximately 1890 are a delight to peruse; moreover, Himmelheber's careful and beautiful selections will be an important resource for collectors and dealers, as will his detailed notes and bibliography.

Cast Iron Furniture

By Georg Himmelheber