The furniture designs of C.F.A. Voysey, part 1: 1883–1898

The best of Voysey's furniture is as well known as his architecture and is highly regarded in design circles, with many major museums of Decorative Art holding representative examples. Above all else, his pieces are praised and valued for their simplicity of design, exquisite proportions and exemplary craftsmanship. In today's secular society it is all too easy to impose our own values and perceptions - primarily aesthetic - on these, the products of a relatively recent past. In the case of C F A Voysey this would be a mistake. Voysey's own extensive writings on architecture and design make clear that he viewed his creations as having two, interdependent but equally important aspects: the moral and the aesthetic. Counselling against judgement based purely on aesthetic grounds Voysey wrote: "Some would have us silence our reason and drink in the sensuous beauty as we often do our food, for the mere pleasure of being pleased; so feeding, not as a means to an end, but as an end in itself. Rather should we approach the works of men in all time, intelligently seeking the higher motive of their action".