At the beginning of the 20-th century the Kaunas furniture factory as well the Jonava furniture factory provided inhabitants of Lithuania with furniture. They produced it out of foreign or local timber. Many pieces of furniture were imported from Poland, Germany, Czechia, Latvia. Trade school students, to-be joiners, carried out orders. Small private furniture workshops were operating in towns and townships. Forms of historism and modern (otherw se called “art nouveau”, “secession”) were popular with cabinetmakers.The Exhibition of Furniture and Textile of 1900 in Vilnius exposed furniture of different styles. Sets of furniture were produced according to catalogues of westeuropean firms MAPLE, OCTZMANN, BRUHL, brought to Lithuania beforehand. Village cabinetmakers produced simple, functional furniture, without any stylistic elements.
Artists Antanas Jarosevicius, Tadas Daugirdas, Petras Rimsa designed some separate pieces of furniture before World War One. Their angular silhouettes reminded of forms of jugend, the German variety of modern, meanwhile much-ornamented armchairs and chairs by P. Rimsa had traits of Lithuanian folk art.
In twenties-thirties towns rapidly grew in Lithuania. Flats and public premises were flooded by furniture of serial production making town-dwellers’ homes similar. For design of public interiors, tenders were invited. In thirties artists Antanas Gudaitis and Gerardas Bagdonavicius earned fame as furniture designers and interior decorators. Forms of their furniture based on art deco style fashionable in Europe and folk style elements propagated in prewar Lithuania. In late twenties Jonas Prapuolenis (1900-1980) started his creative way. Furniture of thirties by J. Prapuolenis was solid, functional, of constructive or inswept forms. Construktyvism and stylization of silhouettes were related to art deco style. Striving to convey folk style to furniture, the artist used proportions of Lithuanian folk furniture, its constructional devices, decor elements.
In forties-fifties furniture was produced as well by factories of wooden articles, various small enterprises. Production of Lithuanian furniture acquired ever vaster dimensions. At that time the Kaunas Applied Art School and the Telsiai Applied Art School trained furniture artists of high education. For development of more contemporary style, in 1957 the Furniture Design Bureau was established in Vilnius (since 1959 the Experimental Design Bureau at the National Economic Council), which worked out typical designs for all Lithuanian industry of furniture. Architects and artists cooperated creatively in this Bureau. In fifties many unique pieces of furniture were designed by Jonas Virakas, Simonas Ramunis, Algimantas Nasvytis and Vytautas Nasvytis, Sofija Rimantiene.
Art exhibitions of forties-fifties exposed many small wooden articles: decorative plates, small boxes, containers, souvenirs, and adornments made of wooden pieces with amusing texture. Authors of these articles worked in art factories DAILE. Wooden small boxes, dishes, decorative plates by S. Rimantiene distinguished for tastefulness and artistry. They were chamber-type, of laconic forms, reserved decor. The artist avoided fashionable ornamentation. Her articles were decorated by metal incrustation of simple vegetative pattern, carved geometric ornament matching to form of dish.
Between 1961 and 1975 the demand for furniture jumped, due to growing construction of flats. Furniture was produced by wood processing factories and furniture factories, operating in all bigger towns of Lithuania. The Furniture Design Bureau established in 1957 in Vilnius was engaged in designing of furniture for large-scale and serial production. Architects and designers of the Bureau paid a great respect to new technologies and aesthetic norms of that period based on functionalist conception. Furniture had to be functional, of rational construction, laconic forms, made out of new materials, mobile, assembled of unified parts, matched to architecture of typical dwelling. Ornamentation was almost not used. Structure was conceived as an aesthetic valuable.
Furniture designed by architects of the Bureau was exposed in exhibitions of applied arts of discussed period. More interesting were pieces of furniture by the Stapulionis, Lygija and Algimantas, Liucija Zaveckiene, Valerija Cukermaniene, Eugenijus Guzas and L. Stapulioniene (1974) and furniture for the Vilnius Palace of Marriages by E. Guzas (1975).
Jonas Prapuolenis (1900-1980) was probably the only designer of unique furniture. At first he designed furniture in folk stylistics, but gradually estranged himself from direct citations of folk art. His furniture of that period was in particular graceful, light, mobile, made mostly of light wood, almost without ornaments. Tendencies of functionalism dictated laconic and reserved forms. Only some hints (backrests, construction of table, general folk furniture proportions) reminded of folk prototypes.
For premises furnished in national spirit, many wooden sculptures, panels, wooden partitions and other wooden articles were designed to convey folk coloring.
From 1976-1990 unique furniture almost wholly vanished from exhibition halls. The Furniture Design Bureau in Vilnius, the only institution of that kind in Lithuania, continued designing furniture for serial and large-scale production. Versus furniture of sixties, the successive period distinguished for more comfortable, not so ascetic, more individualized appointments.
In the discussed period decorative wooden articles were less applied in interiors.

Lilijana Nataleviciene
Translated by Marija Valiene