Design Impressionism - Coffee Table

In a poetic manner, Design Impressionism rethinks the interrelations of 19th century window glass production against a backdrop of emerging Impressionist painting.

The painting that gave the famous Louis Leroy’s article its title and earned an entire group of artists the designation as Impressionists was Claude Monet’s Impression, Soleil levant.

The artists had painted it in his birthplace of Le Havre, showing a view of the harbor from a window in his apartment. Everything in the pictures flickers and remains indistinct. The motif is merely an expression of the atmosphere or - and this is what we would like to explore in the following - it was exactly what he saw: a distorted image through the imperfections of the window he looked through. 

In the 19th century, the majority of the glass windows were produced though first blowing large cylinders, which were then cut open and rolled out on an iron plate. The quality in comparison to windows as we know them was however rather poor. Large fluctuations in thickness, bums, and inclusions were almost inevitable. The effect of this glass creates a beautiful painting like impressions of whatever is seen through it.