Author Description

Since the publication of the book “Modern Furniture in Brazil” in 1994, the result of her master’s dissertation, Cecilia Loschiavo has become a central reference for thinking about the Brazilian material heritage that was constituted by the design activity of the period. The content of this new book is the next chapter in Cecilia’s fruitful academic trajectory – her doctorate, never published in full. Through extensive research on the training of the workforce since colonial times, market characteristics, economic and social factors such as immigration, Maria Cecilia contextualizes the work of four exponents of furniture production in Brazil. The trajectories of Sergio Rodrigues, Joaquim Tenreiro, Celso Martinez Carrera and José Zanine Caldas illustrate the immense creativity, improvisation and resilience in a scenario very different from the European one of the same period. This modernist heritage influenced designers trained from the 1960s onwards, when the first design courses appeared. The current production of furniture continues to emphasize the use of wood and the care of artisanal workmanship, often in pieces executed by the designers themselves. But what the moderns really bequeathed was great freedom of creation and experimentation, even for those who had a more academic and rationalist training.