What does the lantern leg mean?

Lantern leg is a typical leg type in Shanghai style furniture.

Lantern leg is a classic leg type of Shanghai style furniture, which is based on traditional French furniture and combined with China folk culture and aesthetic concept. With the introduction and popularization of rotary wood technology, lantern legs came into being.

Lantern legs have obvious characteristics of French traditional furniture legs in Louis XVI period, but they are obviously different from French furniture. It is a modern Shanghai-style furniture designer's "foreign-oriented, Chinese-supplemented" leg shape designed according to customer requirements and combining the trend elements at that time. In other words, the lantern leg in Shanghai style furniture is a typical case of the localization of western furniture leg style.

The lantern legs in Shanghai style furniture are more concise, mostly cylindrical in thickness, which is not found in traditional French furniture; However, there are a few leg shapes that continue traditional French furniture, or square leg elements are spliced at the top or middle and lower legs, but they are simpler than traditional French leg shapes.

Advantages of lantern leg modeling

The modeling of lantern legs downplays the heavy decorative elements of traditional French leg shape, such as abandoning the groove carving on straight legs and simplifying the carved joint between legs and chair surfaces. And emphasize the harmony and unity of decoration and structure, so that the lantern shape and the overall leg shape complement each other.

At the same time, the leg shape follows the concept of materials in China traditional furniture, retains the natural attributes of wood materials, and highlights the texture and emotional expression of the materials themselves. In the modeling of lantern legs, lantern elements have the function of finishing touch, which makes the original simple modeling of legs and feet more exquisite.

Endowed the whole leg shape with the aesthetic taste and cultural connotation of the times, forming a strong contrast of tightness. Its traditional artistic representation solves the difference between western traditional furniture and China local culture, and it is also a manifestation of the transition from modern design aesthetics to minimalist aesthetics.