Trend spotting-Decorative Upholstery Tacks

Upholstery Tacks as decorative purpose

Adismara Kirana Prasetya History of Furniture Sheila Edwards

Upholstery tacks are short, sharp pointed nails that used to secure upholstery fabric to a furniture. It is kind of similar to the shank nails that used to secure building materials to concrete blocks just with a different size and shape.

Nails it self with its different sizes started being use from pre-history or more specifically around Ancient Egypt Period.

The oldest meaning or the use of words tack is mean ‘nail or other fastening’ (14th c.), which is comes from Old Northern French taque, a variant of Old French tache ‘nail, fastening’.

Thus with this information, it is possible that the first ever use of tacks would be around 14th century if not, earlier.

Upholstery tacks it self started being used around the Renaissance period (1400-1600) with the growth of furniture design and the beginning of the use of upholstery.

Upholsters started being used around the middle ages after the end of dark ages when people started to search for comforts. But At that time upholsters are movable or not attached to the furniture until aound late 15th century, which is early Renaissance period.

The basic upholstery tacks nowdays are iron or steel, configured with a flat head and it’s sharp pointed. Have several size and ideals to use for projects such as attaching protective mesh on the underside of a chair or sofa, securing upholstery maaterial and many more. Before it used brass as material as these tacks would be used where corrosion may be an issue.

Upholstery tacks have three purpose. The first would be as functional, second is decorative and the third would be the combiation of the first and the second.

Upholstery tacks as a functional purpose would be use to attach the padding and fabric to furniture. As decorative would mean that the tacks would have visual aesthetic and it would be added only for decorative purpose, that means that it added after the upholstery already attached to the furniture with iron nails. The cmbine of the two would means that the tacks have visual aestethic and interest but it’s also used to attached the upholstery.

In this chance, we’re going to get to know

Nowadays, many designers use tacks as functional with decorative aspect but most of them use it only as a decorative purpose. Many of those decorative tacks that are fakes. Some of them are real of course but if they only want to use it for decorating the furniture then they will use a fake one.

In this time, these tacks have much more range of shape of the head.

In the past, there used to be only 2 or 3 shape and they would associate it with that time period popular motifs. But now, with the technology and many materials supply, we can have many shape of stack head.

Real tacks will simply shaped like tacks with the head and the shank per tacks. There are many type of fake tacks.

One consits only of the heads and it’s produced in strips so from one head to another would connect.

In this strip decorative tacks usually every few nail head there wil be a ‘nail head base’ with a hole where we could nail one tack to hold the strip down. There is also a nother type of fake decorative tacks or nail head where it have a strip of cloth glued with decorative nail heads so we could just apply it, glue or stitch up the strip cloth to any furniture that we want to decorate. This strip decorative head would easily make a straight and curve line if we apply it and there’s no need to be concern with the spacing. Of course there would also fake upholstery tacks with just the decorative nailhead that could be glued to any surfaces.

Interestingly, many designer now use decorative upholstery tacks everywhere and apply it to many things. Decorative upholstery tacks now not just being used to decorate and also functionally attached upholstery to furniture but it also being used to decorate many accessories and many other things that doesn’t even have any upholsters to attatch it to. Designer use it to other things beside upholstered furniture would classify as fake upholstery tacks. But they would just call it decorative nail head because it’s more global and that also means that they could use it to many things and not only just upholstered furniture.

Some designers say that using these decorative tacks would be as if giving some pretty jewellry to the furniture and accessories. Others would say it’s for accent or as outline and it’s also a different way to gives pattern to many things. Instead engrave the wood or paint it or doing it in any other way, they would use decorative tacks and make a pattern for it. The shiny tack heads with many shape would make a really good accent for many furniture or accessories pieces. It could make it look more elegant or even classy and people love it.

Trend Spotting Upholstery Tacks

This stool used some decorative upholstery tacks along the edge of the stool base to decorate it in every side. With this stool being applied some tacks, it gives more distinction of the shape of the stool base especially along the curve side. This simple stool become more elegant with the shiniy tacks.

We can actually see it that these tacks that being used are added after the upholstery and fabric are attatched. they purely add it for decorative purpose. So does with the other furniture.

Along the edge of the rug, we could see two lines of tacks being used. These are deffinitely fake tacks because the rug is actually movable. Thus it means that they used some decorative head tacks and glued it to the rug as an accent. But it also looks like it makes some new borders in the rug it self and it actually give impression that this rug is actually fixed to the floor when it’s not.

Again with the fake tacks but this time they use it to dacorate an accent pillow. It’s as if the pillow have many pearl on it. The plain pillow become more flashy in an elegant way because of the pattern that they u s e .

From the cabinet, we could see the use of the tacks on top of the strip leather making square pattern around the edge of the top and bottom cabinet and also on the surface of the drawers. It also makes the drawer show with it applied. Here we could see that they try to apply the tacks to a surface other than upholstered surface although they still add the leather underneeth the tacks.

The arm chair next to it also used some bigger size tacks along the edge of the outside part of the arm chair. It looks more like an outline for the dark colored leather that they used. It’s the same with the bench image under it.

For the sofa though, they only apply it to the edge corner of the sofa back and the inner front side of the arm as an a c c e n t .

This cute little case are covered with leather and they used the tacks as decorative accent and glue it to the surface so it won’t make it look plain. The designer didn’t put it on every surface side so it just seem decorated enough. One line on every edge.

This drum look side table also have some tacks around the top. It’s as if it makes some border to seperate which part is the top and which one is the base or bottom. The tacks are coated in the same color paint as the top but because of the material of the tacks itself, it looks more shiny. The pattern would make some lines around it and pointed upwards in every 4 point of the circle as if it has four side.

These case goods have many tacks decorating it. The box like side table that also function as a storage have many tacks in every surface of the box along the line making the pattern of the box more show.

The cabinet have the tacks only on the front and on eachs door drawers front surfaces.

On both case, the tacks are applied directly to the wooden surface without any fabric or any kind of upholstery to attach to.

The Use of Upholstery Tacks Trough Period Renaissance Period The use of upholstery tacks started in Renaissance period where in this period people started to use many upholstered furniture as the demand for comforts keep on growing. The furniture makers at that time started to use it as a functional purpose but they applied it exposed to be seen by many people as there was limited knowledge about attaching upholstery to furniture.

The first ever fixed upholstered furnitures are chairs using leather to cover the seating.

They have difficulty to attached the leather to the seating because of the characteristic of leather and they solved it by using brass tacks to hold the lather in every corner and edge of the material. They use it mainly for chairs or stools. Later, they started to use many materials besides leather and attatched it to the furniture.

Dantesca chair.

Sedia chair.

Dantesca chair.

Baroque and Rococo Period In this two period tacks also used many times to decorate the furniture. Especially to Louis XIII, XIV, and XV furniture or chairs. Around Louis reign, Craftmen use decorative nails or tacks to secure the upholstery. This is also the time where most luxurious furnishing were coveted. Tacks with it shines could give of some elegant and luxurious feeling because the just looks like jewellry.

Louis XIII chair

Louis XV fauteuil

Louis XV bergere

Louis XIV chair

Neoclassical Period Around this period, decorative tacks are not widely used just like in the renaissance period and Baroque, Rococo Louis furniture. They used it on some chairs but mostly they used it on old dutch, spanish and english furniture. We could see most of them on Jacobean furniture. They usually used a large brass tacks around 1 inch in diameter.

Altough you could see it from the happlewhite chair image, they started to use the decorative tacks in some pattern to decorate the chair more. It’s starting to have more exploration in applying the tacks not just apply it along the edge of the chairs anymore.

Happlewhite side chair

A pair of William and Mary dining chair

Jacobean stool Jacobean Farthingale chair

Victorian Period We could see it again in victorian period the use of decorative upholstery tacks. Just like before, they use it to attach the upholstery to the frame and also as decorative aspect. Thus they applied it along the edge of the chair or furniture.

Although as we know, victorian era is where there are many historical revival is. That include Renaissance revival.

Renaissance is the period where the use of upholstery tacks first being used thus in this victorian era, there are many Renaissance revival furniture that also used decorative tacks to the furniture that they produced.

Side chair, England

Pair of Renaissance Revival Chairs

Renaissance revival arm chair

A late 19th century Renaissance Revival medallion back sofa

Art and Craft Period In Art and craft period, not many furniture that would used decorative tacks are leather covered furniture. The person that would really love to use decorative tacks for his leather covered furniture would be Gustav Stickley. he applied it to almost all of his leather covered chair, table, and stand.

Gustav Stickley library table with hexagonal top.

Gustav Stickley Magazine Stand

Gustav Stickley library table

Gustav Stickley arm chair.

Art Nouveau Period In this period, again, not many furniture used decorative tacks. There’s this one designer, Paul Hankar. he have many leather covered furniture wich he would attached it with tacks.

It’s possible because the leather that he used are thick and wide and make it difficult for him to attach it to the frame thus he decided to use tacks.

Paul Hankar chair.

Paul Hankar taboret chair.

Paul Hankar rocking chair.

Paul Hankar swivel chair.

Art Deco Period There are some furniture in this period that would use decorative tacks but it’s so rare. One of the furnitue wouldbe Pierre Chareau arm chair.

There are also pair of French Art Deco arm chairs by Andre Sornay.

In Pierre Chareau chair, he used leather for the seating and decorate it with tacks in every edge of the chair. It’s also the same with Andre Sornay’s chair although he used fabric as upholstery c o v e r i n g .

But from the picture, we could see how decorative from the arrangement or where the tacks are. With Pierre Chareau chair, there are tacks right on the upper side or surface of the arms while Andre Sornay’s it looks more functional than decorative.

Pierre Chareau arm chair.

Andre Sornay’s arm chair

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