Michael:
Thanks for the heads up on the article. I totally agree with her assertion that, to paraphrase her, there's not much new under the sun. I think "creativity" is actually just synthesis - putting things together in a new way, all the components/parts already existing.
But, rather than styles, which do come and go and come back again, I'm interested in the underlying commonality - the proportions, the symetry or asymetry, the wood selection, grain orientation, the visual flow of the design and its execution, the selection of joinery to literally and figuratively tie all the pieces together to make a whole rather than a group of parts. The goal, as she stated, being to make pieces which transcend style.
The question is - what are the commonalities of the various styles and why do they work? I still think there are universal, brain stem level components and some culture specific components to "transcendent" pieces. Identifying them is the hard part.
BTW-in an earlier post I mentioned some of the "trcks" visual artists use to catch and hold the viewer's interest. One was the spiral. A recent issue of Fine Woodworking had a pharmicists drawers inspired piece that was obviously and intentionally asymetrical with an underlying spiral viewing path, lead by the drawer pulls. I don't know if the latter was intentional but the pulls do lead the eye along a spiral path rather than jumping around between the asymetric groupings of drawer faces.
charlie b