1989: designer's complaint department.

Editor's note: Furniture designer O.B. Solie had his tongue firmly stuck in his cheek when he came up with his spoof on design terms.

I hate RTA/KD. I hate all put-togethers--they never stay together. Hate those cam locks and fixes, 32mm construction --they're too practical. Hate glue-less dowels and metal pins. Hate how long it takes to assemble something. Hate the sound of the word "kaydee," it's a downer. Hate RTA, which also means rapid transit authority. Like AHA!, which means at-home-assembly.

I hate contemporary. The word is made up of two bad parts. The first syllable, "con," implies that you are being conned. "Temporary" means that the design will not be long lasting. Hate the fact that it has no history and is a revision of another middle-of-the-road idea.

I hate Early American. It's not that early and it's not all-American; it's mostly English. I hate those maple-syrupy finishes. I hate a camel's back and those people who would walk a mile for a camel's back. I hate those corny, fat turnings and those meaningless shaped overlays. I hate the 14 or so pieces of hardware in multiple sizes strewn across the case fronts, the fake drawers and the bun feet.

I hate Eurostyle. It's too slick, too shiny, too much of an industrial designer look. It, of course, fostered Memphis, which is neither furniture nor art and should be termed "furnArture." It belongs in museums and not in home environments. The polyester and polyurethane lacquers and bright finishes should be confined to automobiles and housewares. Hate those outer-space looks. Let the Europeans have their Eurostyle. I love Amerostyle.

I hate southwestern. If you want to live in an adobe structure, that's fine. But who wants to tear into terra cotta. Hate those sun-washed, bleached, limestone finishes. Hate the zigzag, crude aprons--an art deco look--and the Indian motifs. Hate the country details, the sandblasted surfaces. They have dug up all the themes of the past that were better left underground. Hate the faded flame patterns on the fabrics.

I hate modern. I used to love modern because it had visions of the future built-in. It combined materials like wood, glass, mirror, metal, marble, stone and leather. All honest materials, no fakes. It was the most inventive category; it had such dramatic and simple statements of design. Now we have post-modern, ultra-modern, psychedelic-modern and neon-modern. We also have modern with broken edges, the deconstructivists, chatter edges and high-tech modern, which is built like the United Air terminal in Chicago. Now, modern sofas and chairs are so muscled up, they look like they're on steroids. It's too scary and too rood.

I love this design business, the terminology, the markets, the people, the industry. The above is all in jest. I really like good design. I just hate that there is so little of it.