Issuu chair by woohjoo

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THE CHAIR

Eidted by Woohyun Joo

This book is a produced for the Print Production class, Paper Promotion Book project. Summer 2016. The book topic covers a short history/ survey of chairs and their designs. It is printed via a photostatic process, on 80 pound text stock. Avenir was used for the typography for the whole book. The book was bound and finished by hand. Book was designed by Woohyun Jamie Joo. Professor Peter Wong

CONTENTS

1 THE CHAIR

2 EARLY CHAIR

Egypt

Greek

Rome

China

Medieval & Renaissance

Rococo

3 MODERN CHAIR Technology

Construction

Reduction

Organic Design

Decoration

Manifesto

4 CONTEMPORARY CHAIR

Innovation 67

Contemporary Upholstery

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THE CHAIR

The study of chair-making in England would be incomplete without some reference to the skilled crafts, the structural inventions, and the ornamental forms that were developed originally in the ancient worldâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;in Egypt, the empires of the Middle East, and the GraecoRoman civilization. Techniques, like turning and joinery, were known and practiced many centuries before Christ, and while civilizations collapsed and were followed by dark ages of barbarism when the refinements of life were forgotten, crafts were transplanted to other countries where they flourished, so technical knowledge survived, for it was not persecuted or forbidden like other forms of knowledge when the Age of Reason was replaced by the Age of Faith. The survival power of ornament was considerable, and motifs that had first appeared as early as the Fourth Dynasty in Egypt (29002750 BC), could reappear in France and England during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, while ornament associated with or derived from the classic orders of architecture, perfected in Greece and adapted and used throughout the Roman Empire, exerted an influence on the decoration and subsequently on the form of English furniture after the late sixteenth century. A Roman patrician would have found many familiar shapes in the furniture of a Georgian gentlemanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s house, and the sabre-legged Greek Revival chairs of the Regency would have been equally familiar to Pericles or Plato. The design of seats partly depends on the postures adopted for dignity or comfort. Different races have characteristic ways of sitting which seem to have a cultural derivation and have not arisen because of any anatomical differences between Asiatic, stools and chairs.

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Van Gogh's Chair (1888) Oil Painting (91.8 x 73 cm) The National Gallery, London. 18

Top Left A rare round-backed folding armchair in huanghuali wood. Sixteenth-seventeenth century.

Top Right An English George III (1760-1809) gilt-wood open armchair, attributed to Francois HervĂŠ. Carlton House (1783-89).

Bottom Right The Marie France Armchair, by the French designer Martin Szekely. Collection Neotu, Paris

Bottom Left The Mies van der Rohe "M5" chair. Private collection, New York

As a chair brings comfort, it can also take it away. Chairs were favored through the centuries as a means of torture, which, when appropriately outfitted, kept the victim relatively motionless, and at a lower height than the torturer. The most ancient usually were bulky contraptions featuring leather straps and pointed, metallic instruments. More recently, tubular steel and metal project an effient, antiseptic look, culminating in the ultimate torture chair, the electric chair, being a modern invention, created a supposedly clean and efficient way to die; yet paradoxically it burns the flesh and loosen the bowels of its sitter. Chairs range from an emblem of social ease to sheer necessity. Going from show-off to shame is another kind of chair, the trone reserved for bodily functions. Initially lacquered, painted, and decorated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as an object of display, it became a shameful appurtenance during the prudish nineteenth century, and was hidden away. Materials and fashions change, but the human body and its basic needs and aspirations remain the same, even if body measurements have slightly increased. The mother of all chairs, an Egyptian piece surviving from the fourteenth century B.C., is remarkably similar to a contemporary chair. In everyday chairs, the abiding theme of the last two centuries was an increasing attraction towards comfort. In the nineteenth century the Englsih clearly had the advantage. Their comfortable chairs were the envy of most Europeans. The discovery of new materialsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;molded plastic and polystyrene allied with tubular steelâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;reinforced the existing tendencies. Today's ergonomic chairs, sophisticated in the extreme, with adjusting backs, seats, and headrests designed for the new computer age, seem to be a world apart from their ancestors, and yet their extreme complexity makes it hard to accomplish the goal of total comfort for everyone. For all these innovations, the chair is still an object of unease, and therefore it is a very personal choice.

EARLY CHAIR

Egypt

Greek

Rome

China

Medieval & Renaissance

Rococo

Egypt: The Earliest Chairs

Hatnefer's Chair Period: New Kingdom Dynasty: Dynasty 18, early Reign: reign of Thutmose II–Early Joint reign Date: ca. 1492–1473 BC Geography: From Egypt, Dimensions: H. 53 cm; W. 50 cm; D. 42 cm

The chair is of extreme antiquity and simplicity, although for many centuries and indeed for thousands of years it was an article of state and dignity rather than an article of ordinary use. “The chair” is still extensively used as the emblem of authority in the British House of Commons and in public meetings. It was not, in fact, until the 16th century that it became common anywhere. The chest, the bench and the stool were until then the ordinary seats used in everyday living, and the number of chairs which have survived from an earlier date is exceedingly limited; most of such examples are of ecclesiastical or seigniorial origin. Our knowledge of the chairs of remote antiquity is derived almost entirely from monuments, sculpture and paintings. A few actual examples exist in the British Museum and in the Egyptian museum at C wairo. The earliest seats that survive today were made around 2680 B.C., during the Egyptian Old Kingdom (2686-2181 B.C.). Since Egypt’s dry air preserves even delicate materials such as textiles, wood, and papyrus, a surprisingly complete record of Egyptian carpentry can be pieced together from archeological excavation, from which we know that in ancient Egypt design principles were established for many common objects that are still followed today. The Egyptians believed that every living soul was inhabited by a double, or Ka, which could survive after death if the body were preserved in familiar surroundings. Thus, proper burial was essential for happiness in the afterlife. The Egyptians built tombs as houses for eternity, filling them with objects for use after death, including furniture. They made a variety of stools, whose quality depended on the rank of their owners. Most were low, with flat seats of woven rushes, which would have been comfortable to the Egyptians, who were accustomed to sitting on the ground or on low seats.

Low-backed Egyptian chairs, with back and seat joined by a curve. From the upper part of a stele showing the deities Amen-Ra and Mut, and Herakhti and Isis seated at an altar. New Kingdom, 1200 BC.

As skill in woodworking improved, the crude upright supports for seats were carved, for primitive and civilized people alike have a deep need for and love of ornament, and as craftsmen generally go to nature for models, some of the earliest examples represent the legs of animals. Breasted mentions stools supported on carved ivory legs, representing those of a bull, in the First and Second Dynasties of Ancient Egypt, 3400-2980 BC, and for centuries the placid, unchanging Egyptian civilization developed the art of furnishing, evolving a stylized fauna and flora for thrones, chairs and stools, and perfecting such structural inventions as the folding stool, circa 1300BC, it has duckâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s head terminals, inlaid with ivory and ebony, the beaks butting against turned rests, and the seat supports dipped to allow the leather or fabric slung from them to provide a hollow seat.

A very fine example of an Egyptian chair with a curved, sloping back. Eighteenth Dynasty. British Museum

The Egyptian craftsman, whether he worked with stone, pottery or wood, had a totally different approach to materials from his mediaeval European successors. Egyptian artists sometimes escaped from the inert symbolism that imprisoned inspiration and restricted experiments and innovations, and such transient freedom was marked when they depicted lively scenes from life, like the fight of the boatmen, than famous piece of relief sculpture in the Cairo Museum dating from the Fifth dynasty (2750-2625 BC), or the much later painting of fowling in the marshes, from the Tomb of Nebamun, Thebes, 1400BC, in the British Museum.

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Greek: The Standard for Centuries to Come

In Greece the history of chairs is difficult to reconstruct, since its line of development was broken at the end of the Mycenaean period, around 1200 B.C. After that, visual evidence of chairs is sparse until the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., when representations of furniture in sculpture and paintings became abundant. The first cultures appeared on the islands and the mainland of Greece early in the third millennium B.C. Greek chairs present an interesting problem, as they bear no relationship to what we know of Mesopotamian or Egyptian seats of the same period. Feelings for form and rhythm, precision and clarity, and proportion and order were central to Greek art, and they entered in to the shape and ornament of every vessel, painting, piece of furniture, and architectural monument. Greek art was reason made made manifest. There was no extravagance of emotion, no singularity of form, no pursuit of novelty through eccentricity. In contrast to what has been found in Egypt, very few pieces of Greek furniture have come down to us, since in Greece furniture was made for the use of everyone, not just the wealthy. We can, however, rely on representations of chairs on vases, funerary stelae, and above all, in literature.

The gravestone of Xanthipos, showing the decedent seated on a klismos. 430 B.C. British Museum

Kilsmos Chair

In Greece, as in Egypt, the variety of stools was considerable. There were folding stools with soft, leather seats; rectangular stools with boxlike seats; three-legged and four-legged stools; and many more. In addition, of course, all sorts of objects, such as rocks, served as seats for poorer people. The stoolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s height varied, like that of its Egyptian counterpart. Yet, despite the similarities, the Greek stool, like the Greek chair, had a distinct character. Paintings and reliefs depict slaves carrying stools for their masters, often elaborately decorated seats, with either fixed or collapsible legs. The more ancient models were inwardly curving, with animal feet or hoofs, while later versions had plain, straight legs. Although the basic designs of Greek chairs drew heavily on Egyptian examples, the Greeks also developed their own types, such as the klismos and the couch, and these would in turn be adapted by the Romans. Seats for people of means were sometimes carved and inlaid with silver, tortoise shell, or ivory, and the Romans would imitate this lavishness, as well. Turing, inlaying, carving, painting, encrusting with precious stones, gilding, and steam-bending were all practiced, and construction methods were highly advanced. During the later Classical and Hellenistic periods, Greek chairs were increasingly luxurious, and in these late examples we can begin to see the development of the chairs of Ancient Rome.

A kilsmos chair from the Villa Kerylos. The architecture is modeled after houses on the island of Delos; the patterns of the frescoes and mosaics and the designs of the furniture were inspired directly from antique sources.

Rome: A Blend of Old and New

A Roman inlaid iron curule chair, early fourth century A.D.A fine example of a sella curulis, a folding chair used by the highest ranking judicial magistrates of Rome. The iron legs are decorated with geometric patterns on the inside with scrolling vines. The paw feet are bronze.

The Romans admired the Greeks immensely; much of their literature and art was derived from Greek models, and furniture was no exception. In 146 B.C., when Greece finally came under Roman rule, the conquerors adopted even more elements of Greek design than they had earlier. The remains of Roman domestic interiors suggest a life of solid comfort. Little has been found of the Romanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s furniture, since nearly all of it was made of wood and consequently perished, but a few tables, couches, and chairs of marble or bronze survive. To the wealthy Romans, ostentation was more important than comfort or convenience, and they incorporated and enriched forms of furniture from Egypt, Greece, and the Middle East in endless variety to create a luxurious standard of living. The chief materials used for furniture in Rome, as in Greece, were metal, stone, and wood. The metals used were bronze, copper, and iron, which was the strongest and most durable of the three. The most common stones used to make furniture were marble and limestone, which were especially good for exterior use. The collapse of the Roman Empire and the subsequent decline of living standards had a major impact on the function and importance of chairs in Europe for centuries to come. The Western world had to wait several centuries before it again saw the creation of seats of the refinement and sophistication of those of the Roman Empire, whose level of extravagance, in fact, had helped bring about its downfall. Roman couches had the general form of todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s beds, with a platform of cushions carried on turned legs, and were often inlaid, painted, or mounted with metal. The most common form was the long couch with turned legs, dating from the Republican and early Imperial periods. The height of the long couch varied depending on its purpose, since couches served family and visitors alike. A pillow resting at one end served as an armrest, as well.

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China: Beauty and Utility

A Chinese painting on class, c. 1765, of a lady in her study seated on a root armchair, a type of seat associated in China with scholarly and literary tastes. The technique of painting on glass was introduced to China by the Jesuits. Collection Chinese Porcelain Company

China has a diverse population including people of various origins, languages, and cultures, which contributes to the confusion regarding the earliest Chinese chairs. We know that the Chinese were the only people in eastern Asia to use chairs before the eighteenth century; however, as with Greece and Rome, actual examples of antique Chinese furniture are scarce. Chinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s violent history of war, fire, flood, and revolution has severely reduced what might have otherwise remained of wooden furniture. What does remain is precise in design and style, and of excellent execution.

The pursuit of wisdom and the passion for beauty are characteristic Chinese ideals, and seat furniture reflects that marriage of beauty and utility. Since the Chinese regarded furniture and seats as utilitarian rather than as high art, few written works exist on the subject. Unlike European cabinetmakers, Chinese craftsmen never signed or dated their pieces, and kept few records. In China, as in Egypt, tombs provide a major source of information on furniture. Because the Chinese supplied their dead with furniture for the afterlife, actual seats have been found in tombs, including both full-size and miniature models mode of bronze, ceramic, or wood; often the tombs contain wall paintings that show the furniture in use. Archaeological records indicate that the earliest Chinese did not use chairs, but instead knelt on the ground, leaning back on their heels to support their weight. Until the tenth century, kneeling was the most correct and respectable sitting posture, much as it is even today in traditional settings in Japan. Some degree of protection from the cold and damp of the ground was offered by a low couch or mat, on which the sitter would sit very much as he might on the floor. Folding stools spread throughout China during the subsequent Sui, Jin, and Tang Dynasties, although unlike European seats, these folded from back to front. European seats, these folded from back to front.

A Ming dynasty folding chair, once the property of Philip II of Spain (reigned 1556-98). Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid

Easily carried over the shoulder, they quickly became popular for rulers and other dignitaries who were traveling, hunting, or at war. They were also used as garden seats. In China, people often sat on folding stools cross-legged. Later, it became common for sitters to place their legs parallel to the seatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s crossed legs, a position that was not used in Europe since there folding seats opened from side to side. The seats of the oldest Chinese stools were often made of parallel tied cords. Later on, for splendid occasions, a stool might be upholstered with fabric, or cushions might be fastened to it by means of cords and tassels.

A rare round-backed folding armchair in huanghuali wood. Sixteenth-seventeenth century. Only a very few chairs of this type made of huanghuali have survived.

In ancient China, as in Egypt, Greece, and Rome, the folding stool was a prestigious seat and an early symbol of dignity and power. By the late sixth century, models and depictions of stools appeared in tombs of the wealthy, to provide comfort and status in the afterlife. As in most other cultures, stools had many functions, used not only for sitting but to step up to a higher level, or as a small table. Before the Tang Dynasty (618â&#x20AC;&#x201C;907 AD), the predominant sitting positions in the Han Chinese culture and neighboring cultures such as theJapanese Culture, Korean Culture, Turkic Culture in Central Asia and Tai Kadai Cultures to the southwest were the seiza and lotus positionon the floor or sitting mats. The earliest images of chairs in China are from sixth-century Buddhist murals and stele, but the practice of sitting in chairs at that time was rare. It was not until the twelfth century that chairs became widespread in China. Scholars disagree on the reasons for the adoption of the chair. The most common theories are that the chair was an outgrowth of indigenous Chinese furniture, that it evolved from a camp stool imported from Central Asia, that it was introduced to China by Nestorian missionaries in the seventh century, and that the chair came to China from India as a form of Buddhist monastic furniture. In modern China, unlike Korea or Japan, it is not common to sit at floor level.

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Medieval & Renaissance Chairs

A curved walnut "Savonarola" chair. Italian, c. 1550. Chateau of Ecouen.

The collapse of the Roman Empire ended the political stability of Europe, with a resulting drop in living standards that had a lasting effect on the function and the importance of furnishings. The Babarian kingdoms that succeeded the Empire were constantly at war, either with on another or invaders, which led to the development of fedualism. Over the centuries, these wars, together with neglect and decay, took their toll on furnishings of all kinds, so that few examples of medieval chairs have survived from before the fifteenth century. While the wealthy, stable societies of ancient Greece and Rome produced many types of comfortable chairs, the castles and abbeys of medieval Europe were sparsely furnished. The most common seat was the stool, and it remained so until the seventeenth century. Not until the Renaissance did chairs reappear as a normal piece of furniture even in well-off houses; it took several centuries of social stability to restore the notion of comfort to them.

A late-fifteenth-century Genoese armchair, similar to the Spanish chairs illustrated above, although the craftsmanship of the Spanish examples is superior.

The furniture industry grew rapidly in the sixteenth century. One sign of its growth was the fact that turners achieved such importance at this time that they were installed in a speical quarter of Paris, which would be the beginning of the future Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Only in the second half of the sixteenth century did the Renaissance style penetrate England and Germany. English and German seats of this period tend to be somewhat crude. The armchairs rest on coarse, square or turned legs and feature high backs, but these may exhibit rich, flat-carved Renaissance ornamentation. Medieval portable chairs were supplied with loose cushions, as similar chairs were in classical times, and in some instances, according to surviving inventories, were even upholstered. Early accounts suggest that the seats of such chairs were usually of leather, even if covered with fabric; indeed, the craftsmen who made such seats were originally saddlers.

High Style (Rococo): 18th Century Chairs

The rococo style originated in Paris, with the desire for an intimate, pleasing way of living in reaction to the solemnity of the baroque. Its first, exclusively French, phase is known as the Regence Style, a term that loosely describes the transition from the ponderous style of Louis XIV to the lighter, more feminine manner of Louis XV. It embodied an extravagantly free naturalsim, based on curved, irregular forms. The Germanic countries adopted the rococo style for most of their eighteenth century furniture, and it continued in the shapes of German seats long after the classical motifs of the Louis XVI style had been accepted. In Italy, the rococo spirit flourished early in the century. Indeed, many features of the mature rococo found in Meissonierâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s engravings of the 1730s originated in Italy. Thus, there is no clear division in Italy between the baroque and the rococo. The designs of Italian seats of this period are often exaggerated, although their theatrical effects are charming. Venice, still a center of wealth and prestige, led in the production of sophisticated seats, most of which were painted and lacquered.

An English George III (1760-1809) gilt-wood open armchair, attributed to Francois HervĂŠ. It was a cabriolet, or French chair-maker who worked for George, Prince of Wales, at Carlton House (1783-89).

A late-eighteenth century Spanish rococo armchair. Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid

The rococo style in its more fanciful forms was unsuited to the sober taste of English patrons and craftsmen. Also, it is combined with excursions into the Chinese and Gothic tastes. All the foreign elements that had flowed into England during the previous hundred years were finally fused into a distintive national style, and seats became truly English at last. The search for comfort, beauty, and luxury led to the invention of many new forms of seats. Carved sofas of all shapes were created to match delicately painted paneling; the skills of the craftsmen throughout Europe improved, resulting in seats of light construction, elegance, and whimsical design.

MODERN CHAIR

Technology

Construction

Reduction

Organic Design

Decoration

Manifesto

DKR

Name: DKR (Dining Height, K-Wire Shell, R-Whire Base) Designer: Charles and Ray Eames Design: 1951 Production: 1951-67 Manufacturer: Banner Metals, Compton Size: 82 x 48 x 52.5 cm Material: Varnished wire

Charles and Ray Eames demonstrated their fondness for industrial production methods and materials with a technological thrust in their designs for the New York MoMA’s 1948 “Low-Cost Furniture Design” competition. Wire had already proven itself as a material in various bases for fiberglass shells and for the bases of tables. Its delicate transparency and visual lightness combined with high resiliency could now also be applied to the shell construction. After experiments with triangular mesh, a rectangular structure and spot-welding were eventually chosen.

The loose ends of wire were bound at the edge by two thicker wires. Thus the tips of the wires were less sharp and the shell shape was stabilized. This technological innovation was awarded a patent, the first for a mechanical solution for furniture. With its use of a single material form the base and seat the design of the “Wire Chair,” as the “DKR” is also known, offered a holistic appearance, but, like the plastic shell, it was also available in different base options; the most well known is the “Eiffel-Tower Base.”

Donna

Name: UP5 and UP6, Donna Designer: Gaetano Pesce Design: 1969 Production: 1970-3 Manufacturer: C & B Italia, Como, Italy Size: 92 x 117 x 137 cm Material: Polyurethane foam, cold foam-molded, nylon-jersey

“Donna” is completely in tune with the spirit of Pop Art and the Gaetano Pesce fondness for anthropomorphic shapes. The chair was actually designed to resemble a prehistoric, female fertility figure, with a ball attached to symbolize captivity: “In this design I have expressed my idea of women. A woman is always confined, a prisoner of herself against her will. For this reason I wanted to give this chair the shape of a woman with a ball chained to her foot to use the traditional image of a prisoner.” The unconventional nature of the shape also applies to the construction and marketing of the chair which was one of a series of six. Together they succeeded in marking a radical break from traditional upholstery production thanks to the technology developed by C&B Italia for creating oversized foam parts.

“Donna” consists of molded monoblock of foam with without any supporting structure since the “foam rubber” is dense and free-standing. First, a finished piece of furniture covered with elastic nylon jersey is reduced in vacuum chamber to about 10 percent of its normal volume and is then wrapped in airtight foil. The customer can easily transport the otherwise unwieldy piece single-handedly. After removal of the wrapper at the destination, the chair slowly recovers its original shape without outside help as air seeps back into the capillaries of the polyurethane foam.

Wiggle Side Chair

Name: Wiggle Side Chair Designer: Frank O. Gehry Design: 1972 Production: 1972 Size: 85 x 42.5 x 60 cm Material: Corrugated cardboard, fiberboard, round timber

Cardboard furniture came on the scene during the sixties as a cheap and light alternative to traditional furniture. At that time attempts were made to reinforce the support of the single-layer cardboard offered by using folds, tabs, slots, and other devices. Nevertheless, cardboard was not able to compete against plastic, which was just as light. Frank O.Gehry discovered a process that ensured cardboard furniture-making a new burst of popularity.” One day saw a pile of corrugated cardboard outside of my office – the material which I prefer for building architecture models – and I began to play with it, to glue it together and to cut it into shapes with a hand saw and a pocket knife.”

It was thus possible to transform massive blocks of cardboard into cardboard sculptures. Gehry named this material Edge Board: it consisted of glued layers of corrugated cardboard running in alternating directions, and in 1972 he introduced a series of cardboard furniture under the name “Easy Edges.” The “Easy Edges” were extraordinarily sturdy, and due to their surface quality, had a noise-reducing effect in a room. The design theorist Victore Papanek, one of the first to address the ecological responsibility of designer, praised Edge Board as a useful application of a packing material to furniture. The “Easy Edges” were a great success and brought Gehry overnight fame as a furniture designer, but at the same tiem he was into a role he did not like. Even sales prices were no longer consistent with Gehry’s basic idea of offering furniture to suit anyone’s pocketbook. “I started to feel threatened. I closed myself off for weeks at a time in a room to rethink my life. I decided that I was an architect, not a furniture designer… and I simply stopped doing it.”

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Sitzmaschine

Name: No. 670 (Sitzmaschine) Designer: Josef Hoffmann Design: about 1905 Production: c. 1905-16 Manufacturer: Jacob & Josef Kohn, Vienna Size: 106 x 67.5 x 90 cm Material: Bent beechwood, turned wood, plywood, brass

This type of easy chair with a reclining back has been produced since the seventeenth century. After 1860 the company owned by Englishman William Morris, founder of the Arts and Crafts movement, manufactured and marketed this chair. With its stringent, no-frills design focusing only on elementary parts, it probably served as a model for the later designs of Josef Hoffmann. The Arts and Crafts movement, which greatly influenced Hoffmann and his colleagues Gustav Siegel and Koloman Moser in Austria, was opposed to mechanized mass production and what they regarded as inhuman products. The movement advocated an ethic and aesthetic motivated by social concerns, with form, function, material, and production understood as a unity. Around the turn of the century the Jacob & Josef Kohn Company, which produced bentwood furniture to an industrial standard, hired the avant-garde Viennese architects Hoffmann, Siegel and Moser to make their line more appealing to higher-end clients by means of fashionable design.

Hoffmann’s model “No.670” was presented as part of one of his most important projects, a furnished model country home for the Vienna Art Show in 1908. The chair was distributed by Jacob & Josef Kohn until 1916. Here, the admittedly pedestrian form of the reclining easy chair is given a striking mechanical look. The frame construction made of ben squared timber with a frame filled with geometrically arranged pieces of plywood and the semi-circular curves of the rear section emphasize the constructive aspect of the object. The balls which are as functional as they are decorative – a typical detail of Hoffmann’s balance the curved and rectangular elements.

Lounge Chair and Ottoman

Name: No. 670 and No. 671, Lounge Chair and Ottoman Designer: Charles and Ray Eames Design: 1956 Production: 1956 to the present Manufacturer: Herman Miller Furniture Company, Michigan Size: 82 x 83 x 84 cm Material: Bent plywood, rosewood veneer, blackened and polished cast aluminum, leather cushions, plastic, rubber

Like many of the Eameses’ furniture designs, the club chair “No. 670” was the result of Charles Eames’s cooperation with Eero Saarinen in 1940, when both participated in the New York MoMA’s “Organic Design in Home Furnishings” competition. Based on the arm chair exhibited there made of a single piece of three-dimensionally shaped plywood for the seat and back, Eames Office prototypes were created in 1946 using three separate bent plywood elements for shoulders, back, and seat; these were connected by hard rubber discs. Tubular steel and plywood structures were tried out as supports. Don Albinson, who had worked with Eames since 1946, was involved in these earlier experiments as well as on the final version shown here, which was crated then years later. Although it can be easily and completely dismantled using only a monkey wrench, the construction of the chair is more complex than any other chair designed by Charles and Ray Eames. Moreover, it is the most comfortable and

most expensive piece of furniture the couple created. The plywood shells, bent two-dimensionally for the shoulders, back, seat, and ottoman were veneered in the early version with rosewood and later with walnut or rosewood. The leather upholstery, originally filled with goose-feathers and later with soft foam, is completely removable. One special feature of the construction is the connection of the seat to the back. While both back sections are held together by two cast aluminum supports and hard rubber discs, the armrests provide the only connection of the back with the shell and feature washers made of Neoprene. The chair can be rotated on the star-base, but its individual elements are firmly connected to each other. Its inviting soft padding and the generous, well-shaped dimensions offer, at least in conjunction with the ottoman, nearly optimal sitting comfort.

Sacco

Name: Sacco Designer: Piero Gatti Design: 1968 Production: 1968 to the present Manufacturer: Zanotta s.p.a., Nova Milanese, near Milan Size: 68 x 80x 80 cm Material: Removable cover made of lancio, polystyrene filling

“Sacco,” or the anatomic chair, as it is still called today in the Zanotta sales catalogues, symbolizes an unprecedented break with tradition. In an era characterized by the hippie culture, apartment sharing and student demonstrations, the thirty-something designers created a non-chair and thus launched an attack on good bourgeois taste. After negotiations and rejections from the chemical industry, the designers turned to Zanotta with their purist solution of filling a transparent non-rigid PVC envelope with countless pieces of white polystyrene popcorn, resulting in a transparency similar to that of “Blow,” the chair developed at Zanotta the previous year by designers. However, the shell was still not though enough despite measures such as reinforcing it with synthetic fabric and sewing several segments of it together.

Only then did the designers consent using opaque materials, such as canvas, imitation leather, and leather. Because “Sacco” has no fixed form and its loose filling allows it to take on just about any shape, it molds itself to the contours of the body. “Sacco” can be used as a stool, an easy chair, or a chaise longue; it is lightweight and therefore extremely mobile. This unorthodox “furniture” is especially popular among the young and is an expression of unconstrained, relaxed living.

Tulip Chair

Name: Tulip Chair, No. 151 Designer: Eero Saarinen Design: 1956 Production: 1956 to the present Manufacturer: Knoll Associates, Inc., New York Size: 80.5 x 49.5 x 54 cm Material: Varnished fiberglass-reinforced polyester, varnished cast aluminum, foam rubber, textile

The “Tulip Chair” is one of a series of chairs, armchairs, stools, tables, and side tables developed by Eero Saarinen within a fiveyear period. The characteristic feature of the series is that the supporting structure has been pared to a central supporting stem “like a wineglass” in order to emphasize the uniformity of table and chair. “The bases of tables and chairs in a typical furniture arrangement create an ugly, confusing, and restless world. I wanted to design a chair as an integrated whole once again. All important furniture of the past always had a holistic structure from King Tut’s chair to that of Thomas Chippendale.

Today, we are parting ways with this holism with our predilection for plastic and laminated wood shells. In current production methods, pedestal furniture is half plastic and half metal. I am looking forward to the point when the plastics industry will be capable of manufacturing the chair using just one material, the way I have designed it.” The “Tulip Chair” is still produced today in its original form.

Panton Chair

Name: Panton Chair Designer: Verner Panton Design: 1959-60 Production: 1968 to the present Manufacturer: Herman Miller AG, Basel Size: 88.5 x 50 x 74 cm Material: Varnished high-resistance foam

Danish designer Verner Panton is one of the group of designers who broke with the Scandinavian tradition of producing handcrafted teak wood furniture. He shares this distinction with Poul Kjaerholm and Arne Jacobsen, in whose architecture studio he worked from 1950-2. The final version went into serial production in 1968 at Vitra under the label of the Herman Miller Furniture Co. It was made of Baydur, an HR polyurethane foam produced by the Bayer Leverkusen company, and was varnished in seven color. The "Panton-Chair" was thus the first product developed jointly by Vitra and Bayer Leverkusen to be included in the Herman Miller collection. It quickly won fame and became a Pop Art icon.

In the long run, however, the material did not adequately withstand dynamic stress; Vitra discontinued production in 1979 and the license was returned to Verner Panton. The colorful history of the first serially produced cantilever-base chair made of one single piece of plastic includes numerous quarrels as to the true designer. Because Panton had unsuccessfully sought a manufacturer for quite some time, he had already made his ideas available to a limited audience despite the fact that mass production did not seem imminent.

Marshmallow

Name: Marshmallow Designer: George Nelson Design: 1956 Production: 1956-65 Manufacturer: Herman Miller Furniture Size: 77 x 131.5 x 80 cm Material: Varnished steel tubing, aluminum, vinyl cushions

George Nelson is one of the most influential personalities in U.S. design after 1945. As of 1946 he was for many years head of the Design Department at the Herman Miller company, on whose behalf he engaged designers hardly known at the time, such as Charles Eames, Isamu Noguchi, and Alexander Girard. And he was also inspired by other areas of culture: along with his work as an architect, he concerned himself with work as an architect, he concerned himself with ongoing sociological and artistic themes.

Nelson’s “Marshmallow” sofa must be considered one of the earliest Pop Art furniture designs: the transformation of a traditional sofa into a three-dimensional structure made of soft, colored cushioning. The seat and back are supported by a steel construction and the unit has the shape of an axially symmetrical folded-out waffle. Unlike traditional upholstered sofas, it was possible to make it available in numerous colors and sizes thanks to what was at the time a completely novel, additive construction system. However, production required costly labor inputs; additionally, the unorthodox sofa hardly seemed to fit in contemporary interiors.

Toledo

Name: Toledo Designer: Jorge Pensi Design: 1986-88 Production: 1989 to the present Manufacturer: Amat s.a., Martorell, Barcelona Size: 77 x 56 x 56.5 cm Material: Epoxy-coated cast aluminum and aluminum tubing

Jorge Pensi originally designed the stackable “Toledo” chair for the terraces of Spanish street cafes. Today, however, the chair is available in four different versions, and its uses range from gardens via cafes to conference rooms. Lightness and stability characterize both the material chosen, namely cast aluminum, as well as the construction itself. The obvious stability of the chair may have given it its name. The slits, inspired by the slits in Japanese Samurai armor, enable the chair to be used outdoors, as they provide both ventilation and rainwater drainage.

In combination with an artistic, carefully worked out design for the backrest and seat, the “Toledo” slits form a symbolic unity which leaves a lasting impression. The armrests are not an extension of the aluminum tube that forms the front and rear legs, but were instead manufactured using the more expensive casting process. This attests to the effort to give ergonomics and aesthetics precedence over cheaper methods of production. The natural curves of the interconnections of the individual parts and the perforated elements bring to mind the formal idiom of architect Antoni Gaudi, a prominent figure in Barcelona.

Roodblauwe Stoel

Name: Roodblauwe stoel Designer: Gerrit Thomas Rietveld Design: 1918 Production: since 1918 Manufacturer: Gerard van de Groenekan, Utrecht Size: 86 x 66 x 82.5 cm Material: Varnished wood

Gerrit Rietveld conceived of each piece of furniture as an ideal, abstract composition of surface lines in space. The rigor with which he put this into practice makes â&#x20AC;&#x153;Roodblau we stoelâ&#x20AC;? a key object in modern furniture design. The form of abstraction Rietveld adopts here bears comparison to painter Piet Mondrian. Mondrian, and later Rietveld, were among the artists and architects who grouped around Theo van Doesburg and his journal De Stijl, and whose radical concepts had a lasting impact on twentiethcentury art. Both Mondrian and Rietveld reduced given realities to their linear and surface characteristics: where Mondrian took landscapes as his model, Rietveld focused on the concept of a traditional, massive armchair, which he transformed into a geometric entity.

The elements used were excellently suited both for self-assembly furniture and for mass production, as they could be manufactured with the simplest mechanical means and were already available as standardized wood lengths.

B 3 / Wassily

Name: B 3, Wassily Designer: Marcel Breuer Design: 1925 Production: 1926-27 Manufacturer: Standard Mobel Lengyel & Co., Berlin Size: 72.5 x 76.5 x 69.5 cm Material: Cold bent, nickel-plated tubular steel; polished yarn fabric

Steel tubing was first hospital furniture as of about 1890, for car seats by Czech manufacturer Tatra starting in 1919, and for airplane seats in the Fokker plants as of 1924. It was first introduced to home furnishings with Breuer’s steel club armchair, which marked an aesthetic turning point in furniture production as well as the start of an important branch of industry. Although the chair was not a direct product of the Bauhaus workshops, its history is a perfect example of the spirit underlying this influential institution. Industrial production was “the most modern means of design,” as Walter Gropius, the founder of Bauhaus, wrote in 1923 –and thus its economic and aesthetic model. The choice of material and construction clearly place in an industrial context that Breuer expected would lend living a more functional aspect: “This metal furniture is to be nothing more than a necessary device for modern-day living.”

The most important innovation of Breuer’s design lay in reducing the basic design of a heavy club armchair to the basic design of welded steel tubes. The “B 3” also reveals the influence that Gerrit Rietveld’s furniture had on Marcel Breuer’s Bauhus designs, as the position of the seat and backrest clearly evokes Rietveld’s “Roodblauwe stoel.”To a far greater extent than with wood structures, the reflective nickel-plated surfaces of the steel tubes rendered the construction transparent, an effect further enhanced by reducing the surfaces to thin lengths of fabric. Breuer’s ideal, which he formulated in a film from 1926, was to make sitters think they were sitting on “springy columns of air.” The first “B 3” consisted of nine separated welded parts. The seat and back were separate units in a frame consisting of an endless loop of tubular steel, in which both pairs of legs were joined together to form parallel runners that served as the base.

Barcelona Chair

Name: MR 90, Barcelona Chair Designer: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Design: 1929 Production: 1929-30 Manufacturer: Berliner Metallgewerbe Size: 75 x 76 x 77 Material: Chrome-plated steel strip, leather belts, leather cushions

Mies van der Rohe designed the German pavilion and corresponding furniture for the 1929 worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fair in Barcelona. Among other things, his pavilion served as the setting for the inaugural ceremony led by the Spanish royal couple, Alfonso XII and Victoria Eugenia. While Mies van der Rohe implemented his ideas of avantgarde steel and glass architecture for the building design, he drew his inspiration for the furniture from historic models. Mies van der Rohe took as his starting point the ancient, scissors-shaped collapsible folding chair, already a symbol of power among Egyptian rulers. In ancient Greece, this chair represented the throne used by gods and mortal rulers alike, and in the Roman empireâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; served as a magistrateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s chair, curule chair. In keeping with the occasion, Mies van der Rohe adopts the representative qualities of the scissors chair, although he does without the folding function and interprets it afresh.

In order to match the overall impression of luxury in the pavilion, evoked by wall panels made of onyx and marble, as well as delicate, chrome-plated steel supports and stained glass of various colors, Mies van der Rohe chose not to use wood like tha historic models, but instead employed chrome-plated steel strip and white leather upholstery with button stitching. Despite the use of different materials, various features in the construction of the first series bring to mind the model made of wood. At the same time, the volume of the welded points of intersection on the sides was reduced, lowering the need for regrinding and polishing of the welds. Finally, as of 1964, the chrome-plasted steel strip was replaced with polished high-grade steel. A feature common to all variations is the weave of the leather upholstery, which evokes the alternating cross pattern of the slats used in the wood chairs.

CONTEMPORARY CHAIR

Innovation 67 Contemporary Upholstery

Cubica Armchair

Name: Cubica Armchair Designer: “Tito” Juan Bautista Agnoli Design: 2002 Manufacturer: Zanotta S.p.A, Nova Milanese, Italy Material: Painted or chromium-plated steel, polyurethane foam, fabric or leather upholstery

Agnoli trained as a painter under Mario Sironi before completing his studies at the Politecnico in Milan. The Italian-Peruvian designer is now active in Como. He prefers to work on the premises of his manufacturing clients so that he can collaborate directly with the administrators in the offices and the technicians on the floor of the plants. Agnoli and Zanotta, like all designers and manufacturers, wish to achieve wide international sales. However, shipping costs, particularly for pieces of furniture that occupy large volumes, can be expensive. Thus, a collapsible padded chair that occupies a small volume and can be assembled after its arrival at a store is highly desirable. Unfortunately, much of the socalled knock-down furniture being produced today is not upholstered for comfort, has the appearance of being cheap, and lacks a level of high style for which the Italians, for example, have become known.

Agnoli’s aesthetically sophisticated design – the Cubica Armchair – solves the problem so well that, were you to see it on display in a furniture showroom, you would be unlikely to suspect its completely flat knock-down feature. The designer claims to have called on the principles of origami in creating it.

Foomy Chair

Name: Foomy Chair Designer: Markus Benesch (German, b. 1969) Design: 2002 Manufacturer: Moneyformilan G.b.R., Munich, Germany Material: Polyethylene foam and ethylene vinyl acetate foam

A designer with a studio in Munich serving a cadre of international clients, Benesch came upon his idea for a lightweight chair in a circuitous manner. As he relates: “I was a bit tired of packing, unpacking, repacking heavy exhibition pieces. I wished they were made of a different material, and I could just throw them in a truck and, when I opened the trunk again, they would pop out and be ready for display. “Looking at my sneaker sole, I had the idea of employing PE foam as the main material.” He then developed the idea of creating “a chair which is easy to handle and comfortable and also radiates an optimistic aura” wherever it is used.

Concerning his use of foam, Benesch says: "It fascinateds and intrigues me tremendously at the moment. Typically used for flip-flops or as sneaker soles, I am amused by the fact that I can throw these pieces around and they won't break, even when I move my stuff for the tenth time. It won't make any difference to them." Benesch's foam chair—lightweight, buoyant in water, unbreakable, available in a wide color range, and soft—"can't hurt you—no hard edges," he asserts.

Stretched Planes Armchair

Name: Stretched Planes Armchair and Lounge Chair Designer: Khodi Feiz (Iranian, b. 1963) Design: 2002 Manufacturer: Khodi Feiz Studio, Amsterdam, Netherlands Material: Zippered and reinforced nonstretch fabric

Contessa Office Armchair

Name: Contessa Office Armchair Designer: Giugiaro Design (Italian) Design: 2002 Manufacturer: Okamura Corporation, Tokyo, Japan

Giorgetto Giugiaro (Italian, b. 1938) began working at age 17 with Dante Giacosa at the Fiat automobile-styling center in Turin. This was followed by work at the Bertone car bodyworks. In 1968, he established ItalDesign and, in 1981, Giugiaro Design. While best known for his car body designs, he and others of his studio have realized numerous industrial-design commissions. The main features of the Contessa Office Armchair are the sophi-sticated engineering and the transparent mesh for the back and seat. The ergonomic features include mechanisms that allow the user to adjust the user to adjust elements while seated. The design also purports to provide comfort for office workers who remain in the same position for long hours.

The manufacturer conducted studies to determine the most suitable angle, finding it to be 26. Performance studies were also conducted by the Giugiaro Design group. It has been suggested that, owing to Giugiaroâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s background, some of the prototypes reveal the styling of automobiles such as the Aston Martin Twenty-Twenty and the ItalDesign Structura concept car.

Maxima Lounge Chair

Name: Maxima Lounge Chair, Side Chair, and Stools Designer: William Sawaya (Labanese/Italian, b. 1948) Design: 2002 Manufacturer: Sawaya & Moroni S.p.A., Milan, Italy Material: Cholrosulfonated polyurethane, stainless steel, polyurethane coating

Sawaya, who was born in Beirut, worked there initially and then in France, Italy, Japan, Greece, and the US. Almost 30 years ago he settled in Italy, where he established an architecture-and-design practice and, 12 years ago, a manufacturing facility, both with Paolo Moroni. Sawaya designs, and also commissions from others, furniture with a strong visual presence. Michael Graves was one of the first designers to work for his firm. The list of alumni has become quite extensive.

Concerning one of his own designs, the Maxima, he says: "Remember the Jacobsen Chair? It still looks quite contemporary [today and has maintained] its lightness, sleekness, and simplicity through the years." â&#x20AC;&#x153;This was I had in mind for the Maxima Chair but in a contemporary material such as compact polyurethane, combining high resistance, light flexibility, and a folded intimate shape.â&#x20AC;? The polyurethane to which he refers is cholrosulfonated polyurethane (CSP), an elastomer and one of a new generation of plastics with a memoryshape characteristic: that is, a thin profile of CSP will return to its original shape after deformation and not split at stress points.

Contemporary Upholstery

Contemporary black leather living room Chairs ideas by Modern Upholstery Armless of Lounge Chair Design with Chairs Living Room plus brown leather living room chair

The twentieth century saw an increase in the number of upholstered seats, owing to the growing middle class, especially in the West. Comfort became synonymous with quality of life, and lounging on a sofa became an expected part of life. Nowadays, no living room is complete without at least one couch, and the term "couch-potato" entered the vocabulary of late-twentieth-century America as a reflection of common behavior. As developing technology produced new materials for chairs throughout the modern era, chemists created new materials for upholstery, as well. Although the traditional materials of upholstery are still used— springs, slats, hair, and feathers—increasingly they are replaced by foam. Each method has its champions. The Bridgewater, considered the finest chair of the 1930s, was made by the London firm of Howard.Still available with its companion settee, the Audley, this chair is upholstered with springs, cord, hair, and wool in the traditional way. In America numerous catalogues from Calico Corners to Crate & Barrel and Pottery Barn also offer a wide range of classic sofas and chairs put

together in the traditional fashion, using steel coils tied together in eight directions to create a uniform support for each frame. Springdown cushions, in various degrees of firmness, are standard on most frames. Striving for perfection, a manufacturer will use foams, feathers, hair, latex, and springs, each for the job it does best, in a single chair. The New York firm of de Angelis is said to make the best—and the priciest—of sofas of this type. The upholestery techniques developed at the end of the seventeenth century have remained the same, but have been refined with modern techniques. The new upholstery is simpler to make, and is no doubt more hygienic, but it is still doubtful that the new foams willl stand up to wear with the best of traditional upholstery.

Sources Chairs: a history. Eric Himmel, Adrams, 2006. The Chair. John Gloag, South Brunswick and New York: A.S. Barnes and Company, 1967. 100 Masterpieces from the Vitra Design Museum Collection. Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein. 1996-2000 Newchairs: Innovations in Design, Techonology, and Materials. Mel Byars, Chronicle Books, 2006. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_chair en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klismos metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/36.3.152 knoll.com/shop/by-category/seating dwr.com store.hermanmiller.com/Category/Chairs raisenfurniture.com/some-modern-chairsfeatures-for-comfort mahoganyandmore.com/product_closeup