CategoriesFurniture and Lighting
Chair
The single-person seat with a back, a test piece for designers because structure, body and material meet at a small scale.
14 works · 10 related artists
About
Few objects show a designer's thinking as clearly as a chair, which must carry weight, fit a body and stand on a small footprint. Ancient Greek vase painters recorded the klismos, with a curved backrest and legs sweeping outwards. Ming dynasty carpenters in China built horseshoe-back armchairs of dense hardwood held together by joints alone. In 1859 Michael Thonet's firm produced its No. 14 chair from a few pieces of steam-bent beech that could be shipped flat and assembled anywhere.
The 20th century turned the chair into a laboratory. Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand built in steel tube, George Nakashima balanced walnut on cantilevered bases, Verner Panton cast a whole chair in one sweep of plastic in the 1960s, and Gaetano Pesce and Philippe Starck used resin and polycarbonate to make chairs expressive or transparent. Look at the joints, the way loads reach the floor and whether the chair stacks.
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