Chair we go again! - VIDEO
WE take them for granted as functional pieces of furniture... yet few homewares capture the imagination of designers quite like chairs.
Throughout the decades, chairs have taken many iconic forms.
Now a touring exhibition, A Century of Chairs, traces the history of modern design through the evolution of the chair.
The exhibition, at The Gallery@The Civic in Barnsley, features more than 75 classic chairs from the Design Museum Collection, each illustrating a landmark in aesthetics, functionality, materials, production technology or sustainability.
The chair has long been a focus of experimentation for modern designers, from Michael Thonet's discovery of how to mass manufacture bentwood chairs in the late 19th century to Marcel Breuer's pioneering use of tubular steel at the Bauhaus in the 1920s, to the plywood innovations of Charles and Ray Eames in the 1940s and the pop inspired plastic chairs of Verner Panton and Joe Colombo in the 1960s.
"There's a fine line between art, craft and design," said David Sinclair, Exhibition and Education Coordinator of The Gallery @ The Civic.
"We can look at some pieces and they're definitely a sculptural art form rather than a functional four-legged chair."
He added: "People find it interesting when they can see the history of the chair and its evolution all the way from 1800 to 2000.
"I think people are enjoying this exhibition because they can look and say 'Oh my parents used to have a chair like that' or 'How on earth can you sit on that?'"
Some of the design classics include:
The Panton Chair, 1959-60, by Verner Panton (1926-1998)
Made from Polypropylene (HR polyurethane foam) in Vitra, Switzerland
Designed in the late 1950s, the Panton Chair was not put into production until 1968 because of manufacturing difficulties. Verner Panton was inspired by the freedom of designing in plastic. "I try to forget existing examples, even though they may be good, and concern myself with the material," Panton once said.
The result rarely has four legs.
Fibreglass felt chair, 1989, by Marc Newson (1963-)
Made from Fibreglass and steel in Cappellini, Italy
An important inspiration for Marc Newson's early furniture designs was the D-I-Y culture of surfing enthusiasts who made their own surfboards in his native Sydney. Newson refined the fluid silhouette of the surfboard into the hourglass form.
Mezzadro stool by Castiglioni
Made from beech wood and steel in 1954. Re-issue by Zanotta, Italy.
The Castiglioni brothers presented their first prototype for the Mezzadro, or sharecropper, at the Tenth Milan Triennial in 1954. This is one of a series in which the brothers incorporated found industrial objects – such as a tractor seat and a cycle wing nut – in their designs. Radical for its time, the Mezzadro was not put into production until 1970.
Universale stacking chair, 1965-67, by Joe Colombo 1930-1971
Made from Polypropylene in Kartell, Italy.
Throughout the 1960s, Joe Colombo and a new generation of Italian designers pioneered the use of plastic in furniture as part of their pop aesthetic.
The first adult chair to be made entirely of injection moulded plastic, the Universale had a hole in the back through which it could be prised from its mould.
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Sheffield
Saturday 26 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 11 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 14 mph
Wind direction: East
