Chairs, Chair Design and Chair Designers
A collaboration between Nienke Klunder and Jaime Hayon back in 2009, this giant purple rocking sausage chair is made in an edition of only 8 – as seen on Design Milk. Thoughts? I’m wondering if it’s sold out by now.
Found this photo of an early Westport Chair somewhere on the web. Also found DIY instuctions at This Old House‘s site, maybe to peruse myself.
The Westport Chair was first built by Thomas Lee of Westport, New York, for his family home, but it was Harry Bunnell who patented the design 5 years after Thomas built it and produced it until the 1930ies.
Above dilapidated Chandigarh chairs. Below restored ones
Indian officials had looked 50 years or so to the rather raw furniture designed by Pierre Jeanneret who, in collaboration with his cousin Le Corbusier (Charles Edouard Janneret), had designed the city of Chandigarh. So what happens with old furniture? You try to sell it or you throw it away as trash. Until a clever Frenchman, Eric Touchaleaume, came along who assessed the true value of the furniture and started to buy dilapidated furniture from the local auctions and take it from the various junkyards. He restored the furniture in top condition. He wrote a book about it. Organized various prestigious galleries to showcase his finds and offered the furniture for sale by prestigious auction houses. And there and then it became apparent that Chandigarh was losing an important collection of original design and architecture and started people claiming that he was looting and robbing Chandigarh…other people would call it clever marketing…
When you take a close look at the dilapidated Chandigarh chairs and the mint condition ones you will agree with me that although raw, the design has been exceptionally sturdy. The chairs have survived 50 years of uninterested use and can be beautifully restored.
As Patricia Urquiola was the Curator of trends for the 2011 IMM Cologne exhibition, some of her chairs were on exhibition. Luckily, as she does very little with her web presence.
At Least Moroso gives us some insight in their products designed by Patricia… Seeing it I had to change the name from Karma into Klara. Sorry about that!
