Anonymous asked:
could you please tel us about some chairs with names
door answered:
hi i’m sorry for not seeing this earlier! i mostly use tumblr on mobile and it hides the inbox from me.
so, most chairs have names! usually given to them by their designer or manufacturer, but for much older pieces it could be what they’ve become known as by historians. here are some of my faves:
the womb chair
of course. the womb chair was designed by eero saarinen and manufactured by knoll (now by design within reach) and it is my very favourite chair in the whole world. incredibly comfortable and certifiably iconic (it was the first molded fiberglass chair), it was called the womb chair after Florence Knoll requested a chair she could “curl up” in. It’s been enablng laziness since 1948.
the barcelona chair
here’s a name that is directly tied to the chair’s origin: the barcelona chair was designed by ludwig mies van der rohe for the king and queen of spain to use within the german pavilion which mies designed for the 1929 World’s Fair in Barcelona.
it was a hit, and the rest is history! the barcelona chair has been in almost constant production (also by knoll and then design within reach) ever since.
the sgabello
here’s one where the name is a type of chair–the sgabello (this one is half of a pair in the national gallery of art, washington dc collection) was big in renaissance europe. designed to line hallways and be sat in for short periods of time (a comfortable seat this was not), sgabelli were usually constructed of walnut and elaborately carved. any chair of this form would be considered a sgabello–here’s an earlier one with very different aesthetics in the collection of the met.
the butaque chair
finally, a chair which combines type and proper noun names. the butaque is a chair which came into use in colonial-era latin america, a hybrid of the spanish x-frame chair and pre-columbian duho. this specific butaque, which has come to be known as a proper-noun Butaque Chair, was designed by Cuban-born Clara Porset, who lived and worked in Mexico from 1935 on. She set out to learn more about the vernacular furniture in her adopted home, and came across the butaque. Her version emphasized ergonomics and local materials–the original (c. 1950) porset butaques are covered in wicker, leather, or locally woven fabrics.
here’s the one the moma has, which is covered in wicker.
and here’s a photograph of porset’s home.
i hope you enjoyed this taste of chairs with names! i encourage you to look up the furniture/decorative objects you love the most–they probably have names, too :)
