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About who?
Let’s talk about you first! Before I give you some background info, I would like to ask you to comment to this page with your own background information. Please feel free to promote yourself here and even to rant about what I write or wrote. I’m always curious who is reading what I’m curating here.
Nice to meet you! I’m Guido J. van den Elshout AKA GJE AKA Happy Hotelier and blogging from The Hague, The Netherlands and meet the other two authors below.
The blog started on April 30 2007.
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Why a Blog solely devoted to Chairs?
We are amateur chair lovers. We have no other commercial intentions with this Blog than try and make it self supporting. We added Google adsense – and later removed it – and might add other ads to cover some of the expenses that come with blogging.
Please note we do not manufacture seating furniture, we do not sell seating furniture and we do not buy seating furniture!
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A little bit of background of Chair Blog:
Chairs are important, as the population of the western world spends at least 1/3 of its life time in a chair. Chair Blog will be mainly a Photo blog. It started with my fascination for the Thonet story. Round 1900 they had a real multinational empire of chair factories and sales outlets. I have owned a couple of Thonet chairs myself.
Until the end of 2013, together with my wife, I owned and operated a small but very luxury design hotel in The Hague, The Netherlands (Haagsche Suites), hence my focus on architecture, design, interior design and, in addition, yacht design. A couple of years ago I was researching chairs on the Internet because we needed to buy some new chairs for the hotel. I found out there was no easy way finding information.
Thereupon I created a couple of Dutch Language link pages about chairs, chair design, chair designers and chair manufacturers: Some disappeared and one is still alive: Stoelen Startpagina, “stoel” is Dutch for chair.
A Photoblog is a nice addition to mere text links pages.
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More about the author:
You can find a lot more about me at my “Significant Other Blog”: Happy Hotelier. -
Do meet our second author as of April 2010: Polley Wong
And don’t forget to read all of Polley’s posts
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Do meet our third author as of January 12, 2011: Julia Osovskaya
And don’t forget to read all of Julia’s posts.
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More about my fumbling with Tumbling
You can find on Tumblr and similar Curating Tools and in the category @About Chair Blog and More.
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More about Chair Blog
About the development of the blog over the years you can read more in the category @About Chair Blog and More.
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Contact
Please use the contact page if you want to contact us.
Now I am heading off to show you some more chairs, sofas, benches, stools, ottomans, pouffs, in short everything that can seat you!
Looks like an interesting blog – one that I will spend much time on in due course. Would like to have found this when I was studying furniture design, but all is not lost! I’m currently rediscovering my photographic muse, but still have an interest in good furrniture.
I found your blog today while searching for unusal chairs. You certainly have information on quite a few. I wonder if I can send a picture of the one I recently came upon. Perhaps some of your readers will recognize it. If acceptable, please provide me with an email address so that I can send a picture. Thanks.
@ 5billj2001
See my e-mail address in the post and replace the [at sign] by @.
Added December 16, 2009: There is a contact page now!
I have come to possess a chair that I think was made by an artist named Rico Macho. The chair base is made out of fiberglass and is shaped and dimpled like a golf ball. There is a space for the actual seat of the chair to be placed into the golf ball frame. The chair is red vinyl. The only information I could find (on the chair itself) is the signature (of the presumed artist – Rico Macho) and the date of August 1, 1989. There is another, smaller piece of paper noting “booth 4”. I wanted to be able to post it so that maybe someone might recognize the chair somehow, but cannot find a place on this site to post pics. Does anyone have any idea about this chair or artist? If you give me your email address, I will send pics. Thank you – Laura
Laura: You can contact me via the Contact page.
Hi all! What a great blog this is! Thought I would share my little piece of the blogsphere with you all. I create themed chairs out of papier mache and I also re-upholster old hard rubbish chairs with my hand made felted fabric. (among many other things!) Come and have a look at my little world of colour….
visit me at: http://www.adelle.com.au
@ Adelle
Saved your compliments from my askimet pile 🙂
Thanks for the great collection of amazing chairs. I am a new designer and passionate about chairs in particular. I wanted to add one of my own, my very first piece – called Chez Banc d’Amore. Check it out at: chezbanc.com [ed: Site disappeared]
It has just been selected for inclusion at the ‘youngdesignersfair’ at Interieur 08 in Kortrijk, Belgium. I am extremely honoured to be the first Australian designer invited to attend the youngdesignersfair.
I look forward to watching this space in future.
Best regards
Russell Grigg
Update: Eventually the comment led to a post
Check out some of my chairs on my site!
Update the site prosite[dot]com disappeared since
You have a really nice blog here, and I find your passion for chairs absolutely fascinating. I am helping b-uncut doing some social media work for them. One of our artists makes chair-based sculptures… would love to discuss coverage opportunities on your blog!
PS: I also tweeted you!
PS2: On a different note, I’d love to talk to you about doing an interview for my personal blog… will tweet you about it 😉
Hi Mr GJE
would it be possible to send you the picture of one of my chairs to post it on your blog?
Your blog is fantastic and I often retweet your posts.
Best regards
Hi fellow seating lovers,
I am a furniture maker with a chair obsession. My newest piece and company takes the British Campaign furniture model and gives it modern and comfortable twist. Built to last and made by hand (mine) I am hoping it is well recieved to the seating world! Many more pieces in the works as well…..
Cheers,
Andy
Hello, I have begun collecting Mid-Century furniture … especially chairs. I have found some chairs that I cannot find any information on including who designed them and when.
Could I send you a picture to take a look at?
Palmiye Kocak Furniture Ltd.Sti.,Founded in 2001 by the Kocak family. Our company is a major Manufacturer of furniture,interior decoration products.
Palmiye Kocak, the following three branches in the furniture sector provides services to its customers.
1-Furniture and Decoration,
Hotel, Restaurant, Cafe, Patisserie, home, office and hospital such as places, to make furniture decoration.
2-Wholesale Dealer Sales;
our company’s has over 400 dealers across in the Turkey. Our customers are among turkey’s leading chain stores and the best shoping centers
3-E-Commerce,
e commerce companies to sell goods
I love chairs and I love this blog! Awesome!
Here’s a post I’ve just written all about chairs… http://confessionsofadesigngeek.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/every-chair-i-sat-in-today/
(I’m missing a credit in there, if any chair geeks might know where I got it from??!)
So many websites, so may blogs–but this is definitely one of the best. How often can you treat yourself on a blog focused exclusively on chairs? Thank you for the inspiration. Here is a very short guide on Dining Room Chair Styles some readers might enjoy: Top 5 Cheap Dining Room Chair Styles
Thank you for your fantastic Chair Blog. I love the fact that there is a little subculture of chair lovers out there. I’ve personally had a thing for chairs for years and never been able to exactly explain why. I just started acquiring them. A cafe booth, a row of old theatre seats, 1940s classroom chairs, my grandparents’ armchairs, an inherited antique dining set and then on to more iconic examples like an Eames.
Chairs are or can be such beautiful and sculptural forms yet functional and democratic. There is a multitude of possibilities. Their history chart changes in design, politics, aesthetics and materials I like to use my love of chairs in my theatre and teaching work. Could rant on chairs for ages but I’m just attempting to address your first point here.
Hello
I always take it happy.
I make a chair in Japan.
I wait over a wonderful chair from now on.
http://tinyurl.com/2dbl78j
Love the blog. I run two very niche sites – shedworking.co.uk and Bookshelf [ed: link disappeared] which is in some respects similar to Chair Blog. I started it as a hobby too but now it’s coming out in book form next year.
Hi!
I’m not sure how I did it but, I’m really pleased I found this blog, having completed my first chair in my final year of college, last summer.
I also managed to exhibit it at a couple of shows in Bristol but, unfortunately, it didn’t sell – despite the fact that everyone who sat in it was very complementary of just how comfortable it was (particularly with the lower back support to the ‘lumbar’ region), for a wooden chair.
It’s got me keen to make another for more shows this year – however, I fear that time is running out right now… One thing I learnt last year was that designing a chair (building the full-size mock-ups and all those templates!) can easily take double the amount of time it takes to make the final piece! 😉
Thank you for taking the time to create this blog. I look forward to following and hope to pick a little inspiration in some places.
Olly Parry-Jones
The BEHZ Chair on a mission, SUPPORTING LITERACY THROUGH DESIGN.
A high end design piece of art generating funds for literacy in Afghanistan…
featured in the back of “Letters to My Daughters” by FawziaKoofi.org
We welcome comments through our site.
nice blog with chairs,
This is my latest creation, a different way to look at movement and transformation
hopefully you like it
@Robert
Comments are monitored her. I’ve taken notice of your plug. Don’t try to enter more plugs as you might end up in spam filters.
Thanks!
Ah Estelle uhm, I know I invite people to shamelessly plug themselves. May I ask you to feature us on your site as well?
When do you believe you will have build up some more chair and sofa inventory than you presently have?
Hi There!
I just found your blog while searching my Google Analytics page. Thank you for featuring my Chair in Words Series. It’s so nice to be recognized and appreciated! I have posted links to your site on my Facebook, Twitter, and blog. I hope to have more chairs completed in the near future. I can be found on etsy.com under the name 1ScrappinMom and at 1scrappinmom.com.
Thank you,
Sarah Schmid
Wow, inspiring blog with a dazzling postingspeed regarding the other blog’s and ‘startpaginas’ you also have to keep up-to-date.
I hope one day i can achieve the same quality with my own (dutch) blog about officefurniture.
Thanx, gonna follow you from now on.
Thanks for the great blog. I work for Kirkhouse in the UK, manufacturing and supplying contract furniture here and abroad.
We’re always looking to trace the history of chair designs; it’s really useful to our customers and our business. We also like to see what designers are achieving worldwide; for which your blog is invaluable.
Hi GJE,
I’ve just found this site doing some research into James Irvine, I’ll be reading and commenting in the near future. I myself am a Junior Furniture Designer.
Thanks for all the (obvious) effort you put into this site! 🙂