Category: chair history

Konstantin Grcic at the Then Now Show of The Aram Gallery

Konstantin Grcic at the Then Now Show of The Aram Gallery

The Aram Gallery is another source of inspiration for chair lovers.

The Gallery originated from pasion for design rather than from financial motives:

Zeev Aram opened his first store on London’s Kings Road, Chelsea, in 1964. He had a real passion for design and was the first to introduce the works of designers such as Carlo Scarpa, A & P.G. Castiglioni, Marcel Breuer, Le Corbusier and V. Magistretti to the UK market.

Later on Zeev developped the concept of an Annual Graduate Show to offer young designers and the industrie a platform to meet each other. Recently this culminated in a THEN-NOW Show which was an exhibition of 15 designers who were originally amongst the graduates selected by Zeev Aram to take part in the Aram Design’s Annual Graduate Shows in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This exhibition revisits the work of these designers to show the development of their career over the last 2 decades. Their graduation work and recent work were showed side by side.

Here Konstantin Grcic. Photo by Christina Theisen.

Frankenstein Chair

Frankenstein Chair

There is that Swiss designer who coined his chair “Frankenstein Chair“, but otherwise, like me, you might ask: “What in heaven’s name has Frankenstein to do with a chair?”
That was until I found the Blog Frankensteinia which explains it quite simple: During long days of filming, the movie stars who are in heavy outfits, have to have a space to rest without cluttering their outfit or being bothered by it. Such chair kept Boris Karloff while resting backstage on the set of the Son of Frankenstein in 1939.

Thonet No. 14 Project (1): Amos Field Reid

Thonet-no-14-Drum-2-by-Amos-Field-Reid
Amos Field Reid pointed me to the Thonet no. 14 project where 6 young UK based designers marked the 150th anniversary of the Thonet no. 14 in 2009 by replacing only the seats. More can be read on WC Frank’s site.

The challenge was to find a balance between pragmatic restoration and sympathetic innovation.
The tensioned Drum seat features an interpretation of the pattern that once adorned many of the Thonet plywood seats, is high on comfort, low in weight and can be fitted without tools. As a simple ­organic material that lasts and ages well, leather seemed a match for the chairs aged beech limbs, whilst the strapping shares the bolt-it-together pragmatism typical of Thonet’s constructions.
This piece was produced in collaboration with leather craftsman Justin Parker.

Armchair attributed to Joseph Maria Olbrich

Armchair by Joseph Maria Olbrich

Discovered Yves Macaux, a Brussels, Belgium, based dealer who offers very interesting chairs for sale among which this Chair attributed to Joseph Maria Olbrich, one of the Viennese Art Nouveau designers around 1900.

Armchair by Hans Vollmer

Rare Armchair by Hans Vollmer

Another rare early 20ieth century armchair: One by Hans Vollmer. Hans Vollmer was a pupil of Josef Hoffmann at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna in 1898/9

HANS VOLLMER

Very rare armchair, ca. 1901

Oak, leather, brass. 27 5/8 in. (70.2 cm.) high Possibly executed by Prag-Rudniker Korbwarenfabrik, Austria.

ESTIMATE $30,000-40,000

via Phillips de Pury & Company.

Pillips de Pury refers by way of provenance to an auction of Christie’s on 29 October 1997 in London, King Street, where this chair fetched $4,615, just before the big increase of auction results for early 20ieth century furniture. Again interesting to see the result of this chair….