Chairs, Chair Design and Chair Designers
A clear case of Chairvertizing, a chair on the cover of a book.
Here on Linda McCartneys new photobook Life in Photographs.
My only question is: Does the person in question belong to the Chairchez L’Homme or the Chairchez La Femme category?
Via Restoration Hardware.
Borrowed from a friend from The Hague, “Mr Graffiti” himself.
And then, as a little birthday present (his, not my birthday), my photographer friend from The Hague Pieter Musterd allowed me to share with you this fabulous photo of a White Thonet Chair in a white environment, demonstrating how modern these chairs can be in the right setting….
Bent wood chair caught by bent silver birch could be the caption of this photo.
From time to time I search the Commons on Flickr for nice old photos of chairs. This one is part of the State Library of Queensland Library collection.
leaning against a Thonet or Thonet alike bentwood chair in Madrid, 1923.
I received this photo today as a nice surprise for publication here from one of our Spanish readers, Álvaro de la Cruz-Dombriz. Thank you Álvaro!
The big question for me is now: “Is it a Thonet chair, and, if so, what model?” Note the leg ends resting in copper or zinc pods.
Excellent for our Chairchez L’Homme series.
Álvaro suggests in a comment this is the Thonet no. 20. However, I’m not sure or just headstrong . My first reaction when seeing the photo was: “Not a Thonet”, because if you compare the diameter of the back with the body of Einstein, the bentwood back is almost arm thick. Usually a back of a Thonet Chair is much thinner. However it is very well possible: I’ve checked Swiss Thonet expert Dieter Staedeli’s gallery of Wiener Moebel: He comments:
Thonet No.20 chair of Vienna, around 1872. The model went into production 1870-71. The early 20s are made in a very strait and not very comfortable back design. But this very chair form is exemplary for the first production models and are sought after collectibles. At about 1875 found in all models of Thonet chair gradually switching to ergonomic back forms
Further to the comment of Geert, I found a nice Bentwood dedicated blog which featured a Thonet (Halb?)fauteuil no 20:
I’ve added this post to our Chairvertizing series. What is better than to use a famous person to make your chair (more) famous, or the other way around: Take a famous chair to become (more) famous yourself;-)
Last edited by Guido J. van den Elshout on December 15, 2011 at 5:36 PM