Chairs, Chair Design and Chair Designers
In 2009 Diane Carnevale has published 365 chairs on her Chair du Jour. I’m proud we have inspired her for some of her paintings.
Now I noticed there is a blog called 1001 chair sketches out there. Michael Dharmawan anticipates to punblish 1001 chair sketches during 3 years… I pinched his Pebble Chair and his Pebble Sofa sketches for this post.
Both have earned a place in our (Currently 70) Top Inspiring Chair Design Blogs and Sites
In 1982 Philippe Starck won VIA’s second Carte Blanche grant given to a forward-thinking project by a promising designer, with his “Don Denny” chair. Later, this famous chair appeared in the Café Costes.
This was on my back burner for quite some time. Just to remember the French association VIA (or Valorisation de l’Innovation dans l’Ameublement) that gives Carte Blanche awards to promising designers.
As part of its mission to promote and recovery of French, VIA gives each year one or more “Carte Blanche” to designers whose originality and maturity of the creative process are notable in that time. A commission, composed of personalities from industry, distribution, creation, education and the press, awards a fellowship to the creator selected to develop a personal project prospective. The purpose of the Carte Blanche is to develop a program to rehabilitate our daily activities based on the new behavior of our contemporaries. The designer has studies and discussions by the VIA VIA and guidance throughout the development process of the project whether compliance with the functional logic, purchase or technical feasibility. The “Carte Blanche” offer industrialists, publishers and distributors the opportunity to discover and meet the talent that will create the living environment of tomorrow.
Since its inception, has awarded 67 grants VIA ‘Carte Blanche’.
via Via 30 Years of Furniture Design and the Slideshow on Dwell.
Actually Julia’s post about Thomas Heatherwick’s Spun Chair made me remember I had a post in the works about this 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.
