Category: chair rejuvenation

Mine Chairs by Mati Karmin

Relax Mine Chair by Mati KarminRelax Chair

The Cow Lounger Mine Chair by Mati KarminThe Cow Lounger

Royal Mine Chair by Mati KarminChair Royal

The Boss Mine Chair by Mati KarminThe Boss

I would not have imagined that a naval mine could inspire someone to create a chair from, but it did inspire Estonian artist Mati Karmin. Unusual? Yes! Uncomfortable? No! Not at least when you look at these photos. The Mine Chairs seem decently comfortable for seating, but the thought of sitting in an old – possibly Russian – sea mine may give you very uncomfortable shivers. There seem thousands of mines left over by the Russians from the cold war and fro WW 1 and WW2 on an island 10 miles from the Estonian coast and this is one way of getting rid of them: Rejuvenate them!

Via Marinemine.

b.a-ba: Monobloc Makeover by Cyrille Candas

b.a-ba-orange-monobloc by Cyrille Candas
b.a-ba-blue-monobloc by Cyrille Candas
b.a-ba-green-monobloc by Cyrille Candas

b.a-ba-red-monobloc by Cyrille Candas
b.a-ba-grey-monobloc-by-Cyrille-Candas
I felt I needed two posts, Via’s Carte Blance for the Costes Chair and the connection between Joe Colombo and Vico Magistretti as an intro for this post…

Currently Via has an exposition until December 31, 2011, b.a-ba. It showcases a new way of giving the (in)famous Monobloc Plastic Chair a worthy second life. A Monobloc Rehab one could say. Emmaus is a huge French organization that annually takes in thousands and thousands chairs that cannot be resold. Among them plenty of Monoblocs. In addition it recycles tons and tons of textile unsuitable for reuse. French designer Cyrille Candas has brought the two together with paint. She has the textile ground into a short fiber called floc an mixes the floc with colorful paint. She also gave it a label (b.a-ba) and there is a new sustainable brand being born. Quite sustainable I would say. And we have an addition for our own colorful palettes of chair colors we are slowly, but gradually building into color portfolios here on the blog and via pinterest.

Thonet no. 25

Found this original Thonet no. 25 at another specialist, now one who repairs cane parts of thonets and other cane backed or seated chairs and boat seatings: Suzandy based in the UK.

Revisited: Erika Winters – Mexican Chair Redesigner

Erika Winters Logo

The logo from Erika’s Blog

Polkadot-Cover-Erika-Winters-60ies-Chair

The nice Polka Dot upholstery fits wonderfully with this 60ies style chair.

Erika Winters Polka Dot

But also with more dated chair design…

Erica Winters Polkadot coroflot2

A model like this will “sell your work”  undoubtedly. More of this please!

I introduced you to Erika Winters earlier on February 21, 2008. Since then she has been very active.

  1. She has enhanced her Design Shop website Erika Winters Design
  2. She has uploaded many of her re designed chairs and sofa’s to her Coroflot Portfolio
  3. She even has started a blog Erika-Winters.blogspot.com

I would like to make a couple of suggestions to Erika:

  1. Do away with the flash on your site…it is much too wild and not functional.
  2. Also see to it that one can find your complete portfolio on your own site as well as on Coroflot
  3. If possible combine your site with the blog. That gives you an opportunity to create a historical narrative about your portfolio..
  4. In any case bring the design of your blog more in line with the design of your site
  5. Do give us more photos of your portfolio with yourself as a model. I believe you do sell
  6. I love the polka dot upholstering you were using here which shows us it is usable both for more ancient chair design and pure 60ies chair design.

I hope Erika doesn’t mind me a to be a bit critical. What are your thoughts?

Possible to revive the Scheveningen High Back Beach Chair Design?

Scheveningen High Back Beach Chair 01

In a post of my significant other blog I started a plea to revive the very snug cane High Back Beach Chair of Scheveningen. Up to the seventies there was almost no Dutch Beach without this type of chair. Northern Gemany Beaches still do frequently use another type of High Back Beach chair. It’s main features are protection against the wind and more privacy on the beach.

Scheveningen High Back cane Beach Chair 02
Just thought to enhance the reach of that plea by posting additional photo’s of the historic Dutch High Back Beach chair here.

Dutch High Back cane Beach Chair

Although I like this variation best as its curvy appearance is much more elegant.

Or am I wrong and is it already out there?