In surfing the internet for material for Chair Blog it helps me that I have a very associative mind. I was Googling pictures for “Burnt Rietveld”, because I noticed that I had no photos yet from Maarten Baas’s (in my view in)famous burned chair series which Maarten produced or maybe even created (I would avoid the term designed in this case) long before I started to blog here about chairs.
Nowadays I see several young designers piggy back on an illustrious predecessor’s name and produce a hack or an interpretation to create fame for themselves. I would say piggy back fame or media hype. I know I am a bit traditional in this sense and not so out of the box thinking as the honorable teachers of especially the Dutch Design Academy in Eindhoven tend to teach their students. On the other hand I do admit that it works. When I think burnt chair I immediately associate it with Maarten Baas. In that sense the piggy backing helps, because he dared to burn famous chairs.
Then I found the above photo of a Gerrit Rietveld‘s burnt Zig Zag Chair (another example here) by Maarten Baas at the Flickr account of….Che Eyzenbach and guess what? Che is a 2009 alumni from the Eindhoven Design Academy and designs chairs himself. His graduation project is a set of 7 beautifully designed cardboard seating elements by the name of Flow.
I know, by introducing Che in this way to you, this humble amateur chair aficionado now makes connections between Che Eyzenbach and famous predecessors and might suggest he was piggy backing. He was not! Certainly not in his designs, even not on Frank Gehry‘s Nested Cardboard Chair nor his Easy Edges Chair nor his Contour Chair, because Flow is an entirely different concept…
I may even do him injustice, because if I look into his portfolio, I have a feeling we will see his star rise to maybe equal or higher levels….
Have a look for yourself at Che’s site and let me know your view in the comments.
Joost van Noort and Maartje Nuy
