The Change from old chair design classics to how modern chairs are now

The Change from old chair design classics to how modern chairs are now

            Through the many centuries furniture has changed in many shapes, forms, functions, the materials used to make the furniture and the way furniture is manufactured.

In the 1900s the now world famous Scottish born architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh brought out the high backed chair made in 1900 for the Ingram street tea rooms using joinery craftsmanship to manufacture his chair. This sort of design these days is seen as normal dining table design for the house and restaurants with the padded seat and the hard back and seen as a standard chair design with four legs and a simple back. A similar design to this but using different material to make it lighter is Gio Ponti’s Superleggera chair made in 1951 to 1957 that is made out of ash wood and woven rush. The lighter design makes it easier to move around for older people that may not be able to move heavy objects easily.  This being a very good selling point for chairs as lighter chairs means they are easier to move around.

Different shapes from wooden chairs started to come out in the 1930s using plywood to create shapes that haven’t been made before using wood. Many well known designer chairs such as Alvar aaltos Parimo that uses both plywood and laminated birch to create its curves of the chair 

Alvar Aaltos also came out with the armchair 406 in the 1930s made out of laminated birch for the frame of the chair and woven material for the seating. A very similar design that is sold cheaply in IKEA is the Poang arm chair. Due to how chairs are manufactured now chairs can be made in thousands very easily, compared to the manufacturing techniques used years ago with only a few hundred or less being made this has caused the cost of great design classics being mass produced as copies but for a cheaper price.

In the 1930s the Zig-Zag was designed by Gerrit Thomas Reitveld witch is one on my favourite chair designs as the shape is like no other and seems as if it should collapse but is held up but the strength of the angles the simple design of it makes it stand out from so many other chairs.

Charles and Ray Eames designs stand out in the1940s and still do this day with there fibreglass designs and still using bent plywood for there lounge chair. Jair Straschnow lounge chair is very similar shape and is made out of bent plywood and is from a range from the designer that has won out of the furniture category of the British Insurance designs of the year 2010 showing that being the design is over 60 years old the shape is still seen as modern design. In 1948 Charles and Ray Eames designed there La chaise made out of fibreglass, wood and steel  at the time it was brought out America was trying to bring out new furniture for expanding post war population. The chair was finally manufactured in the 1900s due to its complexity of its design. After being mass produced the chair gained a lot of interest and became a symbol of the mid 1990’s being used in an advertisement for Gucci.

Charles and Ray Eames carried on designing into the 1950s but using different more modern materials such as metals used in there Wire Mesh Chair witch looks and feels light. Still using fibreglass they designed detachable seats to the frame giving it a different look and also different colours the design is still seen today similar to the Alvar Aalto’s armchair 406, the wire mesh chair has been manufactured cheaper and is sold in shops such as dwell. A similar design in the 1950s came from Harry Bertoia designing the diamond chair for Knoll International. With the same mesh look as Charles and Ray Eames chair but different shape working together may have inspired both pieces to look so similar. Still in the 1950s Arne Jacobson designed the Series 7, Model No. 3017 that is inspired by Ray and Charles Eames through the bent plywood they used. The chair become famous when model Christine Keeler posed naked on the chair on a magazine called series 7.  Ron Arad’s Empty chair is a very similar design from 1994, this shows that shapes are constantly being re used but slight tweaks made to design classics. Another chair made for knoll associates in the 1950s was the Tulip chair by Eero Saarinen. The simple one leg seems not strong enough to hold the chair up as it looks as if it’s made out of plastic but the frame is made out of aluminium for its strength and plastic coated. The chair was made using the latest technology of the 1950s, but Saarinen was not happy with the outcome as he wanted it to be made out of a single piece of plastic. The chairs along with other knoll works are now sold in shops like dwell.

Plastics became very popular in 1960s design with one of the most popular and largest mass produced chair was made by Robin Day. The polyprop chair is made by injection moulded polypropylene which is cheap and easily manufactured giving out 4,000 shells a week. The shape was inspired by Eames fibreglass chairs but made simpered for mass production. The design I still used around schools in the United Kingdom today proving that the design works very well. Vernon Panton used the same technologies as the polyprop chair, the Vernon Panton is the first chair to be made out of a single piece of plastic the chair is seen as sexy and sleek being shown first in a fashion magazine to the British public.

Unlike any design before Frank Gehry an architect brought out his easy edges furniture range. The range includes Chairs such as the wiggle chair, side chair, Table-desk and the lounge chair. All the Range is made out of cardboard making it not just the designs unique but the material and how the material is used. The chairs are still being sold in high street shops such as jazz and over the internet. The designs like many others are being copied and sold a lot cheaper from other companies such as inhabitat.com selling at almost half the price compared to the original.

In the 1980s tom Dixon’s S chair was finally made after 50 prototypes using different types of material such as paper, copper and wicker. The chair is very similar to the Vernon Panton chair in shape but the material and base is different. Philippe Starke designed his Dr Glob in the 1980s and becoming the world’s most famous furniture designer of the 1980s.

Into the 1990s Stark designed the W.W. Stool, it looks are more important than its function as there is hardly a seat to be sat on; it was made for a fantasy workspace but ended up going into mass production. Frank Gehry designed his curved and bent wood crosscheck chair that looks delicate and something designed in the 1950s when designers used bent ply wood similar to Eames designs similar to the Marc Newson Fiber Glass Felt chair made with the same materials they used and same organic shapes but using felt over the top which adds colour and comfort to the seat.  The function of a chair was changed with tom Dixons Jack Light that is also a light as well as a chair giving it two functions. No UK manufacturer would make the chair or other British designers work so Dixon set up Euroloung company.

New and different materials were used in design in the 2000s that change the shape and look of design of the chair. Jurgen Beys Tree trunk bench made out of a tree trunk but with traditional chair back rests along it show the transformation and were the chair comes from. The design is simple organic and fun as though the tree trunk has fallen and the backrests seem to grow out of the trunk. The Cabbage chair designed by Nendo in 2008 uses layers of paper to create the chair