Chair Avatars
This is a display area for my spare chairs - my various Twitter avatars.
Why Chairs?
Chairs symbolize social interaction. They invite you to sit down and stay a while; take a load off. You're probably sitting right now. We sit down to digest news. We sit to think. We sit to be social. You might say chairs are the first social media. Okay, you wouldn't but let's pretend.
Some beautiful chairs are painful to sit on (talkin' to you Frank Lloyd Wright, and owners of Indian restaurants everywhere). Many comfy chairs can look quite ugly. Chairs can fit with all situations - from thrones to bean-bags. Lawn chairs say "relax, enjoy the weather." Kitchen chairs say "have a bite." Dentists' chairs say "sit down and scream a while."
As an early user of Twitter in '07, I began to explore a dynamic avatar idea – it was always easy to identify my feed based on the avatar's subject matter, but the actual image changed often. If you followed me and my meanderings, I hope you found the conversation fun and/or thoughtful. Pull up a chair.
The avatar history is captured below...
May 5, 2009
Museum 2007-09
Welcome to the Chair Avatar Museum, Gallery 1.
My First Avatar in 2007. A utilitarian folding
chair. Suggests a temporary thing, not necessarily very comfy, but flexible and easy to move around
The second one (Autumn 2008) is a recycled chair.
I picked this up when someone put it on the curb! It's sturdy and not unattractive. Don't know how long it will last though.
I like the ladder-back idea mostly because
of the name. It's a functional, and, depending on the seat weave, a comfortable design. (Nov 09)
It was getting to be rather spring-like,
and the idea of a folding lawn chair seemed just right. Get outside, throw it anywhere that the sun is shining and enjoy some time with friends! (March 09)
It's a "captains' chair" - getting down
to work. (April '09) Spring cleaning and all that. It's good and sturdy, even if the twitter service isn't always the same. :)
In recognition of Earth Day or, er, Earth Week,
I've put up this modified Captain's Chair, with our precious globe in the seat of honour.
This fancy office chair is the one in which I spend my days. It's pretty nicely adjustable,
plus I got it at a very good price at a used office furniture place - $1200 new, $40 for me used. How it pays to look around!
Perhaps the only Frank Lloyd Wright chair you'd want to sit in for any length of time, this is one of the Johnson Wax
chairs. He designed some snazzy furniture for the magnificent buildings he crafted. Most of his chairs are painful, vertical backed things that look quite cool, but are not shaped for humans.
Saw this neat side chair online from some designers that make it out of a stack of laminated layers like super-thick plywood. The profile is flat so from head on you don't see the profile on the legs, they look square.
From the side view they have the dipsy-doodly bits. Kinda cool, but I think it's about $1000 to get one :( [May09]
I was in Paris, enjoying my usual modus operandi, lounging about in cafés, watching the world go by and
realized that this would be a perfect theme for my twitter avatar update. Hence, the typical Parisian café chair. You see them everywhere there, and are automatically recognizeable once you've been there. They line the sidewalks, two per table, on the same side, so you can sit with someone special and watch the passers by.(Jun09)
It was only a matter of time before I got onto the BauHaus stuff, and hence this Marcel Breuer classic. If you know about Bauhaus, and someone mentions a Bauhaus chair, this is probably the one that comes to mind. Or not.
Breuer apparently named the design for the artist Kandinsky (Wassily is his first name). The intersecting planes and lines are rather Kandinsky like, I suppose. My favourite thing about it is that it looks so modern. You might even think, oh, that's a 1980's chair. But in reality it's from 1926. Not bad for 83 years old.
This is Thor Larsen's Ovalia Chair, often given the name 'egg' chair. But the 'true' Egg Chair is an earlier thing (nice too) by Arne Jacobsen. Not totally egg shaped, but evocative thereof.
Larsen's came in various distorted shapes, but the pure egg one is the cool one that epitomizes the 70's. What is it with Scandenavians and awesome chairs. I must admit to being half Finn myself, and having a compulsion to design chairs, which I've successfully restrained mostly. (July 09) There's a bubble chair too, spherical rather than egg shaped. Wait for it, designer: Eero Aarnio (1968)
Here's something contemporary. I was looking for something interesting from Italy, and found this one called Ole from designers Ludovica and Roberto Palomba for the Crassevig line of
furniture. This is made from plywood. Really pushes the materials limits, I don't know if I'd want to be on it when it fails. But the look for me made me think of the artist Mondrian who did interesting things with geometric shapes.
I wanted to put up something in a classic dining room design. Came across this one that a site is calling the 'steakhouse.' A
pretty good name for it, as it does evoke the feeling of a modern restaurant with simple design, wooden furniture and a utilitarian, blocky feel. This is a simple all wood design, with a leather-like seat. Pretty solid and rudimentary, but attractive.
My First Avatar in 2007. A utilitarian folding
chair. Suggests a temporary thing, not necessarily very comfy, but flexible and easy to move aroundThe second one (Autumn 2008) is a recycled chair.
I picked this up when someone put it on the curb! It's sturdy and not unattractive. Don't know how long it will last though.I like the ladder-back idea mostly because
of the name. It's a functional, and, depending on the seat weave, a comfortable design. (Nov 09)It was getting to be rather spring-like,
and the idea of a folding lawn chair seemed just right. Get outside, throw it anywhere that the sun is shining and enjoy some time with friends! (March 09)It's a "captains' chair" - getting down
to work. (April '09) Spring cleaning and all that. It's good and sturdy, even if the twitter service isn't always the same. :)In recognition of Earth Day or, er, Earth Week,
I've put up this modified Captain's Chair, with our precious globe in the seat of honour.This fancy office chair is the one in which I spend my days. It's pretty nicely adjustable,
plus I got it at a very good price at a used office furniture place - $1200 new, $40 for me used. How it pays to look around!Perhaps the only Frank Lloyd Wright chair you'd want to sit in for any length of time, this is one of the Johnson Wax
chairs. He designed some snazzy furniture for the magnificent buildings he crafted. Most of his chairs are painful, vertical backed things that look quite cool, but are not shaped for humans.Saw this neat side chair online from some designers that make it out of a stack of laminated layers like super-thick plywood. The profile is flat so from head on you don't see the profile on the legs, they look square.
From the side view they have the dipsy-doodly bits. Kinda cool, but I think it's about $1000 to get one :( [May09]I was in Paris, enjoying my usual modus operandi, lounging about in cafés, watching the world go by and
realized that this would be a perfect theme for my twitter avatar update. Hence, the typical Parisian café chair. You see them everywhere there, and are automatically recognizeable once you've been there. They line the sidewalks, two per table, on the same side, so you can sit with someone special and watch the passers by.(Jun09)It was only a matter of time before I got onto the BauHaus stuff, and hence this Marcel Breuer classic. If you know about Bauhaus, and someone mentions a Bauhaus chair, this is probably the one that comes to mind. Or not.
Breuer apparently named the design for the artist Kandinsky (Wassily is his first name). The intersecting planes and lines are rather Kandinsky like, I suppose. My favourite thing about it is that it looks so modern. You might even think, oh, that's a 1980's chair. But in reality it's from 1926. Not bad for 83 years old.This is Thor Larsen's Ovalia Chair, often given the name 'egg' chair. But the 'true' Egg Chair is an earlier thing (nice too) by Arne Jacobsen. Not totally egg shaped, but evocative thereof.
Larsen's came in various distorted shapes, but the pure egg one is the cool one that epitomizes the 70's. What is it with Scandenavians and awesome chairs. I must admit to being half Finn myself, and having a compulsion to design chairs, which I've successfully restrained mostly. (July 09) There's a bubble chair too, spherical rather than egg shaped. Wait for it, designer: Eero Aarnio (1968)Here's something contemporary. I was looking for something interesting from Italy, and found this one called Ole from designers Ludovica and Roberto Palomba for the Crassevig line of
furniture. This is made from plywood. Really pushes the materials limits, I don't know if I'd want to be on it when it fails. But the look for me made me think of the artist Mondrian who did interesting things with geometric shapes.I wanted to put up something in a classic dining room design. Came across this one that a site is calling the 'steakhouse.' A
pretty good name for it, as it does evoke the feeling of a modern restaurant with simple design, wooden furniture and a utilitarian, blocky feel. This is a simple all wood design, with a leather-like seat. Pretty solid and rudimentary, but attractive.
