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...
Nov 1, 2010
Museum Continued 2009-10
...cont'd from Gallery I collection below.
I wanted to showcase a craftsman-style chair and searched for just the right one. Stickley's "Morris Chair" fits it well. It's been copied and morphed in many ways, but this is the original idea. Simple lines and warm wood design made it a classic. He was inspired by the British Arts & Crafts movement he saw in the 1890's and he created several pieces of craftsman-style furniture - simple clean design that contrasted the more ornate Victorian furniture of the time.
This is a classic from a 1927 show, from the giant of architecture in the Bauhaus period, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Simple, slightly flexible and a good example of form and function perfectly wed together,
with simple lines and a timeless quality. Who'd of thought it was from over 80 yrs ago?
In honour of our first real snow of the season (Nov 2009), and still feeling a little sweaty from shovelling and snow blowing, I'm featuring this simple, forlorn, wooden dining chair covered in snow.
Continuing with the snowy theme, I thought I'd put a guest into a nice simple wooden armchair in honour of the Christmas season. He won't be around long, but thought I'd festive it up a bit.
Back to something snowy for the season, given the end of Christmas. Here's a snow covered Muskoka chair, AKA Adirondack chair. These things are pretty comfortable, really, but seem to be relegated to status as rarely used lawn ornaments. In fact, the few times I've sat in one, I've gingerly tested it for soundness first. They've often been subjected to a lot of weather, and may be ready to become a recliner... in the worst way possible.
I feel like I'm a little late in getting a new chairvatar up, so thought I'd get something from someone significant. Eileen Gray is a significant architect and furniture designer who created this piece, called "Transat" in the late 1920's She was largely ignored during her long life, but her work is certainly notable and as a woman in a male dominated profession she really excelled. More on her here.
Now, I don't actually own many of the chairs I've posted, but I've substituted the ball-as-chair avatar on the suggestion of @tgrevatt. I was in search of one of these poorly named 'stability' balls to battle my overly-long seated periods working at the computer. I don't know who the designer was, or who first thought of using what was surely intended as an exercise appliance as a piece of office furniture, but it's a neat idea. Thankfully the idea has been around for several years, so finding one at a reasonable price is pretty easy. I think mine was $15 at the local hardware/dept store.
Charles and Ray Eames were a couple who designed furniture through the from the 40's to the 60's and were responsible for many iconic designs that we all recognize, though likely few of us know of the design duo. Charles was architecturally inclined, and his wife Ray was trained more in classic fine arts, being a painter and film-maker. Their materials were often contemporary ones, rather than traditional. Formed plywood and fibreglass are
prominent in their iconic chairs. The one shown here is a variant of many of the plywood chairs. Their fiberglass bucket chairs are also well known to everyone. I'll have to use one of them in an upcoming avatar. There's a good Wikipedia article that covers way more of their history than I'll try to attempt here.
This is a good example of how I'm feeling just now. The Ku-Dir-Ka chair by Paulius Vitkauskas is a contemporary design and a study in contrasts. The core style of the chair is the epitome of rigid, functional, stable utilitarian chairs. But when you sit down and lean back, the chair moves. It's like a rocker, without the typical rocker elements. I can't help but wonder how stable it is. If you lean back will it go right over? Probably not, that back leg is a big angled, which would make a difference. It must audibly sound different than a typical rocker too. Fun idea. Looks like you can get one for about $650.
What!? I didn't realize I hadn't featured an Eero Saarinen chair before. The guy is a pillar of the Finnish design wave in modernist chairs. Here is his classic, iconic tulip chair. From 1956, like most modernist works, the materials dictated the art, and this was a testament to what was possible with the use of fiberglass-reinforced resin. I usually prefer to go totally b&w on the chairs, as I find it really accentuates the form. But as I thresholded the image, I liked the halfway point, and cleaned it up a bit. Plus, it lets you see the upholstered seat cushion a bit more than a pure silhouette.
It is mid summer just now, 2010, and after mowing the lawn on a slightly cooler day than we've had lately, I thought about the fleeting nature of nice summer weather. What better way to acknowledge that than with an avatar update! Well, I suppose a BBQ party and a bottle of good red wine might be a bit better than an avatar update, but it will have to do for now. Here's a familiar looking teak folding lawn chair. They're made all over the place, but I don't know who the original designer is. If I come across it (or perhaps a reader will send me a reference?) I'll add it here.
I wanted to showcase a craftsman-style chair and searched for just the right one. Stickley's "Morris Chair" fits it well. It's been copied and morphed in many ways, but this is the original idea. Simple lines and warm wood design made it a classic. He was inspired by the British Arts & Crafts movement he saw in the 1890's and he created several pieces of craftsman-style furniture - simple clean design that contrasted the more ornate Victorian furniture of the time.
This is a classic from a 1927 show, from the giant of architecture in the Bauhaus period, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Simple, slightly flexible and a good example of form and function perfectly wed together,
In honour of our first real snow of the season (Nov 2009), and still feeling a little sweaty from shovelling and snow blowing, I'm featuring this simple, forlorn, wooden dining chair covered in snow.
Back to something snowy for the season, given the end of Christmas. Here's a snow covered Muskoka chair, AKA Adirondack chair. These things are pretty comfortable, really, but seem to be relegated to status as rarely used lawn ornaments. In fact, the few times I've sat in one, I've gingerly tested it for soundness first. They've often been subjected to a lot of weather, and may be ready to become a recliner... in the worst way possible.
I feel like I'm a little late in getting a new chairvatar up, so thought I'd get something from someone significant. Eileen Gray is a significant architect and furniture designer who created this piece, called "Transat" in the late 1920's She was largely ignored during her long life, but her work is certainly notable and as a woman in a male dominated profession she really excelled. More on her here.
Now, I don't actually own many of the chairs I've posted, but I've substituted the ball-as-chair avatar on the suggestion of @tgrevatt. I was in search of one of these poorly named 'stability' balls to battle my overly-long seated periods working at the computer. I don't know who the designer was, or who first thought of using what was surely intended as an exercise appliance as a piece of office furniture, but it's a neat idea. Thankfully the idea has been around for several years, so finding one at a reasonable price is pretty easy. I think mine was $15 at the local hardware/dept store.
Charles and Ray Eames were a couple who designed furniture through the from the 40's to the 60's and were responsible for many iconic designs that we all recognize, though likely few of us know of the design duo. Charles was architecturally inclined, and his wife Ray was trained more in classic fine arts, being a painter and film-maker. Their materials were often contemporary ones, rather than traditional. Formed plywood and fibreglass are prominent in their iconic chairs. The one shown here is a variant of many of the plywood chairs. Their fiberglass bucket chairs are also well known to everyone. I'll have to use one of them in an upcoming avatar. There's a good Wikipedia article that covers way more of their history than I'll try to attempt here.
This is a good example of how I'm feeling just now. The Ku-Dir-Ka chair by Paulius Vitkauskas is a contemporary design and a study in contrasts. The core style of the chair is the epitome of rigid, functional, stable utilitarian chairs. But when you sit down and lean back, the chair moves. It's like a rocker, without the typical rocker elements. I can't help but wonder how stable it is. If you lean back will it go right over? Probably not, that back leg is a big angled, which would make a difference. It must audibly sound different than a typical rocker too. Fun idea. Looks like you can get one for about $650.
What!? I didn't realize I hadn't featured an Eero Saarinen chair before. The guy is a pillar of the Finnish design wave in modernist chairs. Here is his classic, iconic tulip chair. From 1956, like most modernist works, the materials dictated the art, and this was a testament to what was possible with the use of fiberglass-reinforced resin. I usually prefer to go totally b&w on the chairs, as I find it really accentuates the form. But as I thresholded the image, I liked the halfway point, and cleaned it up a bit. Plus, it lets you see the upholstered seat cushion a bit more than a pure silhouette. 
It is mid summer just now, 2010, and after mowing the lawn on a slightly cooler day than we've had lately, I thought about the fleeting nature of nice summer weather. What better way to acknowledge that than with an avatar update! Well, I suppose a BBQ party and a bottle of good red wine might be a bit better than an avatar update, but it will have to do for now. Here's a familiar looking teak folding lawn chair. They're made all over the place, but I don't know who the original designer is. If I come across it (or perhaps a reader will send me a reference?) I'll add it here. October 2010 - rather than continuing to append my chairvatars to a single list as I was originally doing, the new posts will appear above in a more conventional blog style. I kind of wanted to the present them in the order in which they appeared, rather than typical blog reverse-chronological order, but it's a bit awkward. So you'll see the new posts above as they arrive. :)
