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 15, 2015
Rowland's 40/4 Chair
Rowland was a Californian who served in B17 bombers in WWII, and probably knew a thing or two about comfort in the seated position after those long flights.
As a commercial interiors designer after the war, he was reportedly industrious and inventive. His 40/4 chair was so-named because you could stack 40 of them in a 4 foot-high stack. There is lots of documented praise for the design, with one "Interior Design" review saying it was “the most universally useful chair ever made and accomplished with the least expenditure of material and labor."
Rowland died in 2010 (NYT Obit). His 40/4 chair is part of MoMA's permanent collection, though not displayed, and their catalog entry is rather lacking.
