The melding of hot furniture design and fashion is complete. While fashion designers are taking on furniture, we are just waiting for furniture designers to take on fashion. And then there's the advertising. Lately this 1950's wood lounge chair design has been the "it" chair of the moment...
Spotted in Banana Republic and AG ads, our clients have been asking about this shape and we've found some really nice versions over at Prague Kolectiv. Our question remains, however, to whom do we credit for the basic design?
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They are two different chairs. The Banana Republic ad has a chair by Danish designer Gretta Jalk. Sadly, I sold the same chair with a great Kvadrat upholstery on Craigslist last year.
The chair in the AG ad looks like a Jens Risom (spelling?) design that has been painted white.
Both of these chairs fall into the classic Danish Modern chair typology, and similar designs were available from many designers with and without names from the 50s through the 60s.
I actually noticed Banana Republic's furniture earlier this year, I went into a store and say 3 eames chairs and they're on their website too.
Fossil as well, but they've been doing that for awhile.
I have the chair show, I can't remember who made it but mine is a rocker, the seat is on spring, never seen another one like it.
check out the New Yorker Dec 4thish issue, related story...
the LACMA exhibit, fashion + architecture...
Yay, I've got one!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ccapell/296035212/
Thanks Craig! :-)
It rather reminds me of my Paul McCobb armchair. I think those struts at the side are different, but the overall proportions are pretty much identical.
Surely this is the beginning of the end of the MCM resurgence. Once my Rooms-To-Go-savvy sister starts becoming an authority on Risom and McCobb it's time for the next trend.
I used to have one. And a couch. I liked them too.
I didn't even sell them. Just left them behind when I moved cross country. (sob)
Didn't know what I had.
I have two of these chairs. My parents bought then in Demark in 1964. I've had the refinished and then recovered in a faux ostrich.
Oops, Click on my name to see it
"...Hussein Chalayn's wearable living room furniture (a telescoping wooden coffee table that becomes a skirt, and slip covered chairs that convert into suitcases in case you have to leave town on short notice) introduce the genral themes..." parag.2, p. 96...by Judith Thurman
(paragraph 4, "Architecture critics have already started to grumble about the tenuous nature of the conxns made in "Skin & Bones," but the fashion world is well served by it. On the runway, inspired feats of virtuosity are all too often quickly forgotten by blase audiences rushing to the next show. Here they are treated with informed reverence..." (final 2/3 of paragraph, splendid, on fashion's self mockery + duality...)
howevr attractive the slip covered chair/suitcases may be, does it not make you want to find more ingenius convertibles out there that would make Maria Von trapp proud...
nice chair, havent seen it much, but on tv its the barcelona that wins, hands down, second is the womb chair.
AJ nails it right off the bat. I have a pair of similar 1950s Danish Modern by Jens Risom. Found them in a junk store without any cushions. Got 'em reupholstered and used some new Knoll textiles for a contemporary twist. So fabu. Wouldn't dream of parting with them.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/goblue72/311604738/
Had those chairs: they aren't very comfortable.
ahhh, danish modern. i spent the summer studying/designing furniture in copenhagen, directly inspiring my own work.
here are the results...
Variants of those chairs really were all over... in the 1970s, my parents had one with a higher back and a matching footstool (it was "used furniture" by then, so probably dated from the 1950s). I loved that chair -- they got rid of it long before modernism made a comeback, though.
I have a chair that similar that I recovered and finished my self. I got it for 20 bucks at a local thrift shop. I could've had 2 but I went back to late. Chair $7.95 Cushions $5.00 Old couche slip cover to recover cushoins $5.00 Needle and thread $2.00 Satisfaction in finishing it and how good it looks .... PRICELESS!!