All Photos By Gail
Oh, the crazy cool things I find totally by accident that end up on this blog! It was a bright red neon sign, spotted way in the back of a newish indoor shopping emporium on Broadway in Soho that drew me in from the street and, look at this awesome chair that I discovered! Just look at it!
Continue reading Cartoon Character Custom-Painted Midcentury Chair
Photographed in the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum
In the mid-to-late 20th century, an atmosphere of innovation and a desire to question the tenets of modernism led some designers to explore a variety of ways in which to shape space. American Architect and Designer Alexander Hayden Girard utilized color and pattern in textiles, particularly in this colorful abstract, or folk art-inspired work for Herman Miller.
Continue reading Eye On Design: Glass Armchair by Shiro Kuramata
All Photos By Gail
Mushrooms, oysters, tongues, and tulips are some of the iconic shapes French designer Pierre Paulin (1927 – 2009) was best known for creating. Having trained under Parisian designer Marcel Gascion, Paulin was influenced by the Scandinavian aesthetic as well as American pre-fabricated designs by Charles and Ray Eames and Florence Knoll.
Inspired to develop his own brand of accessible luxury, Paulin began designing and manufacturing seats made of molded wood lined with foam padding and fashioned with a stretch elastic jersey fabric for Thonet-France. Paulin’s forward-looking, innovative designs for affordable chairs, divans, and sofas in an array of bright and vivid colors, most notably the Mushroom, Tongue and Ribbon chair, among others, can be found in contemporary art and design collections around the world.
Tongue Chairs and Ribbon Chair (Rear)
Paulin designed his Ribbon Chair (model 582) in 1966, for manufacture in 1967 by Artifort in the Netherlands. It involves a tubular steel frame, latex foam, stretch fabric and a painted wood base.
Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.
All Photos By Gail
The undulating form of Mathias Bengtsson’s plywood Slice Armchair is inspired by cutting-edge technology and organic forms found in nature. Bengtsson initiated the design in 1999 and originally executed it in clay. He then used a computer to analyze the shape and precision-cut hundreds of plywood slices, each a unique shape and just a few millimeters thick, which he stacked and laminated to form the sculptural chair.
Continue reading Eye On Design: Slice Armchair By Mathias Bengtsson
Chair (II), 1963 (All Photos By Gail)
Günther Uecker (German, b. 1930) is a sculptor, op and installation artist, known for his relief nail works first developed in 1957. His three-dimensional work creates a unique experience as it appears to move and cast different lighting effects as the viewer moves around the work. In 1961, Uecker became a member of the group of artists called ZERO, founded by Heinz Mack and Otto Piene. Inspired by the Kinetic Art movement, the collective grounded their philosophy on theories of light, technology, and optical illusion. Uecker also produces sculptures of pianos and chairs with nails sticking out of them, and he creates sets and costumes for opera performances.
Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.
