100 Years Of Modern Chair Design

A comprehensive retrospective of furniture design in the past 150 years. 900 illustrations

Pull up a chair (or 100) for this midcentury design showcase. Here is a stylish guide to the top 100 most interesting, most controversial, or simply most beautiful chairs designed between 1930 and 1970. Get to know the designers of the Modern era, including the Eames, Jacobsen, Nakashima, Noguchi, Wegner, and many more, through their creative and unique chair designs. With notes on materials, manufacturers, and construction, entertaining quotes by designers and fans about each chair, a brief biography of each designer, the stories behind the designs, and even a ‘chair timeline’ showcasing the very best of European, Scandinavian, Japanese, and American design, 100 Midcentury Chairs And Their Stories is a must for Midcentury enthusiasts and design history fans everywhere.

The chair—you’re likely sitting in one right now. Yet, despite its common presence in offices, restaurants, and homes, we very rarely stop to think about the origins of the chair and its place in culture. After all, the human body is actually more suited to sitting on the ground than on a chair; and as a result, chairs often cause back problems. Nonetheless, in Western culture, as Anne Massey explains, the chair is an object that marks our place in the modern world. Massey explores how, particularly in the last hundred years, the chair has become a revered object of design. Certain chairs have become iconic—like the Eames Lounge chair and Verner Panton’s S Chair, which are photographed, exhibited in art museums, and slavishly copied by cheaper models. Other chairs have reached iconic status simply through their everydayness—think of Van Gogh’s chair or the way Shaker chairs have become emblematic of a simpler and purer lifestyle. Massey further examines how chairs have been crafted, from local to global manufacture. In doing so she elucidates the meaning of the chair in contemporary culture, as well as the development, design, and manufacture of this ubiquitous object. Drawing on design, art, popular culture, and personal experience, Chair is an engaging and informative biography of this everyday object and will appeal to anyone interested in why we choose to sit on the chairs we do.

In this profusely illustrated study, a noted furniture designer brings together more than 40 examples of chairs that combine practicality and elegance to transcend the confines of period and fashion. Featured are such modern "classics" as Thonet's Bentwood armchair, Breuer's Wassily chair, van der Rohe's Barcelone chair, and many more. Each chair is described in detail with the aid of photographs, Mr. Meadmore's own explanatory drawings and some reproductions of the original designer's plans. The author also explores the ways in which the designers approached and solved inherent problems of function and aesthetics. The scale drawings in this book are all one-eighth of full size, allowing easy assessment of dimensions and visual comparison of size and proportion. Many of these chairs are housed in museum collections; others are still being produced today. Now, this inexpensive edition of The Modern Chair enables students of furniture and any interested reader to make a thorough study of the most important chairs of modern times.

「百張經典設計特椅」。透過「椅子」此一尋常的傢俱，引領觀者進入現代社會「物質文化」的時光長廊，探察「工藝設計」、「精神美學」與「時尚風格」彼此動人心弦、激盪競合的文明軌跡。展覽依年代序列劃分為九個展區，展出自十九世紀後期至二十世紀末具有劃時代意義的設計師經典作品，呈現每個年代中因歷史變遷、文化撞擊下所催生的不同美學風格。