A chair embodies a lot in one small package: engineering, materiality, practicality, and, most of all, imagination. You can love a sofa, a bed, or a table, but they don’t pull at the heartstrings the way a perfect chair does. A successful chair represents more than the marriage of form and function—it rises to the level of art. (And often fetches prices to match.)
The golden age of the modern chair was the 20th century, when technological innovations and the upward mobility of the masses drove the world’s best designers to seize the creative challenge of re-inventing a lowly piece of furniture. Chairs are like pop songs. You might think, Why would any songwriter even bother after Lennon/McCartney? The same is true for chair design after Charles and Ray Eames. But,…
