Elements of Style: Miniature Chairs, Take a Seat
At Shelter Home we have a series of miniature chairs from the Vitra Design Museum. People eye these miniatures in amazement, often wondering aloud, sarcastically, that they would prefer to sit in the chair before purchasing. I try not to laugh, because they are right. A chair like the seemingly delicate Knotted Chair by Marcel Wanders is almost a chair-hammock, or the astral How High the Moon by Shiro Kuramata seems more suited for an astronaut.
Some chairs, including the Eames DCW and LCW, are in modern production and not out of reach for the average consumer. I could never hope to find or afford many of the chairs full-scale. Marc Newson’s slick Lockheed Lounge (sold at auction for $1.5 million in 2007) will always be outside my reach. Others are from small editions, some rare but nevertheless iconic in the history of modern furniture design.
Founded by Vitra CEO Rolf Fehlbaum in 1989, the Vitra Design Museum has one of the largest collections of modern furniture design in the world. With more than 3,000 chairs from all major periods and styles, from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present, this collection takes us from Breuer and Le Corbusier to Gehry and Starck.
The Vitra miniatures are not dollhouse furniture but precise reproductions of original masterpieces. Three-dimensional teaching objects for students, designers, and connoisseurs, they are useful tools of study about construction, craftsmanship and design. Their sales add to the financial budget of the Museum funding further miniatures and chair design by new designers.
Take the five inch high jewel perfection that is Hans Wegner’s 3-Benet Skalstol. Hold it carefully in your hands. The balance. The color. The touch. So perfect it might float away. How else could I own a 1898 Mackintosh Argyle Chair and a Taliesen West Chair by Frank Lloyd Wright? Impractical, you might think. Perhaps, but what perfection. What wonder and desire fulfilled simply sitting on there on the mantelpiece.
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