'The Art of Seating' exhibit opens at Westmoreland Museum of American Art
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Adjustable Lounge Chair, 1947. Designed by Herbert von Thaden (1898-1969) -
Synergistic Synthesis XVII sub b1 Chair, by Kenneth Smythe. -
Centripetal Spring Arm Chair, c. 1850. -
Johnson Wax Company Chair, c. 1938, by Frank Lloyd Wright. -
House of Representatives Chamber Arm Chair, 1857, by Thomas Ustick Walter -
Cabled Chair by Brian Ferrell. -
Chair by Brian Ferrell. -
Table by Brian Ferrell. -
High Stool, 1971. Designed by Frank Gehry
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Take a good look at the chairs in your house before you go to "The Art of Seating." You may see them in a whole new light afterward.
The exhibition, which opens today at Westmoreland Museum of American Art, features 43 chairs from the Jacobsen American Chair Collection made between the beginning of the 19th century and 2010. Collector Diane DeMell Jacobsen will give a free lecture at the museum at 7 p.m. March 16.
The earliest work is a ladderback doll's chair manufactured circa 1800-25, probably in Maine, made of wood and rush and painted a dark green with floral sprays. The most recent, of 2010, is "Iconic Bench," a laminated Baltic birch plywood work designed by Laurie Beckerman and fabricated by Heritage Woodshop in Brooklyn.
The show's subtitle is "200 Years of American Design," and the chairs reflect the historic and cultural shifts of two centuries. Chairs range from regal to functionally practical to whimsical.
Who would imagine there was technological innovation underlying the gaudy Victorian-era centripetal spring art chair, bedecked in floral-patterned maroon velvet and florid metal ornamentation. But the product of the American Chair Co. of Troy, N.Y., is an example of a 19th-century trend toward "patent furniture" and was designed and patented by Thomas E. Warren in 1849. The seat rides atop four legs and eight iron springs that allow it to move in any direction, a quality that was thought to increase the user's comfort.
By the 21st century there is as much emphasis on sculptural form as on function, as with curvy blue "Current." It was designed and manufactured in 2004 by Vivian Beer of Penland, N.C., who works in the tradition of the American studio furniture movement.
"I wanted it to feel as fast and clean as water in its silhouette, with the power of an implied brutal forming in the background," she said.
The first chair purchased by Ms. Jacobsen was an ebonized cherry Egyptian Revival side chair, circa 1875, the design of which was influenced by Napoleon's forays into Egypt and subsequent archaeological discoveries in that country.
First Published February 4, 2012 12:00 am
