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modern classics

easy chairs or lounge chairs contribute to the history of design

updated: September 1999
Click on the chairs in this image or in the list at the bottom of this page to know more about them!ImageMap - turn on images!!!
 
 

 
 
 
 

You have at least three reasons to have a closer look at this page 
 
1

DESIGN HISTORY

learn something about the so-called Modern Movement, if you are not already acquainted with it, and especially about some of the designs of the masters. Design, as any expression of civilization and culture is not invented from nothing but is based on the philosophy and actions of our ancestors and traces of these are conserved in our present-day design. If we consider design language we must trace these connections with the past in order to better understand the present. It is quiet astonishing that so few research has been done in the direction of linguistic analysis of design history.
2

SEMIOTICS

understand better this sign type, that Peirce called, with one of the irksome names of his semiotics, the Rhematic Indexical Sinsign. The Rietveld chair belonging to the manifold of all modern easy chairs contains of course the general characteristics of this group or, in Peircean terms, it is a Rhematic Indexical Sinsign. It incorporates and exemplifies what we could call * easy-chair-ness *. What that means you can discover on the next page. (click here instead for a general introduction on Peirce and the Cabbala )
3

CABBALAH

see how this term collimates with the Hod, or Splendor, Sephirot in the Cabbala. Hod is, as Colin Law explains, (note 1) the appreciation of boundaries, a passion for classification, rules, detail, hair-splitting definitions
Let us start with the first approach, some examples of famous lounge chairs. You can click on the images or on the items in the list at the bottom of this page. 

The Rietveld red blue chair (9) is the topic of the research on these pages and is therefore placed in the center of the image above. It is the oldest chair represented here (1917) and is still on the market. The most recent one is the Wing chair (3)   

You can also click on the following images to have a better look at the different designs. 
( I am still working on a more specific analysis of each of them; students or scholars are invited to participate)
 The second and the third approach are treated on a separate page. 
 
1
bertoia
 Harry Bertoia  Wire Mesh Chair
1950 
2
lounge chair and ottoman
  Ray and Charles Eames   Lounge Chair and Ottoman 
 1965 
3 *
Wink chair by Kita
  Toshiyuki Kita  Wink Chair
1980 
4
Mies Van Der Rohe
  Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe  Easy Chair
1932 
5
 Eileen Gray  Transat chair 
1927 
6
Marcel Breuer Wassily chair
  Marcel Breuer  Wassily Chair 
1925 
7
 Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe  Barcelona Chair
1929 
8
chaise longue
  Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret 
 and Charlotte Perriand		  Chaise Longue
1928 
9
red-blue chair
  Gerrit Thomas Rietveld  Red-Blue Chair 
1917 
*    the Wing Chair by Kita does not really belong to the Modern Movement Design Classics but represents here its evolution.
 Next page explains this set of chairs as a sign category in Peirce's semiotics and in cabbalistic speculation.
 
 
to learn more about the Rietveld chair look at these pages:  some sites to find information on the Modern Movement 
and that furnished some of the images on this page. 
 
note  1 Colin Law's e-mail: cal@hplb.hpl.hp.com
next page What Peirce calls a Rhematic Indexical Sinsign is,  for cabbalists, Hod the Sephirot of classification
 
 
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   andries van onck