To figure out which parts of my normal research process are effective, and which need work, I did some research into the history of chair design, and documented my workflow as best I could. This is the result.
I’m looking into chair design throughout history, specifically how the industrial revolution and mass production changed chair design.
It’s a topic that was brought to my attention several years ago when I read the book “Plastic: A Toxic Love Story” by Susan Freinkel and thought the section on chairs was really interesting. Plus, I have a nice book on design of various objects, including chairs, that I got for my birthday and it’s a good chance to really look through that for images!
CHAIRS:
- The first thing I’m noticing is that my assumptions for when a lot of popular furniture designs were created are way off
- The ‘Tric’ folding chair was designed in 1965, for example. It reveals how young I am that I would have guessed sometime in the 80s. Beyond that, the Thonet chair the Tric was based on (No. 8751) was designed in the 30s, when aesthetically I would have guessed the same as the Tric.
- Michael Thonet, by the way, is a big name in chairs. Picture an old wooden dining chair and you’re probably thinking of something he designed.
DOWN THE THONET RABBIT HOLE:
- So I looked up Thonet on Wikipedia to learn more about him and it’s some interesting stuff
- Specifically Chair No. 14 (1859)
- It could be easily disassembled to fit bulk quantities of the chair in small spaces for worldwide shipping
- This is exactly the sort of thing that I’m interested in learning about. A chair designed as dictated by the workings of mass industry
- Honestly there’s enough interesting stuff about Thonet’s designs that aligns with my topic that I might choose to focus in entirely on his stuff, if/when I explore this further
I mostly did my research from books for this, which is atypical for me. (Generally, I just go on huge WikiWalks for anything but the most formal stuff) I checked out four books on various periods of furniture design, and used those along with my personal copy of The Design Book
(Phaidon).
Any online research was done through WikiWalking to find avenues of research, and then clicking on the stuff Wikipedia cited to read about the details. I linked relevant sources in the research notes as I found them.
