Saturday, June 14, 2008

Thumbelina

At the FT, Sarah Murray on the allure of tiny furniture:
One extraordinary collection – the Beylerian Collection of Small Chairs, which was displayed last year at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design – includes chairs, made by artist and designer friends for George Beylerian, the founder of Material Connexion, a materials resource for designers and manufacturers.

The collection, which contains hundreds of items, includes everything from a chair made as a souvenir for the 1970s exhibition Treasures of Tutankhamun to salesmen’s samples, such as an early 20th-century swivel desk chair and a 1940s steel patio chaise longue.

Iconic designer chairs are also represented in miniature form, including Gerrit Rietveld’s 1918 Red and Blue Chair made from painted wood, Josef Hoffmann’s armchair, the Sitzmachine of 1905, and Marcel Breuer’s 1925 Wassily Chair of steel and black leather.
The Beylerian Collection of Small Chairs--could there possibly be a better name?!? Here is a link with some pictures, and here's the page for the "Have a Seat!" exhibition. The image below is from the museum website.

Patio Chaise Lounge (United States), c. 1940s
Metal, vinyl
9 ½ x 15 ½ x 7 ½ in.

1 comment:

  1. It's the "Beylerian" that really makes it seem like something too good to be true, giving it just the right air of exotic silliness.

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