The Modern Chair

Certain 20th century chairs have earned the status of classics - collected by museums, coveted all over the world and relentlessly copied. Marcel Breuer’s Wassily chair, Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona chair, Gerrit Reitveld’s Zig Zag chair, Ray and Charles Eames’ LCM chair, among others combine elegance and functionality to achieve their classic status.

Clement Meadmore, himself a furniture designer, highlights the design features of over 40 chairs. Meadmore’s approach is to focus on the innovation and influence of the designs, and what he calls their problem solving - the ways in which the designers solved the inherent problems of function and aesthetics. The book includes ⅛ scale drawings of each chair, which enables the reader to understand the dimensions and visual comparisons of proportion and size.

If you do any modern design, this book is an essential reference. The singular focus on chairs means you get a compelling cross-section of what 20th century design meant for different, important designers working on the same object.

Softcover. 192 pages. 8 ½” x 11”.

Pages: 192
Binding: TP
Publisher: Dover Publications