1000 Chairs

Chairs displayed on their own as pure form

More than any other piece of furniture, the chair has been subjected to the wildest dreams of the designers. The particular curve of a back-rest, or the twist of a leg, the angle of a seat or the colour of the entire artefact all reflect the stylistic consciousness of each era.

From Gerrit Rietveld and Alvar Aalto via Verner Panton to Eva Zeisel; from Art Nouveau to International Style, from Pop Art to Postmodernism, the phenomenon of the chair is so complex that it requires a reference work as comprehensive as this to do it full justice. They are all here: Thonet's bentwood chairs and Hoffmann's sitting-machines, Marcel Breuer's Wassily chair and Ron Arad's avant garde armchairs.

The book devotes one page to each chair and displays them on their own as pure form. This account of 200 years of chair design, represented by 1,000 chairs by some 400 international designers, fully describes the life of the chair.