Wingback Chair
Mark Brazier-Jones
year: 1990
material: polished bronze, red fabric
measurements: w 55 x d 55 x h 97 cm
w 21.7 x d 21.7 x h 38.2 inches
handsigned 1990, no. 39 / 50
Mark Brazier-Jones engages with the historical wingback chair—an upholstered type traditionally defined by its high back and lateral “wings,” developed in early modern Europe to provide warmth and enclosure. Over time, the form became closely associated with domestic authority, intellectual retreat, and bourgeois comfort.
Rather than abandoning this recognizable model, Brazier-Jones subjects it to reinterpretation. Through shifts in proportion, material articulation, and surface treatment, the chair moves beyond typology toward sculptural presence. The familiar silhouette remains legible, yet its transformation destabilizes expectations of restraint and neutrality.
In this work, the wingback chair is not simply revived but recontextualized. It becomes an exploration of how inherited forms can be recharged—how tradition may serve not as limitation, but as a framework for expressive and conceptual expansion.
White Swan
Satyendra Pakhalé
year: 2005/12
material: white Carrara marble
measurements: w 53 x d 65 x h 86 cm
w 20.9 x d 25.6 x h 33.9 inches
weight: 300 kg
edition: 7 + 3 a.p.
The White Swan chair by Satyendra Pakhale combines sculptural elegance with material contrast. Inspired by the cultural symbolism of the swan—an animal associated with grace, transformation, and fluid movement—the design translates organic softness into a solid, architectural object.
The chair is crafted from marble, a material traditionally linked to permanence, weight, and historical monumentality. Here, the marble is shaped into a form that appears surprisingly light and fluid despite its inherent mass. The polished white surface enhances this tension, emphasizing purity of line while allowing the stone’s natural qualities to remain visible.
Through the combination of symbolic form and heavy, traditionally monumental material, White Swan explores the paradox of lightness and weight. The work reflects Pakhale’s interest in cross-cultural references and in design as both physical structure and poetic narrative.
Boolean and Chair
Studio Nucleo
year: 2017
material: concrete, vintage chair
measurements: w 61 x d 49 x h 95 cm
w 24 x d 19.3 x h 37.4 inches
edition: 1 + 1 a.p.
Pavonia Armchair, Museum Market
Alessandro Mendini for Design Gallery
year: 1993
material: painted wood, upholstery
measurements: w 90 x d 75 x h 83 cm
w 35.4 x d 29.5 x h 32.7 inches
no. 2/12
Designed by Alessandro Mendini for the Museum Market Collection of Studio Alchimia, the Pavonia Armchair reflects the radical rethinking of design that characterized the Italian avant-garde of the late 1970s and 1980s. Within this context, furniture was conceived not merely as functional equipment but as a medium of cultural critique and artistic expression.
The Museum Market series deliberately blurred distinctions between unique piece and reproducible design, between gallery object and domestic furniture. Mendini’s contribution embraces ornament, vivid pattern, and historical reference as conceptual tools. Rather than adhering to modernist restraint, he foregrounds decoration as meaning—positioning surface as narrative and color as argument.
In the Pavonia Armchair, Mendini transforms seating into a communicative object: expressive, self-aware, and embedded within a broader discourse on authorship, memory, and the role of design in contemporary culture.
Doppel-Stuhl / Double-Chair
Rolf Sachs
year: 1995
material: beechwood
measurements: w 70 x d 56 x h 80.5 cm
w 27.6 x d 22 x h 31.7 inches
edition: 3
With Doppel Stuhl, Rolf Sachs interrogates the stability of the chair as an autonomous object. By merging two seating structures into a single configuration, he creates a form that oscillates between usability and obstruction. The gesture of doubling introduces both symmetry and tension: what appears rational becomes subtly destabilized.
Sachs’ practice often operates through minimal formal intervention that yields conceptual impact. Here, the chair becomes a study in relational perception—between bodies, between objects, and between expectation and experience. Rather than offering comfort as a given, the work prompts awareness of posture, proximity, and spatial negotiation.
Juliette Chair
Massimo Iosa Ghini for Memphis
year: 1987
material: metal, plastic, straw
measurements: w 54 x d 77 x h 90 cm
w 21.3 x d 30.3 x h 35.4 inches
The Juliette Chair exemplifies Massimo Iosa Ghini’s exploration of line, lightness, and structural transparency. The seat is constructed from tensioned string, creating a permeable surface that challenges conventional notions of solidity and support. The backrest incorporates plastic tubes—an industrial material whose lightness and modular logic contrast with traditional upholstery or wood construction.
This combination of string and synthetic tubing shifts the chair toward dematerialization. Structure becomes graphic; mass is replaced by linear articulation. Emerging from the context of late twentieth-century Italian design, the work reflects a broader rejection of strict functionalism in favor of expressive and technological hybridity. The chair appears less assembled than drawn—an intersection of architecture, ornament, and movement.
The Roots Stool foregrounds origin as both material and conceptual principle. Drawing directly on organic form, the work emphasizes growth, irregularity, and the inherent structure of wood. Rather than refining material into abstraction, Ad Hoc preserves its tactile and morphological character.
This approach situates the stool within a discourse on sustainability and archetype. Seating is understood not as an industrial standard but as an evolutionary response to human need. By maintaining visible traces of natural formation, the piece collapses distinctions between artifact and environment, suggesting continuity rather than domination between design and nature.
Weltenbrüterstuhl
Florian Borkenhagen
year: 2015
material: wood, glass
measurements: w 43 x d 48 x h 82 cm
w 16.9 x d 18.9 x h 32.3 inches
unique
The Weltenbrüterstuhl (“World-Brooder Chair”) positions seating as a condition of introspection. Its enveloping structure suggests retreat, incubation, and psychic concentration. Florian Borkenhagen transforms the chair into a spatial threshold—simultaneously protective and isolating.
The work engages with a long tradition of associating seated posture with contemplation and intellectual production. Yet its formal language resists nostalgia; instead, it proposes a contemporary meditation on withdrawal in an accelerated world. The chair becomes less a piece of furniture than an apparatus for thought—an object that frames the body in order to activate the mind.
Chair on base
Forrest Myers
year: 1980
material: anodized aluminium, metal
measurements: w 61 x d 66 x h 61 cm
w 24 x d 26 x h 24 inches
In Chair on a Base, Forrest Myers employs the strategy of elevation to question categorization. By placing a functional object on a plinth, he invokes the conventions of sculptural display and museum presentation. The chair is simultaneously ordinary and estranged.
Associated with postwar American sculpture, Myers extends minimal and conceptual concerns into the realm of design typology. The work destabilizes the boundary between use-value and exhibition value: is the chair to be occupied, observed, or revered? Through this subtle displacement, Myers exposes the systems—cultural and institutional—that define how objects are perceived.