Pearson Lloyd can try to virtue signal their offerings by denigrating a Saarinen classic (the 1948 womb chair) 75 years after being first produced but it’s a disingenuous game. The chair (and Arne’s Egg) remain highly sought after both as originals or copies and is still considered a masterpiece of furniture design, and one of the most comfortable chairs ever made. Time will tell if people are still in love with their Pearson Lloyd chairs in 75 years or whether they have long gone to that great landfill in the sky.
To say it wouldn’t be designed today is blindingly obvious. In 1948 clever people invented the electrical transistor, long since superceeded by circuit boards and chips. On the architecture side Frank Lloyd Wright, Goff, Neutra etc were building away, churning out breathtaking yet carbon guzzling designs. Everyone was war weary, poor yet optimistic and generating huge amounts of static electricity in their rayon clothes and a mere 1% of US population had a TV in the house. In the UK bread rationing was only stopped in July so fat shaming had yet to gain much traction. And yet the womb chair still looks and feels brand new. It’s remarkable.
The “circular economy” argument is a particularly silly and self-serving one to pursue. The issue surely is not a ludicrous and fabricated debate about the morality of glued textiles. The problem is that the vast majority of furniture made today is totally and utterly useless in terms of strength, comfort, durability and beauty. Miserable design and flimsy materials deliver the waste, but it is the recycling of desire to purchase new furniture that is the root cause. Auction houses will tell you that the market for old (recycled, upcycled, whatever) furniture has evaporated. They can’t give it away. The main reason is that a frightening number of people want to be told exactly what to buy to furnish their home and when to change it, environmental altruism takes a back seat.
Fast furniture is just as illogical and ecologically damaging as fast fashion. A chair, like a doggy, should be for life and not for Christmas. And the great thing about chair design is that success is ultimately determined by bottoms and not telling people what they should glue their textiles too.
Concave chairs like Arne Jacobsen's Egg and Eero Saarinen's Womb don't meet today's definition of good design, say the founders of design studio Pearson Lloyd.
!["Egg Chair would not be designed today" say Luke Pearson and Tom Lloyd]()
"Egg Chair would not be designed today" say Luke Pearson and Tom Lloyd
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Founder at Foundry UK Ltd & Foundry Middle East | Director Micon HTI Ltd - Lutron Hotel Technology Integration Specialists
1moCongratulations Poppy Bruten, well deserved. It is an absolute pleasure having as part of the team. 🥂