Flânerie in the design backstage: Piping hot revolutions

At the 2009 European Fine Art Fair (commonly called Tefaf), the Galerie Vallois presented a booth composed entirely of metal furniture. At its center, a grand semi-circular desk and an armchair that I had never seen but whose design felt familiar. TheBordereldesk and armchair were a prototype designed by the Art deco master Jacques Emile Ruhlmann (1879-1933) and entirely made out ofDuralium(Duralium was originally developed for aviation. It combines the lightness of aluminum and the strength of metal). Ruhlmann was a designer of luxury furniture, known worldwide for his use of opulent materials such as fine woods and  inlaid ivory, far from industrial production. For a design geek like me it was surprising to see his name associated with such a metallic ensemble. I had to investigate.

Well, Ruhlmann was an observant man and he saw that society and technology were moving toward more comfort. This comfort came through the apparition of central heating systems (again the pipes…). Wood being a living material, changes in temperature and dryness are its enemies as they cause it to warp. Ruhlmann was assisted in his experimentations by his friend Raymond Subes (1891-1970) who was the artistic director of the Borderel et Robert, a company specialized in ironwork. 

In 1925, he designed a prototype for a chair with an enameled metal frame which was so innovative that it already anticipated the imperatives of mass production (easy to manufacture and with the smallest possible amount of material). This early model offers a strong resemblance with what we consider today to be one of the common stacking chairs. However, Ruhlmann’s prototype was never produced. (We will never know for certain why, but the growing rumors of an extraordinary modernist project distracted him. Indeed in those years, the Maharadja d’Indore was making frequent visits to Paris, with his suite of advisors, to scout the french design horizons and decide who were to be the artists of the Manigh Bagh Palace. But that’s just maybe.)

In 1929, only a few years after Ruhlmann’s first metal creations, Le Corbusier’s architecture practice (where the future leading figures of French design Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret were working) showed his first seats in bent metal. Metal furniture became more and more easy to produce (and reproduce) and the door of the social revolution became wide open…

Next time you fearlessly turn on the heat sitting in your cantilever chair have a thankful thought for Jacques-Emile.

£985

Cubic form, clear design, fine proportions, and flexing movement: the development of the perfected cantilever chairs S 33 and S 34, among the first of their kind, today combines zeitgeist and a sense of tradition. “Why four legs if two will suffice?”, wrote artist Kurt Schwitters in 1927 after seeing the first cantilever chairs in furniture history. The two chairs S 33 and S 34 caused a sensation at the Werkbund exhibit at the Weissenhof Estate in Stuttgart. Starting in 1925, Mart Stam experimented with small diameter gas pipes, and at first he connected them with standard pipe fittings as used by plumbers. As a further development, Stam created cantilevered chairs that no longer stood on four legs, and it was a construction principle that became an important building block in the history of modern furniture design with its formal restraint. His cantilever chairs S 33 and S 34 were more than matter-of-fact designed interior design objects; they were part of the overall revolutionary concept of a new attitude towards architecture and life.