This is Not a Schwarz

Below the paywall: A treasury of Irish chairs.

If ordinary applied art has a personal stamp, this means that it is incomplete. The artist has not gotten past his mistakes or arrived at the typical solution that is just as ordinary and natural in form as a Yale lock, a fountain pen, a bicycle, a scythe, a shovel. Imagine if a bicycle bore the mark of the artist who had designed it!

— Poul Henningsen (1894-1967), Danish author, architect and critic

Last year, I stopped signing my work. This year, I strive to remove even more evidence that I made a chair, shelf or stool.

If I succeed (and I likely won’t) then my chairs should disappear. It’s something I got a weird glimpse of today.

This afternoon I visited Jere’s Antiques in Savannah, Georgia, for the second time ever. The first time was about 15 years ago when I scampered in with my father to escape the rain, cold and empty streets by the city’s old docks.

Jere was the only one around that day in this cavern of chests, armoires and dining tables. Everything was stacked to the ceiling, with about 12" of space between things for customers to snake through. That chilly day, Jere invited us to his office for coffee, and the three of us watched the rain smack the bricks outside while he told us the history of this old Southern town.

When I walked in today, little had changed. Jere walked by while talking on his cell phone. And the antiques seemed to be stacked even higher and closer together than on my first visit. After about 20 minutes of roaming around, Megan said: “OK, I’m satiated. I’ve seen enough.”

I agreed, and we began to wiggle toward the patch of daylight at the front of the warehouse. After a couple turns, however, we encountered a staircase going up. I didn’t remember this staircase from my first visit. (It felt like some real D&D stuff.)

I peered up and saw chairs.

“Come on,” I said. “They have some chairs up there.”

What we saw at the top of the steps was basically the attic of the warehouse. It was an entire city block. And it was piled with thousands of chairs. Chairs on chairs, as far as the eye could see. Chairs hanging on the rafters. Chairs in piles like they were waiting to be burned or shoveled into bigger heaps, hills or mountains of chairs.

I’d never seen so many chairs. Click the video below if you dare.

I looked around the space and wondered about the people who had made these things. Most of them were factory-made items from the 19^th century. But there were a few handmade chairs here and there. You can tell.

“Damn,” I said. “The world doesn’t need any more chairs.”

On the one hand, the statement is completely right. If everyone stopped making chairs today, it would take decades for people to notice a shortage of places to sit. But on the other hand, I didn’t want to own any of the chairs I saw in this vast warehouse of mahogany, shellac, upholstery and carving.

All these chairs were striving. Striving to show wealth, prosperity and purpose. There were sets of matching chairs that showed … what? The means to buy a set of 12 chairs? The match-y match-y urges of an orderly (or boring) mind? A lack of creativity?

What was missing were chairs that blended in with their surroundings. Chairs that you’d never notice until you needed a place to sit. Chairs that didn’t insist upon themselves. Chairs that couldn’t be dated or assigned to a historical period or famous designer (Hepplewhite, Chippendale, Sheraton, Hitchcock and on and on).

Today I couldn’t find any invisible chairs. Maybe they were there. I doubt it.

I want to make the chairs you can’t see. I don’t want to be like Sam Maloof, George Nakashima or Art Carpenter. I want my chairs to fade into usefulness. I want them to be so comfortable that you’d never throw them out (or consign them to an antiques dealer). And I want them to be so nondescript that they will blend in with your “Fahrenheit 451°” interior.

How will I achieve this?

I’ve thought about this for ages.