Production chairs featured at Maine exhibit

The exhibit, “Successful Seating: Outstanding Production Chairs in Wood”, opened Sept.16 and will run through Jan. 7 at the Messler Gallery of the Center for Art in Wood in Rockport, Maine. The collection presents 16 chairs, all currently in production, by 14 designers from seven countries.

Pieces include Michael Thonet’s No. 14 (first introduced in 1859), Hans Wegner’s Wishbone chair (1949), Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec’s Osso chair (2019), and Jasper Morrison’s Iso-Lounge (2021).

The show’s curator is Peter Korn, a veteran chairmaker and the Center’s founder.

“It is beyond challenging to come up with a chair that succeeds on all levels. Inevitably, there are tradeoffs between comfort, beauty, strength, durability, portability, and affordability,” Korn said in a statement. “These chairs show what great design looks like when it needs to be commercially viable.”

For more, visit woodschool.org.

This article was originally published in the January 2023 issue.