Front-Row Seats

Sculpture meets function in the chair and its brethren, a perennial fascination for designers...

Annie Block -- Interior Design, 8/1/2010 3:36:00 PM

Sculpture meets function in the chair and its brethren, a perennial fascination for designers. Furniture-maker Alex Roskin's anatomically inspired Skeletal series-sit at your own risk-turns up at Philadelphia's Wexler Gallery on September 3. "Gustav Stickley and the American Arts & Crafts Movement," debuting at the Newark Museum of Art on September 15, presents 100-plus pieces. When New York's RH Gallery opens its doors for the first time, on September 25, "The Third Meaning" will include Fredrik Färg's riff on found chairs. In the Netherlands, a yearlong commemoration of Gerrit Rietveld culminates at the Central Museum, Utrecht, with "Rietveld Universe," a wide-ranging homage starting October 20.

It's almost as if the authors of 1000 Chairs, Charlotte and Peter Fiell, were behind all this activity. They weren't. However, they are self-publishing a 768-page seat-quel, coming out in January.