The Crafts Council of Ireland Issue no.3
hairs are Many Splendid Things Please Be Seated displays the work of 23 studio furniture makers from the United States. Their chairs exhibit tremendous variety in materials, techniques and approaches but the common denominator is an emphasis in each piece on originality and on personal statement and all are involved in questions about the relationship between art and craft, the relationship between the usual function of furniture and the individual creativity of the furniture maker, and ultimately between art and utility. Diversity of style and interest in creative expression is general throughout the current studio furniture movement both in the makers and in their work, and it reflects the current changes taking place in the larger work of contemporary crafts as it moves closer to the economic and conceptual realm of fine art. Studio furniture, or art furniture, can be traced back to the late nineteenth century Arts and Crafts movement. During this period, Arts and Crafts advocates attempted to reform design and its relationship to everyday life They stressed form, function and the appropriateness of materials in the belief that beautifully made hand crafted objects utilized on a daily basis would impart an uplifting moral tone to community life. Implicit in their approach was the assumption that simplicity, the 'natural', was morally preferable. This perspective was given impetus during the early forties when several craftsmen, reacting against the pervasive machine aesthetic of Bauhaus-inspired industrial design, turned to woodworking, focusing on organic forms which would express the inherent qualities of the material.
personal feeling and interaction with materials in the pursuit of an artistic idea. These makers are forming chairs that create an atmosphere of rich experience and mood while making a strong aesthetic statement.
These furniture makers, unlike contemporaneous furniture designers, rejected industrial techniques and mass production, maintaining individual studios where they focused on making one-of-a-kind pieces by hand. The chairs in this exhibition demonstrate how much the world of crafts has changed in recent years. Craft is now a serious artistic pursuit which result in objects which are a part of everyday life. These chairs are to be sat in, walked around, related to, even as they insert themselves into our vision as complex multidimensional personalities. Ruskin wrote: "Fine art is that in which the hand, the head and the heart of man go together." These chairs come close to fulfiling Ruskin's criteria. Each evolves out of the artist's
Please Be Seated is a collection of contemporary seating design including pieces by Wendell Castle, Stephen Daniell, John Dunnigan, Robert Ebendorf, Wharton Esherick, Peter Handler, Ted Harlan, Susie Krasnican, Jack Larimore, Michael Larson, John Lewis, Daniel Mack, Thomas Mann, Stephen Perrin, Susan Pfeiffer, Peter Pierobon, John Scofield, Tommy Simpson, Jay Stanger, Thomas Stender, Lynn B. Sweet and Howard Werner.