Those of you who went to Milan this year had a lot on your plates. You navigated the ever-expanding array of booths. You deduced which satellite events were skippable. You managed to get some interviews amid exhibitor-buyer talks that increasingly resembled Hungry Hungry Hippos. You even found your way back to the hotel, despite the trains shutting down before you finished your prosecco! And this was all before some volcano erupted!

With all of the distraction, you could be forgiven for overlooking a trend or two. Particularly this one. It’s the latest example of an obscure-but-intriguing furniture-design trope that I would hereby like to dub Piles of Chairs.

Piles of chairs. I’ll wait a moment for that to sink in. Read more…

The ICFF invites are rolling in (and in and in and in—check our Ultimate Event Guide for a frequently-updated roster of all the happenings) and already we’ve noticed a 2010 show-floor mini-trend: At least three exhibitors this year will be hand-making products in their booths. Should be a nice reminder of just how much painstaking work goes into the creation of all those flawless new products at the Javits.

Here are the details: Read more…

In a story in yesterday’s T The New York Times Style Magazine, Guy Trebay sits down with the 93-year-old furniture designer Irving Harper—and kindly gives credit to Metropolis for first uncovering Harper’s behind-the-scenes role in creating some of the most recognizable icons in midcentury furniture design. Click here to read the full text of Paul Makovsky’s original story on Harper, “Vintage Modern,” from the June 2001 issue.

For more than three decades now, two bright-orange Panton Chairs have graced my apartments in New York City. They started out in the living room, then migrated to the bedroom, and now they’re my dining chairs, to be seen clearly from every angle of my tiny downtown loft. And I love looking at them—their shiny, smooth, sensual plastic forms, their striking Sixties color, their generous seat pans from the front, sleek profiles from the side, and humanoid bottoms from the back please my eye endlessly. Believe it or not, I also enjoy cleaning them—going over the smooth plastic with a damp cloth, then buffing it dry is a satisfying moment, in contrast to my other furniture, which needs vacuuming, dusting, and sometimes  toxic stain removers. My Pantons, in fact, stand in defiance of complex maintenance. They are truly Modern chairs in this regard too. And reports to the contrary, my Pantons did not throw guests across the room, break under them, or in any way cause discomfort or bodily harm to anyone. As far as I’m concerned they’re ergonomically, sculpturally, materially, and aesthetically perfect.

As someone who sometimes teaches design history, I also appreciate the chairs’ breakthrough design and materiality, product engineering, and manufacturing methods. The Panton, after all, is the first chair made of one piece of material, a process that took many years and many trials to develop and perfect, starting in the early 1960s. Knowing these historic facts also increases my appreciation of the chairs. And understanding that many trials and errors go into innovative products reminds me that design breakthroughs are not about “aha!” moments, but a sustained commitment to an idea. Read more…