Le Corbusier and The Last Diplodocus

First Published in "The Home Monthly" August 2004 Issue for the Hersam Acorn Press


Le Corbusier and The Last Diplodocus.

My wife, daughter, and I live in a condominium and we are lucky enough to have two decks. The inside deck is surrounded on three sides by our condo with a seven-foot wall closing off the fourth side. It is nice and private. The second deck is a traditional, hang-over-the-side deck off our living room.

When we moved in over a year ago, we decided we needed to furnish these two outside rooms. After three trips, one to Wal-Mart, one to Home Depot, and one to Linens N Things, the task was accomplished. The inside deck was furnished with a round table with an authentic mosaic decal (which lasted one year) in the center and four chairs. The outside deck gained four Adirondack chairs and two Adirondack ottomans. An ottoman can mean one of two things, either a citizen of the Near East empire that was really big before World War One but really small afterward or the small round stool that my mom had covered in rich maroon vinyl when I was growing up. She also had one called a hassock which was also small and round. I have no idea what the difference between the two is and if anyone knows I’d appreciate you letting me in on it — but I digress. The entire adventure cost around $170 and since we don’t spend that much time outside due to the fear of insect-borne plagues or the risk of skin cancer, I consider it money well spent

As the weather turns warmer, thoughts in this house turn towards our friend Nancy’s pool and the living that goes on in and around that swimmin’ hole. Coincidentally, this month’s issue of two national design magazines featured several pieces of outdoor furniture, which sparked thoughts of a few other outdoor seating options that have crossed my path. These are, one would suppose, pieces you would place by the pool, on the deck (either inside or out), on the patio, take to the beach, or, in the case of one chair recommended by a designer friend of mine, while on safari in Africa. They each elevate the outdoor chair to new heights both in style and comfort. All cost a tad more than the $12.99 each I paid for the deck chairs in the al fresco portion of Chez Ploss.

The first is famed Italian architect/designer Mario Bellini’s MB1, available in the States through Heller. The MB1 echoes Bellini’s Le Bambole chair of 1972 for B&B Italia. The MB1 is as massive in appearance as Le Bambole but with cleaner lines and less of a nod to the overstuffed chair. It is, basically, an outdoor club chair. The sister piece, MB5 (one wonders what happened to MB2, MB3, and MB4), is a pouf that dictionary.com tells me is a “rounded ottoman.” Both are one-piece molded polymer (plastic) and the MB1 has built-in cushions. Heller says that both are suitable for either office, home, indoor or outdoor. They come in two “vibrant” shades of gray specified by Pantone Matching System numbers (a Pantone number is to a graphic designer what Everest Green Metallic is to a Mercedes Benz salesman except it makes more sense). One would imagine that either of the two grays would be on the neutral side of any decorating palette. The MB1’s style is definitely clean and contemporary. Thoroughly Modern Bellini. The colors for all of you designers out there are PMS 412C and 452C. It retails in the $800 range.

Extinct, it would appear, are vast herds of aluminum web chairs that have dominated the American leisure landscape for over 50 years. It would seem that, like the dinosaur, some climactic event has destined them to be a dead-end branch of the Furnituris leisurati family tree. But have they all gone? One can still find the last of the species in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart or the Christmas Tree Shop, clinging to existence like the last diplodocus at the end of the Jurassic. There are also indications that they, like the dinosaurs before them, have simply evolved into something else. In the case of the dinosaur, evidence points to them having evolved into birds. In the case of the aluminum web chair, evidence points to two distinct evolutionary paths. The first is that of the cloth-covered beach chair with its shortened stature, book pocket, and carry strap. Flocks of them can be seen perched on top of the frozen food and dairy sections of any Stop & Shop, like crows on a Nebraska power line. The second and arguably more successful evolution on the social acceptance scale is the metal-framed mesh chair. These can be seen at virtually every pool side, every deck, and patio in Fairfield County and are comfortable and airy (the mesh allows airflow to your caboose).

A more interesting piece is the folding English Mahogany Roorkhee Campaign Chair by FM Allen in New York and introduced to me by client and friend, designer Tyler Tinsworth. FM Allen has an entire line of reproduction English campaign furniture from the unique to the downright silly. The Roorkhee Chair (named in honor of the city where the Indian Army Corps of Engineers was located in British Colonial India) is definitely one of the unique ones. It is a wood, canvas and leather affair that requires the “sittee” to put together the various arms, braces, slings and belts to form a pretensioned masterwork. The Roorkhee, unlike most folding camp furniture, actually adapts well to uneven terrain and becomes more stable the heavier the person sitting in it (one can only ponder the previously unreachable levels of stability achieved with me sitting in it). Equally at home on a screened porch or in your office, this is a chair that is the focus, at least at first, of most of the conversations taking place around it.
When one looks at the complexity of the Roorkhee chair and compares it to say the folding director’s chair, one has to wonder why the English had to make things so darn complicated. At first I wrote it off to the fact that obviously the English campaign furniture was invented first and that the director’s chair came much later, say when the motion picture director was invented by Thomas Edison (this led to his inventing the motion picture as an excuse to get rid of all those people walking around his living room looking at him through frames made with their hands). That theory was dispelled by the fact that the French had “invented” the modern director’s chair in the 1890s as a folding chair for their generals. One can imagine legions of French Generals d’Armée sitting on the back porch of the Maginot Line during the spring of 1940, sipping cognac in director’s chairs with Welcome to France stenciled on the back.

According to Nicholas A. Brawer, author of British Campaign Furniture: Elegance Under Canvas, 1740-1914 (Harry N. Abrams, 2001), “The Roorkhee Chair blended the Elegance of the outgoing Victorian Age camp furniture with the more utilitarian style of the new Edwardian Era camp furniture.” The design allowed them to be folded compactly while retaining the highest level of luxury and style that typified “being British.” The fact that the French had invented the other type probably had nothing to do with it. Whatever the reason, the Roorkhee chair attracts attention like no director’s chair could. It’s very cool. Marcel Breuer thought so (the Roorkhee inspired his famous Wassily chair c1925) as did Le Corbusier (his Basculant chair, 1928, is a reflection of it) and Kaare Klint (as seen in his safari chair of 1933). The Roorkhee retails for $550. Dear Santa...

The silly piece is the Victorian Caned Satin-Birch Travelling Chair (for around $2,500). This folding, legless chair has handles positioned fore and aft so that your bearers can carry you, seated at a delightful angle, through the brush. “Oh look Monty, is that a lion eating the china bearer?” Standard equipment includes “massive iron rings” attached in place of legs “perhaps designed to lash it to a wagon or elephant howdah” (not a pachydermal greeting but the harness that was strapped to it’s back where everything from Victorian Caned Satin-Birch Travelling Chairs to small buildings were fastened). “Genevieve dear, could you pop down to the market for some mustard? You can take the elephant.” This is a beautiful work of art; one could imagine hanging it, at elephant back height, from the ceiling. It is a brilliant conversation piece but silly as a usable chair.

Of all of the choices both retro and contemporary that are available to the consumer in the outdoor seating market today, the one that inspires the warmest warm and fuzzies is the ubiquitous 1950s metal lawn chair. You know the one. They had (and still do) stamped metal seats molded to fit the lower district of the human anatomy and scalloped backs with pipe-like arms that started at the backrest, came forward, then bent downs to form the front (and only) legs, bent to the rear at the ground level, flowing back to a right angle and meeting somewhere south of your posterior.

Although it is difficult to find a definitive history of the metal lawn chair (or motel chair as they were also known due to their popularity in the drive-up lodging industry), they are thought, by some, to have been designed by industrial designer John Gordon Rideout of Cleveland, Ohio. Originals are available on eBay, and there are many companies making reproductions. Older examples tend to run in the $45-$125 range with new ones selling for around $60.

It is the metal lawn chair that occupies my earliest recollections of outdoor furniture. My great-grandfather built a large stone lodge in the mountains of West Virginia during the ’30s. The lodge has a covered flagstone porch overlooking the lake and mountains beyond. Lined up against the house were six of the scalloped-back lawn chairs that my grandparents and great-grandparents would sit in while my mom and her siblings played in the yard. During the ’60s and ’70s, it was Mom’s turn to watch from the aged green metal chairs as my brother, sister and I played with our cousins. As kids, we made a connection with the adults when we sat in those chairs, we could join in their conversations about politics, lumbering, and when we were going to drain the pond again. As I got older, I came to enjoy just sitting on the porch with a good book and a glass of iced tea while the chair gently rocked back and forth. I still do.