The Perfect Chair?: Design Mysteries Series

IKEA Beach Chair 2018

Who designed this most perfect chair?

Who designed this amazing chair and why is it madly popular everywhere in the world? You can buy one at IKEA for $24 or spend hundreds of Pounds at Harrods. Every one of them is the exact same structure and everyone folds up and disappears into a truck, locker or closet. The fabric ranges from Sunbrella to inexpensive plastic, but each one is adjustable, lightweight weight, and amazingly comfortable. Some historians think the design dates from the Bronze Age, I think the design is probably older since it can be made from just about any hard wood and is very forgiving in its simple connections and form. Once makers were able to shape wood I suspect connections could have been created out of rope or other binding material and once metalworking was possible the connections are a cinch.

Made famous on Ocean Liners, hence the name, deck chair, but it seems more likely the chair was designed to be simple to make and easy to transport; something our ancestors did a lot of early on, once in place the chair could be easily adapted to almost any environment.

So after designers have changed the material from wood to aluminum and created plastic fabric we have returned to the elegant solution possible the original of a simple wood from with a cotton canvas seat. Sustainable, recyclable, repairable and UNDERSTANDABLE! The design consists of two rectangular wooden frames, a U shaped piece that creates a triangular structure and locks the chair into place and a piece of rectangular shaped fabric, perhaps coming right off the loom with little modification. All simple to visualize and make.

The triangulation of the two frames that form the seat/back leg and the back/front leg combined with the U shaped adjustable stop is possibly the most elegant solution to a chair structure ever created. With the addition of a few pins to tie the structure together, and voila!………..a chair! In every way this chair is beautiful. We are discovering every day that our ancestors where far from the grunting, cave dwellers depicted in cartoons, but sophisticated in ways we may just be approaching or reclaiming.

Deck Chair

Sometime in the 19th-century people started claiming ownership of the design in England and The USA, by patenting certain features. No matter what they did to try to distinguish the designs from one another the simplicity of the classic deck chair shines through.

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Design Mysteries Series
Bruce Hannah 2018 ©