Send to a Friend Philippe Starck for Kartell Select items in stock, choose options to view or check availability. FREE SHIPPING on orders over $50. FREE GIFT TODAY: Use coupon code REFRESH at checkout to receive a FREE Callista Lemon Squeezer, a FREE Navetta Cheese Grater, or a FREE Areo Twin Wall Hook Matte with a $250+ kitchen and bath purchase during the Kitchen and Bath Event. 25% off select design objects. Chairs have taken on a life of their own. Whereas designers had, for centuries, essentially “made the most of” chairs’ structural requirements, new structural freedoms have allowed us to see the chair itself as a design—not a sum of its parts. Modern chairs reflect their creators’ imaginations; in the past, they reflected the popular style, or even earlier, a craftsman’s skills and sensibilities. First, joiners and cabinet-makers, who aimed to build sturdy, durable seating, then design became paramount with carvers and turners and architects dictating chair styles.
Even the machines of the Industrial Age can be credited with impacting the look of the chair, which began to reflect uniformity and simplicity. Now, however, chairs are in the hands artists and designers, giving way to an unprecedented array of styles and forms. Modern chairs are pushing the envelope with their designs and functionality, but the chairs of the past are far from obsolete. Playful twists on the classics, such as Kartell’s “Louis Ghost chairs,” are modernizing centuries-old shapes. The practice of mixing and matching old with new allows a tufted, stuffed Victorian-style chair to look completely modern in a minimalist space. There are no rules for chair design anymore. Modern chairs can be humorous, symbolic, transforming, ingenious creations that explore the human relationship with our everyday surroundings. And as design continues to evolve, chairs remain a major force of artistic expression. They are trendsetting, accessible, and affordable ways to re-imagine an interior, and the entire act of sitting.
Explore a few modern chair masterpieces: Classic Chairs with a Modern Twist: Kartell & Phillippe Starck’s Ghost Chairs Milan-based Kartell began as a manufacturer of car parts, but expanded into home furnishings with an emphasis on plastic. Kartell has played host to a number of brilliant collaborations, but most notably teaming up with architect and designer, Phillippe Starck for a line of plastic chairs in neo-classical shapes. Starck’s Louis Ghost Chair and Victoria Ghost Chair are crafted from clear lucite or solid plastic, in a range of colors, and have become a modern decor classic. Larger than life and full of imagination, Spanish artist Maximo Riera created polyurethane arm chairs shaped like wild animals. The chairs are half reality, half fiction, pulling elements of the past—the formal, Victorian-era tufting, Gothic carving, and curving, Queen Anne-style cabriole legs—and morphing them into a giant octopus, elephant, rhino, walrus, and whale. Mind-Bending Optical Illusions: Peter Bristol’s Cut Chair & Deger Cengiz’s Cactus Chair
The Cut Chair is a gravity-defying feat of engineering, founded on a cantilevered base concealed beneath an attached mat. It’s functional, but also a work of modern art. Another trick of the eye chair attempts to remind the sitter of what he takes for granted: every chair’s hospitable nature. By safely stowing a live cactus beneath its lucite seat, the Cactus Chair gives the sitter a precarious reminder. Repurposed & Reimagined: Katie Thompson’s Suitcase Chairs & Moooi’s Baroque Smoke Chairs Repurposing everyday objects into something beyond their original intention is a fixture of modern art and design. These suitcase chairs are especially clever, though, taking something meant for ‘going’ and turning it into something meant for ‘staying.’ Moooi’s burned Baroque Smoke Chairs point out the ways we take chairs for granted, pushing a chair to the near end of its lifespan—charred and crumbling—then preserving it with epoxy. Smart Chairs: Jennifer Heier’s ReLegs Chair & John Caswell’s Flip Chair
The ReLegs chair has a clever angled joint to hide its convertibility. The Flip Chair does a vertical 180 to offer a different seat height, and uses the wall for support—another 180, when recalling the days when the Medieval chairs were built to use a wall for back support. Sculpture: Maarten Baas’ Amnesty International Chair Maarten Baas’ silently moving Amnesty International chair sculpture was created as part of a campaign to honor and represent Chinese Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dr. Lui Xiaobo. His chair was left empty when he was unable to attend his ceremony because he had been imprisoned. Sebastian Brajkovic created a Louis XV chair and morphed it into an outrageous, stretched sculpture that bends the legs of the chair in on itself. Salone del Mobile 2008, Milan › Seating furniture › chairs The relentless success of Louis Ghost has spawned a "baby" version of Philippe Starck's famous chair. Lou Lou Ghost has inherited its progenitor's classic design, material, indestructibility and ergonomics, teaching children to use small-sized chairs but with adult forms.
Lou Lou Ghost is available in a range of playful mouth-watering shades: fluorescent orange and green, sugar pink, blue, sky blue, purple, lilac, pale green and, of course, transparent. shades of redshades of yellowshades of orangeshades of blueshades of greenshades of violetThe requested URL /product-detail.php?venue=ny&prod_id=145&cat_id= was not found on this server.Product design god Philippe Starck can make even the most banal product look good. From Ian Schrager-approved glitzy hotels to Target brand tape dispensers to underwear and spaceports, the Frenchman’s impeccable eye allows him to one-up pretty much any inventor ever. So it seems fitting that his most revered design might end up being a cheeky twist on a chair fit for a king — a clear, plastic piece of furniture that manages to be elegant instead of clunky. The ironic seat has had design-lovers coming out of their skull since its introduction in 2002: It sits permanently in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, mags like Real Simple claim it will appreciate in value ten fold in the coming years, and it’s even available in Lou Lou Ghost mini-varieties for equally decor snobby babies.
But why ever is this ghoulishly named chair considered such a big whoopty-doo? Because Starck deigns use a plus-symbol instead of a “t” in his last name? The designer has said “I don’t work, I dream,” and at first glance, consumers might think he is dreaming to charge them $410 (the MoMA store’s current non-member rate) for a fancy plastic lawn chair. But the Ghost chair’s appeal hangs on its mix of pedigree and innovation. Starck’s twist on the classic French Louis XVI attributes combines extreme geometry with feminine edge. The round back and slightly undulated arm gives way to a stick straight leg, a form that should be familiar to anyone who has heard of Versailles (or a modern estate sale). But Starck’s attention to 1000-level art history isn’t the only thing that’s impressive here. The chair is made by injecting plastic into a single-mold form, freeing it from any joints or bindings, creating a piece that is both delicate and indestructible. The polycarbonate is supposedly so hardcore it can handle all manner of abuse, with Kartell claiming it is shock, scratch and weather resistant as well.
Aesthetically pleasing, meet tough as nails. When the New York Times briefly described the plastic chair after its unveiling at the International Furniture Fair in Milan in 2002, they said that it did three things brilliantly: “It makes Louis XV modern; it stacks to save storage space; and it sells for $198.” Of course they got the price wrong, and later corrected it to $225, but their quick gush was just the beginning of the design world’s love affair with this now ubiquitous chair. As of August of this year, the NYT claims that over a million have been sold (no retraction on that one just yet). What they forgot to add is that the Louis Ghost is perfect for modern tiny living. The barely-there tinted Lucite makes it ideal for areas that you don’t want to appear visually crowded. Available in a host of opaque options (crystal, smoke, yellow, sunset orange, crystal green and ice blue), it works as nothing more than a whisper (or a rose-tinted one) in an interior. Those looking for more visual bang for their buck can opt for heftier matte colors like glossy white and black.