Ross Lovegrove designs first wooden chair to mark Bernhardt Design's 125th Anniversary

Olá!
Recently, I came across an article on DEZEEN.COM entitled Ross Lovegrove Designs first wooden chair to mark Bernhardt's 125 Anniversary.

To celebrate Bernhardt Design's 125 Anniversary, the company commissioned designers - 
Ross Lovegrove, Noé Duchaufour-Lawrence and Jephson Robb to create new furniture pieces for the brand.

These designs were to "honor the company's heritage of fine wood-working and upholstery craftsmanship".  The designers were asked redesign a piece of furniture to show their interpretation of American design.

ANNE CHAIR BY ROSS LOVEGROVE

Ross Lovegrove based his design on a typical courthouse chair.  The chair's arms arc around the sitter to form a continuous curved backrest, while its legs splay outward towards the floor.

"These chairs were such a visible part of the American landscape because of their very powerful presence," said Lovegrove. "Using this historical reference, I wanted to create a chair that is contemporary and a reflection of my design vocabulary."

The chair is named after Anne Harper Berhnardt, one of the company's founders.

"As in all my work, the Anne chair is about sculpting a material: creating something that has a human dimension and looks interesting from any view," Lovegrove said.

HARPER CHAIR BY NOE DUCHAUFOUR-LAWRENCE

The chair designed by Paris-based designer, Noé Buchaufour-Lawrence, is based on the Windsor chair, which is not an American design.  Noé Buchaufour-Lawrence chose this chair because he saw this chair on the verandas of houses in Hollywood films.

"In the collective French memory, one vision of America is the view of a rocking chair sitting on an open porch," Duchaufour-Lawrance said. "It might be influenced by the movies, but the picture of a man sitting in a rocking chair on a front porch with his feet up on the balustrade, is quintessentially American."

Noé Buchaufour-Lawrence deconstructed the Windsor chair and rearranged the components, so the spindly elements in the back become struts that span between the top and bottom of the curved frame. The leather-upholstered seat is supported by four pieces of timber that extend seamlessly from the outer frame.

ALEX SOFA BY JEPHSON ROBB

Scottish designer Jephson Robb used the Chesterfield sofa as his starting point for the Alex sofa as Americans were credited with popularising its name.

"When I was growing up, the first piece of furniture that actually made an impression on me was a Chesterfield sofa," said Jephson Robb. "I was fascinated by all the buttons, and amazed that my head and feet didn't touch the arms when lying down. It seemed larger than life to me."

To update the design, Robb removed all but five of the buttons traditionally used all over the couch and used a horizontal strip along the back to tuft the fabric.

"The biggest design challenge for me was how to communicate quality and comfort without the repetition of buttons and tufting," Robb said. "I decided to go with a single uninterrupted belt that creates one continuous tuft as it traces the interior."

While taking my Materials Course, I had to source furniture as one of my exams.  I came across BERNHARDT and immediately fell in love with their furniture.

I am looking forward to incorporating their furniture into my future projects.

- Eddy