A brief 100-year history of the chair

Miniature chairs on show in Abu Dhabi until tomorrow

If you want to know if ergonomics existed about a 100 years ago, walk into Zayed University in Abu Dhabi. There’s an exhibition of miniature replicas of chairs designed over a century, which will continue till February 9.

The exhibition titled Dimensions of Design and organised by the Abu Dhabi Music Foundation and Zayed University features different and “inspired” styles of the highly utilitarian chair created by artists, designers and architects over the last century.

Discussing the importance of chair in design, Susan Hefuna, a visiting artist and professor of art and design at the German University in Cairo said, “The chair is a creative and interesting subject. It has inspired many artists and designers maybe because it is closely related to the shape of the human body.”

Hefuna was in Abu Dhabi to give a lecture on design and using art as an inspiration for design on the sidelines of the exhibition.

The chair plays an important role in many cultures and in the psyche of people, she added.

“If you notice, the self portraits of the famous Mexican artist Frida Kahla always show her sitting on a chair. In the Middle East, people too sit on chairs to pose for a photograph,” Hefuna pointed out.

The classical chairs are reproductions of the original designs to a scale of 1:6 and identical to the original in detail, material and workmanship.

The miniatures, which are not as expensive as the originals, are fitted on tiny plinths and housed in glass cases at the exhibition.

This miniature chair collection on display in Abu Dhabi belongs to the Vitra Design Museum in Germany, a museum dedicated to industrial furniture design. These miniatures are made of the same material of the original chair.

“It is very complicated to make these miniatures,” Hefuna said, “and for the viewer it provides a very unique perspective of the chair.”

Another aspect to the exhibition is documenting the changes to chair design over a span of a decade. The 60 prototypes of classical seats on display at the exhibition have been created from approximately 1800 to 1990.