Description
The Tulip Chair is one of a series of chairs, stools, and tables developed by Eero Saarinen within a five-year period. The characteristic feature of the series is that the supporting structure has been pared to a central supporting stem »like a wineglass« in order to emphasise the uniformity of table and chair.
Eero Saarinen describes the Tulip Chair: »The bases of tables and chairs in a typical furniture arrangement create an ugly, confusing, and restless world. I wanted to design a chair as an integrated whole once again. All important furniture of the past always had a holistic structure, from King Tut's chair to that of Thomas Chippendale. Today, we are parting ways with this holism with our predilection for plastic and laminated wood shells. I am looking forward to the point when the plastics industry will be capable of manufacturing the chair using just one material, the way I have designed it.«
Details
Scale: 1:6, 92 x 134 x 83 mm
Material: Lacquered polyurethane and aluminum, fabric
Designer
Eero Saarinen, 1956
Born 1910 Kirkkonummi, Finland. Died 1961 Ann Arbor, USA. 1923 The Saarinen family emigrated to the United States. 1929/30 Eero Saarinen studied sculpture at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris. 1930–34 Architectural studies at the Yale School of the Fine Arts in New Haven, Connecticut. 1936 Worked in his father’s architectural studio and assisted him in his activities as a professor at the Cranbrook Academy of Art.
