Customer Reviews

The Modern Chair: Classic Designs by Thonet, Breuer, Le Corbusier, Eames and Others

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I agree with the above review; minimal information, absolutely horrible photos and rather crummy quality paper makes this book not worth buying. Meadmore selected many chairs that are discussed much more completely in other similar books.

He missed a few key chairs of note; Saarinen's Grasshopper chair and Aalto's Armchair 400 (Zebra or tank) chair.

If you want a good welll rounded selection of Modern Chairs, I'd suggest the 1000 Chairs book instead.

The book is not as good as it's title suggests. It's made of a kind of recycled paper of recycled paper (yeah, twice recycled). It looks old and poor. The content is also very poor, two pictures, and no more than 200 words to describe each chair. I expected more. I'm still looking for a nice designed, well presented, well manufactured book about bauhaus design, with worth of information to read. Don't waste your money.

The two previous reviews are just in certain ways: The quality of the photographs is often not high, and all the photographs are black-and-white. (Unlike what one reviewer said, however, there are often more than two photographs per chair; furthermore, in all cases there are drawings--sometimes several--highlighting the chair's structure.) The quality of the paper is not top-notch. The choice of chairs included--and excluded--is sometimes rather idiosyncratic.

On the other hand, the author was himself a sculptor and furniture designer and the text provides interesting insight into the aesthetic, structural, and problem-solving features of the chairs. True, the descriptions are often brief, but they give a furniture designer's views of these chairs, and I felt I gained insights into these classics that I'd not gotten elsewhere.