I’ve always loved chairs. Especially chairs like these…
For a while now, I’ve been photographing chairs that I find on the street (if only I had the space to collect the objects themselves!). Used, worn and broken, these are objects that have lived their lives in constant contact with humans. Each of these chair’s particularities, their stains, chips, rips, dents and scratches, act as material memories; stories of the chair’s life and interactions with the world.
It is these particularities that also contribute to the individuality, character and personality of each chair. Chairs are easy to anthropomorphise and this is perhaps due to their close relationship with the body. Like human body parts, chairs have ‘chair parts’; they have backs, legs, arms, feet. Chairs can act as a stand in for people – an empty chair can hold the presence of a person who once occupied it. Because of this, a chair by itself can feel lonely, while a group of chairs together often suggests conversations, collaborations and community.
Both chairs and jewellery are made with a consideration of their relationship to the body and both serve their everyday function in direct contact with the body.
As jewellers we ask: how will an object sit on the body?
In making a chair we may ask: how will a body sit on the object?
Here is an object I made in 2020 that sits on the body and can be sat on at the same time.
Of course, the relationship between chairs and jewellery is not new. Artist, Caroline Broadhead for example, has explored ‘the chair’ as an object though her expanded jewellery practice. Broadhead is “drawn to their familiarity of design, and their physical closeness to the body. Chairs and stools are made to support the body and their dimensions are dependent on the body’s dimensions.” In this wonderful work (below) Broadhead makes jewellery for chairs, wrapping found chairs in silver beads. “[This act] of transformation and reinvention, [takes] familiar objects and [upends] our perception of them.” (Quotes and image from https://carolinebroadhead.com/#/surface-tension/)
I could keep talking about chairs but I’ll end here with a selection of chair related objects that I made towards the end of last year. In my next post I will share more about a neckpiece Chairs that I made for the CHAINreaction exhibition during Nelson Jewellery Week.
