There are some things in life we just take for granted. And in many very functional parts of our lives, we fail to recognize when some real artistic brilliance is right under our noses hiding in the most conspicuous places. That principle can certainly be true when it comes to stackable chairs. Few people know that chair design even for very functional furniture has been the focus of attention for some great artists down through history. It was an artist by the name of Robin Day that set his sights on making his mark on the humble stackable chair. And the outcome in terms of the beautiful blend of form and function is as stunning an achievement as it is an unappreciated one.



Some of the credit we can find for stackable chairs actually goes to World War II. Before that time, chairs were primarily made of molded wood. While you could mass produce chairs in the same general design, to make a chair stackable requires much more manageable materials. As often happens, it was the coming of the war that forced makers of wartime materials to find new materials to use to make various products. That is when tubular aluminum and steel became part of the production of military equipment.

It didn't take long for the technology to fall into the hands of artists which allowed furniture makers to mold new designs in furniture using the tubular metals that can be easily bent and shaped into just about any imaginable design. Artists always excel when they can take an innovative new medium and let their imaginations take it in new directions. Throughout the World War II time frame, artists that expressed their creativity through furniture used the moldable tubular medium to create new designs in table, chairs and other kinds of furniture. Names like Marcel Breuer, Mart Stam, Alvar Aalto and Hans Coray are all artists that came up with creative new furniture designs using tubular metals.

Throughout the subsequent decades, artists like Arne Jacobsen continued to experiment with new chair designs that could be created with tubular metals. in the nineteen sixties, however , Robin Day created the Polyprop stacking chair. At the time the idea of chairs that were stackable was not as common as it is today. Day's design opened the door for this design of institutional seating.

the concept for the stackable chair had been innovated when Robin Day brought the use of tubular steel or aluminum in but up until that time, it was just too expensive to mass produce. And since the very idea of having chairs that can stack is applied to situations where you have hundreds of chairs such as a banquet hall or some other group gathering setting, to be able to mass produce the chairs is a must. by combining the tubular frame with other types of seats and backs, not only do you dramatically improve the efficiency of mass production, you also introduce many new design concepts to produce creative and artistic designs combining molded plastic, colorfully painted metallic seats and backs or lovely wood grained items with the molded metal.

The tubular shapes of the frames of these stackable chairs themselves have an artistic esthetic to them. The same methodology of using moldable metallic tubes went on to be used by many artists for huge installations of modern art. By creating hundreds of stackable chairs, in all kinds of colors and combining them with many creative seat and back designs, the overall artistic impression is stunning just as much as it is functional.

Of course, when you go to your local high school assembly or to a meeting at the auditorium of a hotel, the stackable chairs you see there will not necessary reflect a tremendous artistic expression. But there is a beauty in their shape and in the proliferation of the same colorful chair whether stacked or in use. And if you keep your eyes open, you will sometimes find stackable chairs in use that reflect the influence of artists like Robin Day. It is amazing when you see that to reflect on what happens when the world of art touches the functional world. The outcome is almost always something wonderful.