The Roorkee family tree spreads across most of Europe.
Marcel Breuer’s “Wassily” chair (1925), Le Corbusier’s “Basculant” chair (1928), Wilhelm Bofinger’s “Farmer Chair” (1966) and Vico Magistretti’s “Armchair 905” (1964) all owe a tremendous debt to the Roorkee chair.
Two of the closest relatives are the Kaare Klint “Safari Chair” and Arne Norell’s version, now sold as the Sirocco chair by the Swedish furniture company, Norell Möbel AB.
There’s a particularly well-broken-in example in this recent Craigslist ad passed to me by Dave Jeske. The Sirocco is an interesting chair because all its components are turned, and Norell eliminated the pivoting back braces – giving the job of holding the back leather piece to the back legs. The cant of the backrest is handed by fastening the back leather to two of the turned side stretchers.
Speaking of stretchers, Norell added three of them to this chair compared to the classic Roorkee. Yet, the chair still retains the same basic profile.
In the coming months, I’ll be exploring more links between 19th-century campaign furniture and 20th-century modern design. There are, in my opinion, some strong ties.
— Christopher Schwarz
When are you going to start talking about Danish modern furniture? I am ready.
That Wegner stuff is pretty awesome.
Chris,
I wish you could of heard the ideas and thoughts of the attendees at Colonial Williamsburg working wood conference. Many of them have requested that in 2015 they would love to see Campaign Furniture. My thoughts are, be prepared Chris for you may get that phone call.
There are dealers who know a lot more about the forms: Nicholas Brawer, Jerome Phillips, Simon Clarke and Sean Clarke come to mind.
Woe unto you. These are the wages of internet fame, dude.
There are people who are much more qualified to speak on vaccinations and autism than a Playboy Playmate, too. She’s still convincing enough that people will put their own children at risk.
Granted, she’s a lot more fun to look at than you are…
So you are saying I’m stupid AND ugly? Ha!
Well, it could be that a boob job, a Brazilian, and a saucy tongue waggle would fix all that for you…
I guess you can’t fix stupid.
With a nice rack, and an absence of any body hair, nobody will care.
And then when you get the call to hit the road yet again, and dance like a trained monkey for yet another crowd of ogling fanboys, you won’t have to worry about respecting yourself in the morning.
😉
The Craigslist ad states “Matching sofa also available…..”
Nice chairs. Holy crap their expensive! lol
I have thought about writing to you about these chairs for quite a while and then you found them on your own. I come from the small place where these are made. They have been made from several species and various coulors of leather over the years. I own four and two of them are made of jacaranda and black leather. If you are curious of anything let me know and I’ll see what I can find out.
Anders
Anders,
I would love to know the diameter of the turned stretchers – that would be a good piece of data for all builders of chairs like this.
Thanks!
Add says there is a matching sofa. Please someone get a picture of that!
Do you think these disassemble?
A couple people have wondered about the sofa (loveseat, actually). There’s a CL listing for it as well: http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/fud/4255135292.html. Less expensive than the chairs.
EDIT: loveseat listing is a different vendor. Perhaps the one at The Good Mod more closely matches the chairs (and no doubt the price).