‘The Art of Seating’ presents a reflection on American design

LITTLE ROCK — The Arkansas Arts Center will present the featured exhibition “The Art of Seating: 200 Years of American Design” Sept. 29 through Dec. 31.

“The Art of Seating” will open with a lecture by Diane Jacobsen at 6 p.m. Sept. 28 in the Lower Lobby Lecture Hall. The event will be free for members and $15 for nonmembers.

“The Art of Seating: 200 Years of American Design” is the first comprehensive survey of American chair design. The 43 chairs featured in the exhibition, hailing from the Thomas H. and Diane DeMell Jacobsen Ph.D. Foundation in Jacksonville, Fla., document the rich and varied evolution of American design, illustrate the emergence of new technologies and materials, reflect changes in consumer taste, and illustrate social and cultural developments. Designed for function, each of these sculptural works possesses a unique story, revealing as much about its own creation as it does our collective national identity, a news release said.

The earliest chairs in the exhibition, both dating to the first half of the 19th century, are a diminutive Ladderback Doll’s Chair and a similarly styled Rocking Arm Chair designed and made from local wood by a Shaker adherent for use in the religious community in New Lebanon, N.Y.

The Gothic Revival and Rococo Revival styles influenced the design and manufacture of seating furniture later produced in factories. The factories employed new technologies and materials in their manufacture, such as the use of steam-bent and laminated woods as seen in the exuberantly carved chairs by John Henry Belter.

Made nearly a century later, Charles and Ray Eames’ Lounge Wood Chair echoes Belter’s Slipper Chair, through the use of laminated and molded woods. Hailed by Time Magazine as the “Chair of the Century,” the LCW was praised for its compact and lightweight design, which appealed to the Baby Boom generation of mid-20th century Americans who were looking to outfit their homes and businesses with inexpensive, yet stylish, furnishings, the release said.

The LCW is still being produced today by the Herman Miller Furniture Company. Vivian Beer’s sinuous and sensuous chair, Current, continues the tradition and spirit of the American studio furniture movement, which peaked around 1960, yet remains vibrant today, it said.

Early proponents, including Sam Maloof, Wendell Castle, and Jon Brooks, favored the aesthetics of fine craftsmanship by hand over those made through mass production. Beer’s Current pushes the ever-shifting boundary between craft and design, and of utility and a sculptural work of art, the release said. About Current, Beer said, “I wanted this chair to seem as if it had been cut and crushed out of a single sheet of metal. At the same time, I wanted it to feel as fast and clean as water in its silhouette with the power of implied brutal forming in the background. The balance and trickery are important.”