Chair - Reaktion Books - Objekt Author:Anne Massey The chair: we sit on one every day in our homes, schools and offices. Yet how often do we think about the origins of the chair and its place in culture? After all, the human body is more suited to sitting on the ground than on a chair, and some chairs even cause back problems. But in Western culture, the chair is an object that marks our place i... more »n the modern world. It holds our bodies above ground and in the seated position, sending signals about the sitter and even the designer. In this book Anne Massey provides an anatomy of the chair and looks at how we interact with others in predetermined ways when seated. As she argues, the chair can communicate the authority of the owner, the sitter and even the creator. Massey explores how, particularly in the last hundred years, the chair has become a revered object of design. Certain chairs have become iconic - from the Eames Lounge chair, to Verner Panton's S Chair, to the Aeron office chair - photographed, exhibited in art museums and slavishly copied in knock-off cheaper models. Other chairs have reached iconic status simply through their everydayness: think of Van Gogh's chair, or the way Shaker chairs have become emblematic of a simpler and purer lifestyle. Massey further examines how chairs have been crafted, constructed from materials in plentiful supply locally, to their global manufacture. In doing so she elucidates the meaning of the chair in contemporary culture, as well as the development of the designer's and manufacturer's relationship with this pivotal object. Drawing on design and art, popular culture and personal experience, Chair is an engaging and informative biography of this everyday object, and will appeal to anyone interested in why we choose to sit on the chairs we do.« less