Inspiration – Tokyo Chair Exhibitions

Over the past few months here in Tokyo there have been a number of chair exhibitions at different museums around the city. My wife and I went to two of those shows, both of which were really interesting, especially because we we allowed sit in and try out a huge number of the chairs on display. It really was a great opportunity to see a variety of chairs from designers all over the world, and see up close not only how they were built, but also the details of each design, and most importantly of all how they felt to sit in.

250 Chairs Exhibition

The first show we went to was an exhibition of 250 chairs from around the world. (Here is a link to the online catalogue which has details on all the chairs. It’s in Japanese but is still full of useable information for those who don’t read Japanese.)

One of the coolest things about this show was that they had two Ming Dynasty chairs on display, and we had the opportunity to sit in both. I’ve only ever seen these chairs in books, or from afar at other museums, so to see them up close was really cool. One thing that blew me away was the sheer scale. The first chair that you encounter when walking into the show was this high back Ming Dynasty chair (circa 1600). And it was massive!

I tried to take photos that would show the scale of the chair, but photos alone really don’t do justice. In the picture below, the Ming Dynasty high back chair and the horseshoe arm chair next to it, are both truly massive and throne-like in scale. The details were gorgeous. Lots of interesting joinery and carved details. Ergonomically they really demand a cushion, and are not the most comfortable to sit in on as is, but nonetheless it was really cool to have the chance to experience these chairs in person.

Here’s a detail of the carving on the back of the horseshoe arm chair. Really incredible work, and in amazing condition for a chair from the 1500’s.

The layout of the show was pretty interesting. Following the Ming chairs, were a series of Hans Wegner chairs that were design wise, direct descendants from the Chinese chairs. The first Wegner chair was his “Chinese Chair.” You can see here a bit of the scale difference between Wegner’s more modern scale chair, and the looming Ming Dynasty chairs in the background.

Ergonomically and comfort-wise, Hans Wegner’s chairs were the most comfortable out of the whole show. I don’t really consider Hans Wegner to be the greatest chair designer to have walked the earth, but he was a master of his craft, and clearly he was devoted to creating beautiful designs that also were ergonomically sound. The chair below is another design of his inspired by the Ming dynasty horseshoe chair. Not my absolute favorite design, but it was super comfortable to sit in.

By far my personal favorite chair of Wegner’s, that I discovered for the first time at this show, was the following chair; with the exciting name model pp201. I love the simplicity of this chair. Aside from the curved arm rest, the parts of this chair are all really quite simple, and the overall design feels very humble and practical to me.

One thing that I realized after looking at these Wegner chairs and their curved arms/back rests is just how tight of a radius the curvature is. When I designed my own chair with curved arm rests a few months ago, I left the curvature much flatter, thinking that if it was too tight, it would be uncomfortable. But I’ve come to find the opposite to be true. My design puts too much pressure on my spine. The Wegner chairs with their tighter curvature where your back rests, are far superior when it comes to comfort, and do a better job of distributing pressure away from your spine to the sides of your back.

Stepping into another area of the show, there was another Wegner classic, his rocking chair. Again, this was a really comfortable chair, with a clean design.

And nearby was this George Nakashima chair. There were a few details that I really liked about this chair, particularly the back rest spindles which were left right off the tool, revealing the texture and facets of the draw knife or spokeshave that shaved them. But I also found this chair to be somewhat uncomfortable, and being a fairly low chair with no arm rests it was kind of awkward to get in and out of.

A bit further along in the exhibition was a room dedicated to Japanese chair designers/makers. One favorite from that space was the following chair from Fukusawa, Naoto. This chair was another that was really well ergonomically designed and comfortable to sit in. I also really like the joinery on this chair. The legs are round and meet with stretchers that have an oblong cross section but the intersection between those parts was really clean.

Another design which I liked a lot, but which was very much not comfortable to sit in was the following chair from

Toyoguchi, Katsuhei. There’s something really inviting about the design of this chair with it’s big wide seat and the taper of the back which flows down into tapering feet. To me it looks like a really cozy and casual chair. But it was way too low, maybe 1/2 the standard height of a normal chair, which left me not knowing how to comfortably relax my legs. It turns out this chair is designed for users to sit in cross-legged, and was designed such that it could fit in a traditional Japanese room with tatami mats. So this chair has a very specific use, and may be great for sitting cross-legged on, but I wasn’t able to test that out for myself. Nonetheless, I really like the design details of this chair.

Finn Juhl Exhibition

The second exhibition that we went to was an exhibition of work by Finn Juhl, a Danish mid-century designer famous for his architectural and furniture work. The show started out with a display of work by other mid-century furniture makers, and it was there that I saw a chair that really caught my eye, and has become a new favorite of mine.

Easy Chair no. 149 by Ole Wanscher. I think the design of this chair is just right. There is some curvature in the arms and a touch on the back legs, but it’s not flashy or overstated in any way.

One of the details that I really liked was how the arm rest flows down at an angle joining the seat stretcher and continues on to join the leg stretcher as well. What a cool detail! All the joints are really well done too, especially considering that all the parts are round or curved in cross section. Being more or less a production chair, I would love to see the jigs and tooling used to cut the joinery. I can imagine how to do it by hand, but mass production is another story, and would require some pretty specialized processes.

From the front you can see more clearly the angle of the arms.

Towards the end of this exhibition there was a room where you could sit in a selection of the chairs on display, and I was excited to see that Easy Chair No. 149 was included. And It was really comfy to sit in. The seat and back are made up of a really soft leather, with a nice cushy feel. I’m dying to make an easy chair next after having a chance to enjoy sitting in this one.

As for Finn Juhl’s chairs, there were a lot of really great pieces but some of his designs are a bit more flamboyant for my taste. I was more taken in by the little details that he incorporated into his work, than any one piece in particular. Here is an example from earlier in his career, titled Grasshopper chair. The chair itself is kind of garish, but the actual details were really well done.

This detail in particular was pretty interesting, where the back meets the arm and seat stretcher. Definitely some tricky joinery and fitting going on there. I’d love to be able to see how this was all put together. The leather work is also really clean and clearly involved some tricky fitting to work around the intersections of the wood frame.

Here’s a detail on a leg from one of his sofas. I’ve seen this kind of splicing quite a bit lately on current chair/furniture makers work here in Japan, so it was interesting to see that Finn Juhl was also applying this kind of detail 70 years ago.

The same sofa had a lot of two-tone wood splicing going on and I have to say I kind of like the effect. It’s a cool detail, though I imagine it was a bit of a pain to execute.

Chairs are tricky to design and build. There’s really no other furniture that requires so much thinking and planning into body ergonomics and comfort. To actually have the opportunity to sit in a variety of famous chairs was a really great learning experience, and it has left me with a renewed interest in further developing my own chair design.

I’d love to hear if any readers have seen/used any of the chairs discussed here, or know of any good museums where you can not only view but actually sit in chairs on display. Please feel free to share.

Thanks for reading

-Jon