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Cross Check Chair

Chair
1989 (designed), 1992 (manufactured)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

This chair was part of a collection designed by Frank Gehry in the late 1980s. Gehrey was approached by Barbara Jakobson from renowned furniture manufacturer Knoll who asked him to design a chair. The Cross Check Chair was one of a number of designs in bent plywood or 'lightweight slender strips' as Gehry describes.

Although decorative in apperance the shapes of the chair are structural. According to Gehry 'The swirls and curves of my chairs are structural and they grow out of necessity' ('Frank Gehry Reinvents the Chair' in: Blueprint, no. 90, 1992, p. 34).


Object details

Category
Object type
TitleCross Check Chair (alternative title)
Materials and techniques
Moulded plywood
Brief description
Chair made from long strips of pale plywood, designed by Frank Gehry in 1989, manufactured by Knoll International in 1992.
Physical description
The chair is made from long strips of pale maple plywood. The four legs consist of two sections of curved plywood that overlaps at the centre of the base. The seat of the chair consists of two lots of four sections of bent plywood. The sections, that form the seat, then extend to form the back supports of the chair. These then loop over to continue the curved shape. At the front of the chair the structure of the seat is held in place by a strip of plywood that attaches to the front legs and the arm rests.
Dimensions
  • Height: 80.7cm
  • Width: 103.5cm
  • Depth: 56.5cm
  • Seat height: 45.8cm
JS (17.12.2010)
Summary
This chair was part of a collection designed by Frank Gehry in the late 1980s. Gehrey was approached by Barbara Jakobson from renowned furniture manufacturer Knoll who asked him to design a chair. The Cross Check Chair was one of a number of designs in bent plywood or 'lightweight slender strips' as Gehry describes.

Although decorative in apperance the shapes of the chair are structural. According to Gehry 'The swirls and curves of my chairs are structural and they grow out of necessity' ('Frank Gehry Reinvents the Chair' in: Blueprint, no. 90, 1992, p. 34).
Collection
Accession number
W.4-2012

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Record createdSeptember 9, 2014
Record URL
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