Or are you looking for Search the Archives?

Please complete the form to email this item.

Chair

Chair

  • Place of origin:

    England (designed)
    USA (made)

  • Date:

    1965 (made)

  • Artist/Maker:

    Murdoch, Peter, born 1940 (designer)
    Peter Murdoch Inc. (maker)

  • Materials and Techniques:

    Polyethylene coated laminated paperboard, printed

  • Credit Line:

    Given by Peter Murdoch

  • Museum number:

    CIRC.18-1970

  • Gallery location:

    Furniture, Room 135, The Dr Susan Weber Gallery, case BY8 , shelf WALL

The design of this printed card chair by Peter Murdoch is typical of the 1960s and early 1970s in trying to make good and groundbreaking design fun and affordable for more people. As the catalogue for the 1980 Whitechapel Art Gallery exhibition 'Chairs 1918-70' comments: "With a unit cost measured in pennies, a chair of this kind can be completed on one machine at the rate of one per second, and can be shipped in a minimal volume - 800 chairs in a pile no more than four feet [approximately 122 cm] in height".

Physical description

Child's tub chair, produced as a flatpack: the shape is cut from white card printed with a pattern of red discs, and folds into a curved seat on a cylindrical base.

Place of Origin

England (designed)
USA (made)

Date

1965 (made)

Artist/maker

Murdoch, Peter, born 1940 (designer)
Peter Murdoch Inc. (maker)

Materials and Techniques

Polyethylene coated laminated paperboard, printed

Object history note

Given by the designer, Peter Murdoch, with a version in another colourway; RF 70/162

Descriptive line

Child's chair (unformed) of white card printed with a pattern of red discs, designed in England by Peter Murdoch 1965

Production Note

Attribution note: According to the original registered description, the design was the first chair of paper/ card to be designed for mass productiion. The original description also atates that the chair is made of fibrecard, which is probably a period specific sense: early 21st century usage of the term appears to be related to fibre optics and other electronic applications. The Whitechapel Art Gallery exhibition catalogue entry for Circ.17-1970, another colourway of the same design, describes the material as using three different papers to make a board of five laminations ('Chairs 1918-1970').

Materials

Paperboard

Techniques

Printing; Laminating

Categories

Children & Childhood; Furniture

Production Type

Mass produced

Collection

Museum of Childhood

Large image request

Please confirm you are using these images within the following terms and conditions, by acknowledging each of the following key points:

Please let us know how you intend to use the images you will be downloading.