$16,000

United States
1995

Prototype stacking chair hand-built of aluminum by furniture designer and artist Richard Schultz as a full-size 3-D model exploring the ergonomic and sculptural qualities of a design in which the seat is formed as a continuous ribbon of sheet metal, following in a modernist paradigm first explored by Gerrit Rietveld in the early 1920’s. Schultz experimented with this design in 1995 during the time he was creating his famous Topiary series of outdoor furniture–note the scalloped edges and the biomorphic perforations in the seat. The present chair, however, never went into production, leaving it as the only example of a work that has a sculptural aspect of Rietveld or Breuer meets Newson or Arad; that is to say, a design that induces a frisson of the heroic forms and industrial materials of Machine Age and Pioneering Modernism. Schultz (1926-2021), while perhaps not a household name, is still a furniture designer of the first order, with justly renowned lines of outdoor furniture for Knoll and for his own company, Richard Schultz Design, to his credit. Courtesy of his early training with Harry Bertoia, he brought a sculptural sensibility to the ergonomic problems of furniture design (his own sculptures were shown at MoMA in the early 1960’s, before he turned his full attention to his work for Knoll). Provenance: the collection of Richard Schultz.

Condition
In as found condition. Scratches and scuffs to the sheet metal seat; exposed welds and scratches to the tubular metal frame. All consistent with purpose as a working model.

Measurements
Height: 33 in.
Width/length: 23.25 in.
Depth: 21 in.

Specifications
Number of items: 1
Materials/techniques: Hand cut, bent, and welded aluminum