Design Icons Series

Throughout history, furniture has presented designers all over the world with infinite opportunities to experiment with new methods and materials within the set parameters of an object that is primarily there to serve a practical purpose. However, it was only until a few decades ago that furniture gained height. Up until 1920, given the limitations, furniture was just wood. Not denying the progress made by past generations, it was a movement known as Modernism that left a vast impact on society. The designs and ideas of the Modernist era went on to shape the face of furniture design as we know it, and many of those pieces are now certified works of art. With the rise of Modernism, techniques to create brilliantly simple, stackable, comfortable furniture could be licensed and produced everywhere. New materials and techniques – like plastic, tubular steel, and wood-bending – were being experimented with. Designers and architects collaborated in creative hothouses like the Bauhaus School and De Stijl, and later through enormous furniture design houses like Vitra, Cassina, Kartell and many more.

Some of these so-called designer furniture pieces are the main subject of this self-initiated photography project. Not the ordinary, average chair but pieces that can justifiably be termed ‘iconic’, furniture pieces by world-renowned designers; Charles and Ray Eames, Achille Castiglioni, Verner Panton, and Phillipe Starck, amongst others. I deviate from the cliche commercial photography generally associated with furniture and instead explore how the force of the image can transform a furniture piece, which many take for granted, into icons of contemporary style.