the class-o-matic

While at a New York School of Interior Design's show, entitled - “Modern in the Past Tense: Revisiting the Landmark Exhibition “Design 1935-1965: What Modern Was”, I saw a beautiful chair that I had never seen before.

As I'd never seen this design before, I was quite surprised when later that day while walking past the shop Artifacts of the 20th Century on Crosby Street, and saw a similar chair in their window! the "Pretzel" chair by George Nelson (1908-1986) from 1952.'

George Nelson is one of the preeminent design figures of the twentieth- century.

There is nothing that he could not do. Nelson was a terrific graphic designer and a supremely talented furniture designer too.

His (almost) forty-year relationship with Herman Miller, Inc. began in 1947 when he joined the company as its design director, is a testament to this. While at Herman Miller, Nelson was responsible for bringing on board Charles and Rae Eames, Harry Bertoia, and Isamu Noguchi.

In 1955 Nelson opened his own design practice, George Nelson and Associates, and hired many talented people there as well, including Irving Harper, who understood design in the same way that Nelson did, as "an internal, necessary, and ineradicable logic inherent in the fabricated, synthetic world"


Nelson was incredibly eloquent and wrote about his work better than anyone else could.

He was the co-managing editor of Architectural Forum (from 1935) and founded Industrial Design magazine (1953). Reading his interviews with giants of twentieth- century design like Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Gio Ponti, and the Luckner brothers, which he conducted while living in Europe during the 1930's, and later published in Pencil Points (a magazine which eventually became known as Progressive Architecture), gives us insight into modern design and architecture that is essential to our understanding of the period.

The Pretzel Chair is made out of bent wood and was initially referred to as the Laminated Chair. The curved back, which gives the chair its name, and reminds one of the great Art Nouveau furniture with similar sinuous lines. Bent laminated wood is used not only for the backrest and its twin supports, but also for the four legs that cross underneath the seat.

In 2008, on the 100th anniversary of Nelson’s birth, Vitra placed the chair back into production in a limited Anniversary Edition of 1000 pieces. Nelson’s entire archive is now part of the Vitra Design Museum.

The exhibit at the NYSID, “Modern in the Past Tense: Revisiting the Landmark Exhibition 'Design 1935-1965: What Modern Was'", presents some key pieces of furniture, borrowed from private collectors, to give us a sense of what was on view in the original exhibition.