Description:

The Chair was published in 2024 by Objectspace on the occasion of the landmark New Zealand design exhibition The Chair: A story of design and making in Aotearoa, 2 December 2023 – 3 March 2024. Edited by Kim Paton and Victoria McAdam, it gathers the stories of 110 chairs from across 170 years, made by 83 designers and makers. One chair leads to another, each chosen because they point us to stories that warrant telling and, in many cases, risked going untold. Through commissioned texts and photography – with many chairs pictured in the environments they reside in – The Chair tells a story of Aotearoa design characterised by pragmatism, adaptation and innovation.

The premise of The Chair is simple. One object type explored from the earliest documented period of local production through to today. This is not the definitive history of chair design and making in Aotearoa. Instead, it is a story of ad hoc research and discovery… An object has ancestry, nothing is entirely new, nothing is its own island. By moving through the chairs in this exhibition we find connections and inspiration between the works; we see the lines they throw to the past, and to design and craft beyond our shores.

The design embraces the chronological survey of 110 chairs while deliberately avoiding visual monotony. Each object is allocated either a two-page spread or a single page, but an adaptive grid—rooted in a flexible 12-column system—allows images, text blocks, and white space to shuffle organically, giving every spread a sense of rhythm and surprise. Text columns are often subtly shaped to echo a chair silhouette, and the shifting layouts create a dynamic journey through time, while a carefully curated palette—drawn from the exhibition’s aesthetic—unifies the pages.

In both breadth and depth of research this project breaks new ground in publishing focused on product design in New Zealand. Intelligent, fresh, highly accessible and beautifully illustrated, The Chair: A story of design and making in Aotearoa effectively delivers an enriching survey of national design history and development to both specialised and mainstream audiences. The Chair asks – what can design and the objects we live with tell us about ourselves? It advocates for the cultural value of craft and design in understanding our past and present, and in shaping potential futures.