Somersault Chair | furniture design
The Somersault Chair is a project from Hank Richardson's Design History class at Portfolio Center. The assignment was to design a chair based on a personal story, guided by the ideals of a period of design history. The process of combining history and personal narrative, two seemingly unrelated things, gives rise to even deeper truths within each designer that are eventually communicated in the final chair design.
I researched the Vorticist art movement in 20th century Great Britain. Vorticists made a name for their short-lived movement by publicly rejecting everything traditional about art at the time. Ultimately, the immense loss of life during World War I drained their enthusiasm and they disbanded. Upon reflection, I found parallels in the tragedies and subsequent abrupt changes in my own narrative. Change is the only constant, and while we take for granted the way things have always been, our lives can flip and alter forever in an instant. The way that we react to these tumultuos events can kill our spirits, like the Vorticists, or can produce strength and perspective.
The Somersault chair is about a period of abrupt change and restructuring in my family. The wooden seat can be flipped and configured in two very different ways. In one, it faces backward and has only a back support. When flipped, it faces forward and the back support becomes a foot support. The flipping action and change in support is symbolic of the choice to move on with strength and a new perspective, rather than continuing to look back and remain comfortable. The copper legs, which will age and oxidize over time, symbolize change itself, an unavoidable part of life to which we must constantly readjust.
*Thanks to Spencer Bigum for the rendering
