Vacuum cleaner designer James Dyson names his favourite classic chairs, all still on sale in Ireland
James Dyson's Contemporary Design Icons - an exhibition showcasing items he considers among the best pieces of modern design - was mounted at a show space on the outskirts of Milan during Design Week, writes Eoin Lyons from Milan. Dyson's first invention of note, in the 1970s, was the ball-barrow - a wheelbarrow with a large rubber ball instead of a wheel - but more than anything else he's famous for the Dyson vacuum cleaner, which was the first not to lose suction because it had no paper bag to clog airflow.
His criterion for selecting objects was largely practical: "For me design is about how something works, not how it looks. It's what's inside that counts." Among some 23 items selected were the Sony Walkman ("like Sellotape and Post-It, Walkman has achieved generic term status"); the Maclaren buggy ("until then parents were stuck with prams - unwieldy carriages of unattractive proportions that hid the child from the outside world"); and the JCB digger ("before 1953, no one had ever dug a ditch without a hand shovel"). Here are some chairs that featured in his selection.
B306 CHAISE LONGUE
Designed in 1928-29 by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand
"Le Corbusier famously stated that a house was a machine for living in. He extended this to the furniture inside the house, and was later to describe his celebrated chaise longue as a 'machine for rest'. The B306 is recommended for back pain sufferers. It does not try to imitate the shape of the body, yet supports the entire back while placing the legs at the correct angle to relieve stress. The chaise longue is just as pleasing ascetically. It sits inside a metal frame, which enables it to slide in an arc and thus move the sitter in one smooth motion from upright to supine."
The B306 costs €1,730 in cowhide and €1,495 in leather at Siena Design in Kilkenny (056-7790771) .
WINK CHAIR
Designed in 1980 by Toshiyuki Kita
"What is an animated chair? The idea of an assemblage of steel, Dacron and foam plastic coming to life is perverse. And yet the Wink chair, with its rounded contours and jolly colours, has an animal-like charm, quite unlike most modern furniture. The Wink moves, too. It can be flexed and bent into many different positions, from upright armchair to lounger. This neatly encapsulated the Japanese custom of sitting on the floor whilst offering the Western visitor the comfort of a traditional chair. Toshiyuki's experiences of the West have led him to design objects that take into account the values of both worlds." The Wink chair can be ordered from E-Mimo in Cork (021-4344999).
EAMES LOUNGE CHAIR
Designed in 1956 by Charles and Ray Eames
"The aim of Charles and Ray Eames when they created their Lounge Chair, reproduced in a thousand guises all over the world, was 'the warm, receptive look of a well-used first baseman's mitt'. Derided by some as too conventional, and even too ugly, it has become a best-seller. In the 1950s, the Eames design partnership accepted a challenge to design a modern American equivalent of the comfortable leather armchair beloved of English gentlemen's clubs. The chair's basic framework is three pieces of plywood covered in rosewood veneer and black leather upholstery." O Twentieth Century Furniture in Cow's Lane, Temple Bar, Dublin (01-6770679) can source originals of this chair.