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Imagine this to be true: “A chair is a chair is a chair”. Allow the word “chair” to represent nothing but a chair’s core elements: seat, backrest, legs and armrest.
Imagine that the object has one sole purpose: to provide humans a place to sit, head above heart.
If this was true, could one even speak about a chair’s beauty? If people were perfectly pragmatic, would the word beauty even exist?
Design as a discipline would be redundant, even ridiculous, because all chairs would be the same. Then imagine, one day, there is a guy who decides to alter the one chair known to the world. He tweaks the angle of its backrest, adds different colors to it and an ottoman for people’s elevated feet.
“But that’s no longer a chair,” the bureaucrat exclaims while rummaging around standard forms for product registration and taxation.
“That thing might harm the children,” a concerned minister says.
Our guy is arrested and sentenced to prison for disorderly conduct. Outraged newspapers publish photos of his freak creation. This is when something interesting happens.
People love the new chair. Groups are formed that demand “Real Chairs for Real People”. Celebrities join their cause, a little girl riding a rocking chair makes the front page of Times magazine.
Luckily, humans are not only pragmatic. Gratefully, humans are as diverse as the universe. Thankfully, there are crazy people walking among us. Our hero is pardoned and released from prison. He starts a furniture company and changes the world.
Our story may not be this dramatic, but the spirit of it is what motivates us: A chair is much more than a chair. Design transforms people’s lives. Natural materials define everything we make.
This is the story of KARPENTER
