Know Your Chairs: The Louis Ghost Chair

For this episode of Know Your Chairs, I am featuring a delightful, tongue-in-cheek piece of furniture by the legendary Philippe Starck.

A man of many talents, Starck's career has bounced around the design world, from commercial (restaurants and hotels) design to residential design to product design to architecture--even naval design. He started his career in 1969. He was named artistic director of Pierre Cardin's publishing house, he opened his own industrial design company Starck Product, and in 1983, he designed the private rooms of President François Mitterrand at the Élysée Palace in Paris.

With former Studio 54 owner and hotelier extraordinaire Ian Schrager, Starck pioneered the idea of the boutique hotel by creating The Royalton in New York City. Starck went on to design a slew of unique hotels, each a true work of art, like The Paramount and The Hudson.Starck also worked successfully in the world of product design. In addition to mineral-water bottles for Glacier, watches for Fossil, and luggage for Samsonite, he created the iconic Juicy Salif citrus squeezer (it looks like an alien pod from "War of the Worlds") for Italian houseware brand Alessi.

But I think Starck is best known for designing hundreds and hundreds of pieces of furniture and lighting, and the best known of those pieces must be his reinvention of a classic Louis XVI chair, named the Louis Ghost chair for Kartell. The classic incarnation is clear acrylic (the see-through quality gives it its name) but it also comes in tinted colors and opaque black as well.

"I didn't really have to design the 'Louis Ghost' chair, because it is part of our western shared memory. It basically designed itself. Itʼs a ʻLouis somethingʼ, we donʼt know what, but everyone recognises it and it looks familiar. Itʼs here when you want to see it, and you can mix it if you want to be discrete. Itʼs on the verge of disappearing, dematerialising. Like everything that is produced by our civilisation."
--Philippe Starck

The armless version is called The Victoria Ghost Chair.

The chairs can be purchased through Design Within Reach here and here. But please beware of inexpensive knock offs and fake versions--not only does it violate the copyright and license holder of the design, but you will be buying something of inferior quality and workmanship that will likely snap or break.

Happy designing!

Leopard, Jaguar, or Cheetah?: The Enduring Classical Appeal of Big Cat Prints

There are few things more polarizing in the world of interior design than animal prints. There are those who love them because they love the animals themselves while others hate them for unfortunate associations with gaudy, Las Vegas-style decor and tacky clothing. If I've learned one thing in my years in interior design, it's that people can have strong mental and emotional associations with the most unexpected things.

But for me--someone who has studied interiors for the better part of his life and has been exposed to millions of images, ideas, and designs--I feel differently. While I do love the big cats featured here in this post, I have always had Classical associations with the use of these patterns. Just like the old adage "Every room should have something red in it," these rooms live by the adage "Every Neo-Classical room should have something leopard in it." Just look at the spectacular surroundings of each of these spots of leopard (pun intended). Used in this way, leopard brings an air of sophistication, a kind of Continental savoir faire that speaks to the idea of the layering of history in a room.

A leopard carpet in the library of Pierre Sauvage's Paris apartment

Leopard pillows in the Paris apartment of Marco Scarani and Jamie Creel

Leopard stair runner in a home by Miles Redd

Leopard carpet and upholstered stool in the entry of Alina Cho's midtown Manhattan apartment

Leopard stools in a sitting room by Alessandra Branca

In order to clarify, when you are looking at these patterns, you might see one that looks familiar but with some slight variations. If you see leopard spots but with a few more little speckles and spots in the center of the rosette, you are looking at the fur of the magnificent jaguar.

Arne Jacobsen Egg chair upholstered in jaguar in Emma Jane Pilkington's apartment

Now, here's the thing: there is yet another big cat with fur that is similar in pattern to a leopard and that is the endangered cheetah. Where the leopard and jaguar have black or dark rosettes with a brown center and sometimes additional smaller spots in the center, the cheetah simply has spots.

The bedroom in designer Stephen Shubel's San Francisco loft features a cheetah carpet

Cheetah chairs in a wonderfully eclectic sitting room Olivier Gagnere

Of course I do not condone the use of real fur for any purposes. These big cat prints look wonderful in crushed velvet, woven into wool carpets, or even printed on linen. There is no need to slaughter one of these animals to enjoy the beauty of their natural markings.

Happy designing!

Famous Homes: Hill House by Charles Rennie Mackintosh

The architect, artist, and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh is credited with helping to creating a genre of art and design known as the Glasgow School (a streamlined version of the concurrent Art Nouveau style, previously here), and his exemplary masterpiece, Hill House, is the subject of this month's installment of Famous Homes.

Located in Helensburg, Scotland--about 25 miles north-west of Glasgow--Hill House started as a plot of land purchased in 1902 by publishing magnate Walter Blackie. He intended to have a home built for his family and Blackie's friend Talwin Morris recommended architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh to create it. After seeing other homes he designed, Blackie hired Mackintosh. It seems it was a perfect match as Blackie's style direction for the house--no bricks and plaster or wood beam construction, and no red-tiled roof, but grey rough cast walls, and a slate roof instead--dovetailed neatly with Mackintosh evolving work within the Glasgow School. And in 1904, Mackintosh delivered just that.

All of the interiors were designed by Mackintosh as well, along with his wife, the artist Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh. Between them, they created a unique, bright white interior that supported the Mackintoshes belief that a minimalistic exterior should shelter an extraordinary interior. Textiles, rugs, furniture, fittings, and lighting fixtures were designed by the Mackintoshes as well as art work. Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh's gesso panel Sleeping Princess resides here along with some lovely embroidered textile hangings in a bedroom.

Along with highly stylized florals, the  rectilinear design of the interior is emblematic of Mackintosh, especially the use of perforated squares seen at the top of the classic ladder-back chair he designed specifically for this house, and which is currently available through license-holder Cassina here.

To clad the exterior of Hill House, Mackintosh selected portland cement harl, then a newly introduced product, for the surface finish but this was found to be less durable than traditional lime harl and by 2017 it was discovered to be in a precarious, soggy condition, putting the integrity of the whole building at risk of sever water damage. But the National Trust have built a very ambitious structure around the house to protect it. Their website describes it:

Mackintosh was a revolutionary designer, but the materials and techniques at the cutting edge of architectural design in 1900 haven’t withstood a century of the west of Scotland’s harsh, wet weather conditions.

The external render of the property has not proved watertight and the walls have gradually become saturated and are crumbling, with water now threatening the interiors.

If we don’t act soon, the house will be irreparably damaged and we’ll lose its iconic architecture and unique interiors forever.

We’re embarking on a 10-year conservation programme, which will allow continued public access to the house, but also offer views of the Hill House that have never been seen before, even by Mackintosh himself. Stage one opened to visitors in early June 2019, with a protective steel frame structure covered in chainmail mesh, featuring walkways around and over the top of the house. This structure, along with a new visitor centre, will deliver a unique heritage visitor experience.

You can visit the Hill House in Scotland and see The Box as well as eat some delicious Mackintosh inspired treats at the cafe. See the website for details.

Happy designing!