droog: manicured chairs posted 11 May 2010
For this year’s Salon del Mobile in Milan, the highly inventive, active and innovative company droog decided to buy various lots of remaindered items from liquidation sales, and then offered the batches of unusual things to 14 designers to transform in some way. Things like glassware and safety vests and dog baskets and wooden spoons … none of it particularly nice, so it was a challenge.
From the lot I chose 2 items: a single wooden table, and 80 wooden folding chairs.
For the folding chairs, well, I had this wacky idea. I had just had my fingernails done in LA for the first time, and I was fascinated with how quickly and nicely the manicurist put designs on my nails. So I proposed to droog that we get 80 manicurists and get one each to decorate a chair. Incredibly, they went for it. In the end there were only 4 or 5 manicurists, but still.
This is the first time ever that I have done something that was only concept, in which I designed nothing, and touched nothing with my actual hands.
These were my instructions:
1) COLOURS
bright colours: pink, red, yellow, etc.
opaque colours: white or nail polishes with a lot of white in them: light blues, greens, etc.
neon colours (a whole chair in neon colours would be cool: it would glow in blacklight!!)
metallic colours: the more shiny-metallic they are, the more they will stand out on the dark surface. Silver, copper, glitter .. .I have found that even metallic dark greens and blues look quite good.
They can choose a colour “theme” or make it multi-coloured.
2) MOTIFS
I’m not looking for works of art. Keep the designs simple and easy to make.
Flowers are very easy to make: 3- , 4-, and 5-petaled flowers
or little grasses, stars, abstract things with shapes and dots (I like this a lot).
Maybe there is some design they have learned that they are good at: a little butterfly or ladybug or something. Whatever they are, they should be small and simple, as though they were done on a fingernail … but there will be lots of them. I would prefer that they pick one or two little designs and just do that over and over, over the surface of the chair. Something they get good at and can do quickly and easily. NO big design pictures, no scenes or designs that would not fit on a finger nail … it should look pretty and delicate.
The Centraal Museum Utrecht bought one of these chairs, but droog still has a lot. The plan is to ship them to the droog store in New York, I believe, where they will be for sale, and more will be made.
Photos by Stefanie Grätz, courtesy of droog.
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