Hot desking at a gallery near you
I rather like those histories of everyday things – ‘Latitude’, the story of spice, the history of salt. Exhibitions of locks and keys from the middle ages, or the furniture exhibitions at the Geffrye Museum, fascinate me.
So an exhibition of desks is a must! As a writer I spend most of each day at one, and it isn’t beautiful.
When I daydream, I imagine myself sitting at a fine Louis XIV desk with curvy gilt legs, or a lovely Restoration bureau…
“8 Desks” is a bit more modern but equally stylish. Jean Prouvé and Jean Royère’s almost minimalist, strikingly modern desks represent the practical, functional side of the modern style. (We’ve already seen Jean Prouvé’s architecture in London recently – here’s another chance to catch up with this intriguing designer.) Mass production techniques enabled the French designers to create cheap, useful furniture while still achieving beauty, albeit a rather austere beauty. Metal and formica create slick, shiny surfaces and defined, geometrical shapes.
If you don’t go for modernist, though, you can have your desks more curvy, and if you don’t like formica, wood provides a warmer, less clinical feel. George Nakashima, for instance, seems to have been influenced by arts-and-crafts style or perhaps the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. This American designer creates a more sensual work, using the feel and look of natural wood. Charlotte Perriand, too, uses wood and traditional joinery techniques to make desks you want to caress rather than abuse.
Would you ever have believed a desk could be so interesting?
If your answer is ‘no’ and I haven’t managed to convince you, forget it.
But if you’re a design nerd, or a furniture nerd, or you’d just like to see something a bit unusual, go and take a look at these desks when the exhibition opens up in January.
When: 15 Janury – 14 March 2009, 10-6 Mon-Fri and 11-1 Saturdays
Where: Sebastian + Barquet London, 19 Bruton Place, W1
How much: free
Photo credit: Jean Prouvé,“Standard” Desk and Chair, 1943
Courtesy Sebastian + Barquet London
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