The url you are using appears...
The url you are using appears to be: http://www.flickr.com/photos/76976159@NO4/7055007997/
which is not a typical image link, as it should end with ".jpg".
Ding...ding..ding...ding ! I think we have a winner here,!!!!
Oh fantastic!
Last week he was won of the designers I researched, but could not find these chairs. On Decopedia it shows just the side chair in a lighter sling material which I am guessing is leather as well. I think you are correct as to whom designed these and thank you so very much for clarifying this.
I have three arm chairs and I felt that they were important not only because of the style, but because they are extremely well constructed!
Um, sorry to disagree
But I'm fairly certain that is incorrect.
I've seen a number of these chairs over the years. The first time was in December of 1999 in the booth of an art dealer at an art fair in NYC. I asked the dealer if they knew the designer as I recognized the Mart Stam/ Marcel Breuer/ Mies influence, but I though the reversed cantilever was pretty wild. They are also very well constructed. The told me their designer had purchased them for the gallery many years ago, but did not know the designer.
I saw them again later in shops in NY, Chicago and San Francisco each time with no attribution, or with "in the style of". It was only when I saw a late Dunbar catalogue that pictured these exact chairs that I discovered the attribution, which I now fail to remember. The Dunbar catalogue was from the later post Womley/ Roger Sprunger era. It clearly showed the chair design from several different angles and listed the designer who, while the name escapes me right now, was not Jindrich Halabala. After seeing the catalogue I was again in NYC and visited Las Venus in the East Village where they were selling a set of 4 of these chairs as "Dunbar". There was apparently still labels attached to this set.
I have looked at images of Jindrich Halabala's work on line and while I do see similarities, I also see a different, more fluid sensibility. Perhaps the Dunbar designer was inspired by the Halabala design with the reverse cantilever that has the wood arm rests. But if you look closely, I think you will note important differences. I'm also confident that had they been designed by a fairly obscure Czech designer, I would not have seen as many of these chairs in the US as I have.
It's a very cool design, and very well made. I wish I could remember the name of the designer, but I'm almost positive they were made by Dunbar and are not a Jindrich Halabala design.
*edited for typo
Shades of
Frank -- Wright, that is -- whose three-legged chairs were wont to tip their occupants to the ground if not careful. There's no way this chair won't want to rotate forward if too much weight is put on the fronts of the arms, as when sitting or getting up. That's self-evident, from the excellent side view immediately above. I'm surprised this version made it to production.
Nice design nevertheless. And clearly quite rare . . .
Still a mystery?
I looked very closely at my chairs again and today I do see some slight differences in the design from the Dunbar version. The placement of the underseat support bar is approximately 2" behind the reverse cantilever front (in the image from the Dunbar catalogue the bar appears to be in direct line of the front base. The chair does not tip forward at all as it seems to be very well balanced. In the past I have sat in chairs that tip forward and feel unsafe which I am not sure if the Dunbar version does. The weight of my chair is 24.5 lbs. so it is quite heavy and the width of the tubing is 1 1/8". Overall the dimensions are similar to the Dunbar chair so I am still not sure whether or not these are the real deal. I tried on several attempts to line up my chair visually with the one shown in the Dunbar catalogue and it does not match!
So I guess I will have to continue to research this.
thanks all for your input, you are all so great!
Mystery Solved
You were absolutely correct as I saw the original chair on www.modernista.cz which clearly shows an image of Jindrich Halabala's chair so I guess I just have the Ralph Rye Dunbar chairs which are still lovely, but I am so glad this has been cleard up thanks to you!
Still it would have been nicer to have the original design.
BTW..
I am shocked at how this chair is passed off on internet sites as Halabala's chair when in fact it is by Dunbar.
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