Dear Stephen
I am not sure you are asking the right person, but let me give you a tste of how difficult your question is. You mentioned for instance the screws. The "official" Knoll licenced chair has black hex screws. Which is a nice choice. It is consistent with the "mechanical approach that was typical for Marcel Breuer's experiments at the time. Is it original? no, simply because the hex screw did not exist in the mid twenties when Breuer was building his B3. This type of screw was invented in 1936 and produced by Bauer & Schaurte Karcher in Neuss, Germany and was known as the: Innensechskantschraube Bauer und Schaurte. In Germany and Netherlands, this type of screw is known under the name Inbus?. The Allen Key that comes with it was an american invention (not Ikea) and came years later. Obviously Breuer did not use them in the "real" Wassily chair. The same can be said aboutr the chrome finish (was nickel) or the leather (was canvas)...so as long as you have the measurements right and the quality is fine and YOU like it, I would call it a Wassily chair.
Hi Don,
You mean...how to spell Innensechskantschraube?. It's one of these adavantages of german languages that you can make endless long words by adding all the characteristics in the same word. In this case: Inside-six-sides-screw. You can also complete it by adding the tool and the operator which would be a Innensechskantschraubenzieherbedienungsmann..and a happy new year to you to!
thanks koen
Koen thanks for that info, this is why we love you and many of us wish you were female.
Now, regarding that chair. The one I'm looking at is on Ebay (pickup only from melbourne, Australia). (you could check it out simply by putting Wassily chair into the ebay search engine and looking only at Australia). The seller says it is probably from the mid-1950s and has extra thick leather. Here's what else he has told me about it:
Answers to your questions. The two ends on the floor spans are screwed from underneath, not welded. The left and right side bars are screwed not welded, the cap socket head screws are on the outside, and screw into a concealed (or sinked as you put it) thread on the front an back tubes, so you don't see a nut on the inside of these tubes. The tube sealing is welded closed, and finished flush and flat, not convex. The armrest straps are sewed together top to bottom, with no metal springs. Hope this helps out, I know there are heaps of versions of this chair.
Cheers
Stephen
Dear Stephen
I do not seem to be able to locate the ebay one that is available in Autralia... I guess that explains your comment on not being female. I agree...women are smarter.
Could you possibly put in the link? From your description I have to agree with the seller. The flat ends are most common in real mid century productions. The rest of the description sound right to...yet, I would refer to see it for myself.
Women vs. Men...
I'm not sure where this fits into DA subject, except perhaps that you should take into account the intelligence of the persons you are designing for, but I can't resist wading in here in defense of men, who are presently taking something of a beating of late in the who is smarter question.
Intelligence is a tricky to measure attribute in human beings, either scientifically, or anecdotally.
In USA, African Americans often tested out lower on IQ tests claiming to measure some objective level of learning capacity. But then research began to reveal that there were a lot of cultural biases in the testing. That biasing does not prove anything about what races are smarter, if any; rather, it simply refutes the findings of the tests with the biases.
Given that men and women have traditionally been encumbered by socieity with what at least seems quite a bit of cultural biasing, it in their upbringing, one has to wonder about the effects of cultural biasing in testing among men and women. One can't really conclude who is smarter. Maybe women are in fact fabulously smarter than men, even more so than the tests suggest. Or maybe the same or maybe dumber. All I am inclined to say at this point is that we probably can't rely on the tests to make many distinctions. Instead, we ought to view both sexes and persons deserving the best educations and most nurturing our society can possibly afford in order to get the best out of them both for themselves and for society.
IMHO, both sexes are pretty good at using intelligence to get what they want. Their wants just differ from time to time (perhaps, for its even hard to say this with total confidence). Hence, I can't make the time honored leap to say that women are smarter than men across the board without so much qualification that it is not very persuasive.
My wife is smarter than me in several subjects. I am smarter than her in some. She is better at some things. I am better than her at others. She wants to be right, whether she is or not, whenever her self esteem requires she be right. I am pretty much the same.
She is fabulously clever and skillful and adroit at getting what she wants, often things I could care less about. The same seems to be true of me in some respects.
We both make a fabulous number of mistakes. We both routinely misunderstand what the other wants and needs. We both like to source our problems to the other when the problems are exceptionally difficult to solve.
Neither one of us is very good at predicting the weather or what the stock market will do. Neither one of us can understand how the current President found enough votes to be elected or reelected. Neither one of us can agree on why we both find French culture so appealing. Neither one of us can figure out why we aren't very good at keeping our house organized.
Both of us are enchanted about certain things about the other and openly annoyed about other things.
Women vs. Men...Pt. 2
I can't get control of the daily agenda from her and she can't get control of the TV remote control from me.
She likes me to drive, but she likes to criticize my driving from time to time.
I like to drive and hate to have my driving criticised.
Sometimes we both do the damnedest things.
Anecdotally speaking, she is hands down smarter than me when it comes to multi-tasking, but I have seen men who can out multi-task her.
Anecdotally speaking, I can write circles around here and no more history than she will ever begin to know even if she tried.
She is fabulous at accomplishing things that then become problematic and burdensome to maintain. I am fabulous at avoiding things that will cause me more headaches once they are my responsiblity (except for family).
In my own world, IMHO, the verdict is not yet in on which gender is smarter.
Frankly, I think humanity has not even begun to measure the manifold dimensions of human intelligence that truly ought to be accounted for. Emotional intelligence. Wisdom. Compassionate intelligence. Loving intelligence. Manipulative intelligence. Ruthless intelligence. And so on. These all can be observed to be daily drivers in the events of every day life.
Sometime I look around and think my Great Pyrenee is smarter than all of us. She gets exactly what she wants all the time from all of us anytime she wants it. She is content. She is beautiful. She is elegant. She is strong and sensitive. She suffers no fools and recognizes who should be feared almost instantly. She picks no fights, but is not even afraid of trained German Shepherds. She never has to apply eye liner, because she has evolved her fur so it is permanently applied. And mostly all she wants to do is lay around, keep an eye on things and have a good bone every now and then. She's got me and my wife beat for getting what she wants hands down.
Smarts
Perhaps our problem as human beings is a constant need to quantify, qualify and compete on things as silly as who is smarter, man or woman. Who is stronger, what country poses a threat and which country doesn't. Man or woman, at core we are all human beings hurtling through space on this little planet we call earth. There is no back-up planet and I for one am not terribly interested in living on the moon, (lousy decor and no atmosphere) Instead of focusing on how we are different, smarter, stronger, etc., what say we focus on what we hold in common, a love of good design, peace, prosperity, etc. We all breathe, need clean water to live and hopefully wish to leave a better planet for our children and those that come after us. Come to think of it that's not bad advice for nations. Celebrate diversity? I say let's celebrate that which we hold in common instead of trying to divide along arbitrary lines, like who's smarter. John Lennon said best when he said "Imagine all the people, living life in peace, " or words to that effect. Just my small wish for peace and harmony in our lifetime. May you live in interesting times, but more importantly may they be in peace. In closing Imagine being kind, and I mean truly kind, to just one other human being today and everyday.
If the world isn't already...
If the world isn't already gone to the dogs it should be going that direction. I think if they could ever get a good grip on the pen most, except for the poodle variety, would outscore all of us, women and men alike, on any test we could take. My hat, if thrown in, would say women, as a collective, are generally more intelligent than men. This is true for a number of reasons, one being that on the whole women tend not to be as easily distracted, particularly by things of little consequence, as the majority of men. When I was going to college, alot of us guys, with good reason, claimed that the N on the Nebraska football helmet stood for knowledge.
This is funny!
My comment was neither intended as a serious statement, nor as a way to start a discussion. I was only intriged by Stephen's comment:"...many of us wish you were female..." a statement that made me wonder..."Do women generally know more about design?"....I should have listened to my late mother who use to say that if you do not want to discuss something, don't go around telling people that you do not want to discuss it, just ignore it. That's what I should have done. But now that the harm is done I have to agree with Don...although I think our cat "Charlotte" is even smarter. On the subject of Wassily chairs, I am sure that there are design addicts out there that know a lot more about the Wassily chair than I do. I have always been iritated by the claims about "real" and "original" especially with a chair that has so many "original" variations. Some years ago I had a conversation about it with an employee of a "real" licence holder who mentioned that the "real" Wassily chair had an interupted crossbar (cut after the bend) to hold the lower end of the seat. It was news to him when I mentioned that the Wassily chaires in Gropius' own Bauhaus directors office had a continious crossbar as documented in quite a number of pictures from the Bauhaus years...women would know that.
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