February 2014 Calendar Featuring The Y Chair

The Y Chair by Hans J. Wegner. Image found here.

We find ourselves in February, and on the 2014 Pickle Design calendar we are showcasing the Y chair. Download a desktop version of the February calendar here. At Pickle we love looking at all areas of design for daily inspiration. We use Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Tumblr to drench ourselves in creativity, but there really is something quite special about chair design. Not only does a seat need to be comfortable (trust us, we sit in one all day!) but a well designed chair can make a statement about the designer themselves, the home owner, or society at large.

Hans J. Wegner created this chair in 1950, basing the design on traditional Dutch paintings of merchants sitting in Ming chairs. Wegner was a perfectionist. Stylistically there wasn’t necessarily a common thread between his designs, it was more his ethos that shone through, he said "the good chair is a task one is never completely done with", it was "a continuous process of purification, and for me of simplification, to cut down to the simplest possible elements of four legs, a seat and combined top rail and arm rest." Another of Wegner's designs was used for the first ever televised Presidential debate, in 1960, between Kennedy and Nixon.

I like how the Y chair (also known as the Wishbone chair) still looks perfectly contemporary in a modern home, but it has that craftsmen feel that speaks of tradition.

Emma Julian