$39.35
- Softcover
- 208 pages
- 296 × 224 × 18 mm
- ISBN 9784861529610
- Japanese, English
- 2024
From a Japanese collection: masterpieces of unparalleled minimalism and beauty of form by “furniture architect” Poul Kjærholm.
Poul Kjærholm (1929–1980) is counted among the giants of modern Scandinavian furniture design. While mid-twentieth-century Scandinavian furniture is typically associated with the warmth of wood, Kjærholm’s designs were marked by highly disciplined forms shaped from hard stone and metal; his works harmonize well with Japanese architecture, which perhaps explains why he is so well embraced by connoisseurs in the country.
This book presents the collection of one such enthusiast, Noritsugu Oda, who specializes in chairs. Some fifty masterpieces along with a wealth of valuable design drawings and archival photographs trace Kjærholm’s career from his beginnings under the noted furniture designer Hans J. Wegner to his death at the age of fifty-one.
“The chair must have a natural shape in keeping with the material and the tools used for it, so that it is constructively evident,” Kjærholm once wrote. “The chair must excite an aesthetical pleasure.” The works of this self-styled “furniture architect” exhibit a consummate minimalism and beauty, and this definitive volume distills the quintessence of his aesthetic sophistication and design philosophy.
Noritsugu Oda is a chair collector, professor emeritus of Tokai University, and culture and arts coordinator for the town of Higashikawa in Hokkaido. Born in 1946 in Kochi Prefecture, he graduated from the Osaka University of Arts and worked as an illustrator and graphic designer for the advertising section of the Takashimaya department-store chain before establishing his own design studio. In 1994 he became a professor at the Hokkaido Tokai University (later Tokai University) School of Art and Technology, where he taught until his retirement in 2015. Today he resides in a house in the woods of the town of Higashikagura in Hokkaido.
Edited by: Panasonic Shiodome Museum of Art with supervision by Noritsugu Oda
