At the main Boise Public Library I recently borrowed a DVD of Monobloc - a 91-minute 2021 documentary by Hauke Wendler (in German with English subtitles) about one-piece injection-molded plastic chairs like the one shown above. About a billion monobloc chairs have been made. The film is about the social impact of design. You can watch a two-minute trailer on YouTube. There is an article about it by Thomas Wagner at ndion on January 26, 2022 titled Monobloc: What matters is that you sit. In India these inexpensive chairs meant that people could sit up to dine in their homes rather than sitting on the floor. Monobloc chairs also were used as the seat for the first-generation design of an inexpensive wheelchair given away by the Free Wheelchair Mission.
There also were some nineteenth century chair innovations by Michael Thonet. Way back in 1859 the bent wood Thonet Chair No. 14 (shown above) was introduced. There is an article about it at the Design Museum which says fifty million of this design were sold by 1930.
There also is the director’s chair. An article by Hadley Mendelsohn at House Beautiful on January 10, 2022 titled How the director’s chair became an icon on set and beyond says it was introduced 130 years ago in 1892. But, as shown above, you can find one in a Civil War photograph by Matthew Brady from back in 1862.
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