I'd been meaning to do a retro blog post about the 80s but for some reason the 80s is much less chromey than I remember it. Or what survives of it that I can easily track down, anyway.
It seems the 80s were more about thin red graph paper lines, not-of-this-planet vegetation prints, mega-mega use of plastics, and the odd piece of well designed classicism.
The ChromeQuest (TM) led me, as it almost always does, to the work of the Eames brothers. Check out this classic chrome/leather job on
RetroDecades - I haven't actually tried one of these out, but it looks like it's got two of the main design plus points a chair should have - a level of good visual design and also a level of comfort.
Too many retro pieces look like something off the set of a space opera or a film by someone like Michaelengelo Antonioni. I think the Eames were genius because they understood sedentary ergonomics as well as style. The fact that they made use of chrome is just a bonus really.
Another, not dissimilar approach to ergonomics, aesthetics and chrome-ology is [at top of this post] the Breuer "Wassily"chair (named, I presume, for Kandinsky). Even looking at the picture almost works as a posture-corrective!
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