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Glass chair

1976
Not on view
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.
Inspired by the futuristic set designs in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Glass Chair is a landmark in twentieth-century furniture design. It builds on the avant-garde planar construction of De Stijl but offers an innovative method of bonding the glass at each join with ultraviolet-hardening adhesive. This breakthrough surely inspired Sottsass a decade later, when he insisted that Murano glassworks Toso Vetri d’Arte break the age-old tradition of hot welding glass by substituting chemical glue. Sottsass surely appreciated the clean precision of the invisible joins in Kuramata’s chair as a way to enhance the visual transparencies and clarity of his own glass forms. Glass Chair is a study in visual lightness contrasted by the object’s actual weight, a play on an almost invisible structure for a barely visible chair.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Glass chair
  • Artist: Shiro Kuramata (Japanese, 1934–1991)
  • Date: 1976
  • Medium: Glass, adhesive
  • Dimensions: 34 5/8 × 35 7/16 × 23 5/8 in. (88 × 90 × 60 cm)
  • Classification: Furniture
  • Credit Line: Courtesy of Friedman Benda, New York
  • Rights and Reproduction: © Kuramata Design Office
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art