Ontwerp voor een stoel c. 1906

Carel Adolph Lion Cachet made this chair design, Ontwerp voor een stoel, sometime in his life, using graphite on paper. It's just a very cool, wonky, straightforward design, all in pencil. You can see the artist working through the problem of how to build a chair, the construction of the joints, how one part connects to another. I can imagine him sketching this design, figuring out the proportions and measurements, thinking about how it will look in the end. His marks on the paper are really about structural integrity, and the potential for furniture to inhabit an interior space. Chair design is something that artists have always taken an interest in. It's like, how can a functional object also be a really beautiful, powerful, or sculptural thing? It's a question that's been asked across art history, from paintings to drawings, and is still being asked today.