The Chair

Captivated by Hector Guimard’s sinuous vegetal forms and undulating lines, and encouraged by Victor Horta’s belief that the stem possessed a beauty greater than “the leaf and the flower,” I approached the chair as a form capable of growth, transformation, and mutation.

Together with its plinth, the chair developed the character of an object long lost at sea, its surfaces imagined as coated in brine, corrosion, and marine accretions. This narrative draws upon the maritime concept of sine spe recuperandi (without hope of recovery) and the classifications of flotsam, jetsam, lagan, and derelict, terms used to describe property cast adrift or abandoned at sea. The chair emerges as a recovered relic from this imagined maritime archaeology, both familiar and estranged.