Ellen Silverman

One of the details we loved about Lydia Wills’ apartment, featured yesterday, are the folding stools hanging on the wall in the foyer. They look great, take up no space and are perfect for a million uses, as extra chairs for a dinner party, side tables, a place to sit and take off your boots…On their own, they are lovely little sculptures. They were designed by Roger Tallon in the late ’70′s. Lydia described how she stumbled on the stools and what she discovered about Tallon:

“Roger Tallon started out as a product/industrial designer (watches, electronics, typewriters), but his big thing is that he was a TRAIN designer, very well known for the Mexican underground, a trans euro train, and his biggest deal, the TGV Atlantique (!). I found this stool because he also made a little chair that was designed in a similar way that was an even more beautiful sculpture when folded, but it was too expensive on Ebay, so I just entered his name and then these stools came up one day. Since he did trains, no wonder he came up with these little useful folding chairs.”

Here are images of Tallon’s work (including trains, watches and a spectacular staircase)…We came across the little folding chair that led to Lydia’s stools:

They are so ideal for a small apartment, we wonder why there are nothing like them to be found these days…

…

…not five minutes after we wrote that, we stumbled on this folding chair designed by Christian Desile  in 2009 (at Vange Edition‘s) on the odd, charming French blog Planetargonautes, (which published it’s last post in May)…

…a Comment about it led us to the Plaka chair designed in 1972 by Argentinian designer Carlos Blanco….

…and we followed the trail forward again to the Sheetseat, made from a single sheet of plywood, designed in 2009 by Kutuk and Keskin...

It reminded us what we’ve marveled at before: that people in different places can come up with the same idea at the same time, as though something was in the air…or REINVENT something that found it’s way into the world decades, even centuries before…

Which chair do you like best?

BTW: Lydia’s foyer light was made by Reggiani (the renowned Italian lighting company) in the 1970′s.

Related post: Lydia Wills’ Apartment: Before + After + In Between

06.24.10 | in copy this!, family + friends, furniture, strategies |
trackback | tags: folding stools, hangable folding chair, Lydia Wills, Roger Tallon folding chair