nendo
Cabbage Chair2008

On view:

Geffen Galleries, The Stuff of Alchemy: Plastic in Art

Sculpture made from hundreds of stacked white paper sheets formed into a rounded dome shape, with sheets gathering and pinching inward at the top in a spiral fold

Designed by: nendo
Japan, founded 2002
Designed by: Oki Sato
Canada, active Japan, Tokyo, born 1977
Title: Cabbage Chair
Date Made: 2008
Medium: Unwoven fabric
Dimensions: Height: 28 in. (71.12 cm) Diameter: 29 1/2 in. (74.93 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by Peter and Shannon Loughrey through the 2013 Decorative Arts and Design Acquisition Committee (DA2)
Accession Number: M.2013.102
Classification: Furnishings
Collecting Area: Decorative Arts and Design
Curatorial Notes: Fashion designer Issey Miyake commissioned industrial designer Oki Sato to create the Cabbage Chair as part of an exhibition about envisioning new, sustainable production practices. Sato, who heads the design firm nendo, is renowned for the deceptive simplicity and effortless elegance of his products, following in the tradition of such minimalist Japanese designers as Naoto Fukasawa and Sori Yanagi. Sato was given the paper remnants from the process of making Miyake’s celebrated Pleats Please clothing. The paper, strengthened with resins, protects the fabric while it is heat-pressed, then rolled into cylinders and discarded. By stripping successive layers of the paper from the cylinder, much like cabbage leaves are peeled to the core, Sato created a comfortable chair (although ultimately he needed a stronger material to make full-scale, structurally integral seating). Several chairs were made for the XXIst Century Man exhibition at 21_21 Design Sight in Tokyo in 2008; this example is from a subsequent edition of forty chairs commissioned by Friedman Benda Gallery for the 2009 exhibition nendo: ghost stories.

Bobbye Tigerman

2013

nendo
Cabbage Chair2008

On view:

Geffen Galleries, The Stuff of Alchemy: Plastic in Art

Designed by: nendo
Japan, founded 2002
Designed by: Oki Sato
Canada, active Japan, Tokyo, born 1977
Title: Cabbage Chair
Date Made: 2008
Medium: Unwoven fabric
Dimensions: Height: 28 in. (71.12 cm) Diameter: 29 1/2 in. (74.93 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by Peter and Shannon Loughrey through the 2013 Decorative Arts and Design Acquisition Committee (DA2)
Accession Number: M.2013.102
Classification: Furnishings
Collecting Area: Decorative Arts and Design
Curatorial Notes: Fashion designer Issey Miyake commissioned industrial designer Oki Sato to create the Cabbage Chair as part of an exhibition about envisioning new, sustainable production practices. Sato, who heads the design firm nendo, is renowned for the deceptive simplicity and effortless elegance of his products, following in the tradition of such minimalist Japanese designers as Naoto Fukasawa and Sori Yanagi. Sato was given the paper remnants from the process of making Miyake’s celebrated Pleats Please clothing. The paper, strengthened with resins, protects the fabric while it is heat-pressed, then rolled into cylinders and discarded. By stripping successive layers of the paper from the cylinder, much like cabbage leaves are peeled to the core, Sato created a comfortable chair (although ultimately he needed a stronger material to make full-scale, structurally integral seating). Several chairs were made for the XXIst Century Man exhibition at 21_21 Design Sight in Tokyo in 2008; this example is from a subsequent edition of forty chairs commissioned by Friedman Benda Gallery for the 2009 exhibition nendo: ghost stories.

Bobbye Tigerman

2013