More on that plate glass chair...

A little more research on the plate glass chairs from the Glass Center revealed that another one was sold at auction in 2010 for a little over 9 thousand dollars, nearly twice the going rate in 2003. The auction site cites Arts & Architecture magazine, mentioning that the chair had been sold by J. W. Robinson Co., a high-end Los Angeles home furnishings retailer.

A quick trip to the New York Public Library confirmed this: there was the chair, unmistakably on page 15 of the October, 1947 issue of Arts & Architecture in a Robinson ad. But it's not quite the same chair: the manufacturer is given as Turchin; the glass does not appear to be clear; the cushion appears thicker; and the Robinson chair clearly has additional padding along the inside top back.



I find very little information regarding Turchin on the 'net: they seem to have started out as a much smaller operation, producing, among other things, decorative glass blocks, bookends and aquaria. No mention is made in the Robinson ad of the original chair design, designer, or any Fair connection. Did Turchin simply copy the design? Who knows?

But it would seem that there could certainly be a few chairs out there that date from after The Fair. Assuming, though, that the Brooklyn and Carnegie Museums have done their homework, I am fairly confident that their chairs are Fair originals.

Fantasy in Glass

So today we rode out to The Brooklyn Museum to see...

The glass chair is displayed next to a Kem Webber dressing table and stool from 1934

THIS AMAZING PIECE OF AWESOMENESS. The chair, formed from a single piece of thick plate glass, was designed by (or attributed to) Louis Dierra and produced by the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company for display in the Glass Center Pavilion at The Fair. Due to the impracticality of the medium, however, very few of these chairs were ever manufactured; in fact, it's not certain that any other than the Fair samples were. So few seem to exist today that I think it's likely that the ones you can see, at the Brooklyn and the Carnegie Museum of Art, are actual chairs from the Fair exhibit.

Still others are in private collections. One came up for auction at Phillips, de Pury & Company in 2003, and went for a little under 5 grand!

I would sell my mother to own one of these chairs!