Rover chair
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 Chair exhibited at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, 2010 | |
| Designer | Ron Arad |
|---|---|
| Date | 1981 (United Kingdom) |
| Materials | Steel frame, leather car seat |
| Style / tradition | Postmodernist |
| Sold by | Vitra (Switzerland) |
| Height | 78 cm (31 in) |
| Width | 69 cm (27 in) |
| Depth | 92 cm (36 in) |
The Rover chair is the first piece of furniture designed by industrial designer Ron Arad. It was made in 1981 as a fusion of two readymades and launched Arad's career. The chair is a postmodernist design, combining a car seat with a structural tubing frame.
Arad had left his employment with a firm of architects,[1] and obtained the parts to make the chair from a scrapyard in Chalk Farm, London.[1][2] The readymade[3] chair was the first piece of furniture he produced.[4][5]
The red[6][7] leather seat is from a Rover P6[8][9] and is housed in a black[10] painted curved steel frame made from a Kee Klamp milking stall.[1][6][8] Later exhibited pieces had epoxy lacquered frames.[11] The frame provides both feet and arm rests.[12]
The Rover P6 is sometimes known as the 2000. Some reports of the chair refer to it being made using seats from the 200,[2][13] P5[14] or 90.[15]
Furniture maker Joe Hall visited Arad's Covent Garden shop in the mid-1980s and then collaborated with him to make further chairs. Hall scoured the country's scrapyards for P6 seats, which cost £5–15 each and were in excellent condition.[8]
The chairs sold for £99 each in 1981,[2] about three times the production cost.[1] Original chairs made by Arad's One Off company[9] have been auctioned by Christie's,[16][17] Bonhams,[18][19] Bonhams & Butterfield[15] and Göteborgs Auktionsverk.[20][21] Hundreds have been produced since 1981, fetching thousands of pounds at auctions at the turn of the century.[2][8][22] The success of the chair, which has become an icon,[23] launched Arad's career.[6][11][24][25]
The chairs were produced by One Off until 1989, and in 2008 were being produced by Vitra in two models.[12] A two-seater version was auctioned in 2011.[20][21]