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Heritage Stewardship

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Orange Ron Thom designed side chair and foot stool

Heritage Stewardship

  • Welcome
  • The Architectural Vision
  • Ron Thom
  • Furniture
    • Alvar Aalto Collection
    • Arne Jacobsen Collection
    • Bruno Mathsson Collection
    • Charles Eames Collection
    • Eero Saarinen Collection
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    • Michael Thonet Collection
    • Robin Day Collection
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  • Revitalization Projects
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TRENTU.CA / Heritage Stewardship / Furniture / Robin Day Collection

Robin Day Collection

A black and white protrait of Robin Day wearing glasses, bow-tie, and styled hairRobin Day (1915-2010) was a British designer, and had a career building and designing furniture that spanned over seven decades. His most notable work, “the Polypropylene Chair” has been used as the blueprint for thousands of different plastic-based school chairs. the Polypropylene mixture had just been discovered, and was only beginning to be used for furniture design. It was found to be as strong as fiberglass, but cheap enough that it could be mass-produced in many vibrant colours. Day’s designs had strong ribs on the underside of the chair to support central legs, and curved the front chair legs to deal with students leaning back on their chairs. Later in his career he created the Polo Chair, which had ventilation holes all through it, and this became the benchmark for stadium seating all over the world.

 

 

A single piece of red plastic makes up the seat and backing of this chair. with no armrests and four thin metal legsThe “Polypropylene Chair'

Utilizing the new compound created by Charles and Ray Eames, Robin Day invented his first chair with oddly bent legs, to attest to design without compromising functionality.

Year First Produced:1961

 

 

 

 

A circular glass piece makes the top of this low table, with two crossing metal bars making the four legsThe “Alpha Table” 

Year First Produced: 1959

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