Sitting on subway maps and signs
I have these two friends. One is a die hard New Yorker and a subwayphile. The other is loathe to pass up any opportunity to snap up an old street sign that happens to be lying around. If I had a few thousand bucks burning a hole in my pocket, you can bet I’d be placing an order for a few of these chairs. Designed by Boris Bally, they are crafted from aluminum and steel signs rendering each chair unique.
As Michael Monroe (wait, that Michael Monroe?) so aptly put it:
“An attraction to the bold graphics of discarded highway signage inspired Boris Bally to collect, recycle, and fabricate furniture of great wit and distinction. His chairs – with fragmented words, symbols and arrows splashed across their surfaces – seem to symbolize urban grit and rhythms.”
Indeed…of course, I love weird highlight pieces like this. You wouldn’t want to outfit your whole house with them–at least most people wouldn’t–but they’re awesome in a starring role. My main stand-out piece is a beautiful and striking Russian khokhloma side table that my grandparents brought back on some excursion some years ago. What’s yours?
The problem with chairs like those is that I still have people in my family who walk into the house and throw their books and coats on top of everything. No one would ever see that chair. The issue with having “stand out pieces” is that unless you have a physical set up for a living area with doors that close (like in my parents’ home, where the entrance to the livingroom was sliding doors), you can’t protect nice things from children, pets, and traffic.
In my case, I waited for my “nice things” until my kids were in college so that the amount of “coat and book damage” can be minimized.
One thing I like about the sign chairs is that they’re made of metal. With four cats, wood gets seriously knocked around in our house unless The Beard or I am close by the with the spray bottle or the shake can. That beautiful khokhloma table I mentioned is kept in a closed off space for fear of claws. When kids come along? I’m considering putting all of the really nice things in storage for 15 or so years.