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In the San Remo Garage space hidden within the narrow streets of the historical heart of Milan, Max Lamb, London based designer, showcases a collection of his chairs. The exhibition “Exercising in seat-ing” that takes its title from the designer’s degree thesis at the Royal College of Art is a catalog of the past and on-going Lamb’s experiments and investigations on the materials. Each Lamb’s piece in fact is an example of a wide range of matters the designer regularly works with and various production techniques. Thus on display more than 40 objects that vary from the most natural wooden essences to 100% synthetic compounds. Each exemplify an always new production method: from the most simple and intuitive handmade trials to extremely sophisticated, complex end even chemically controlled processes.
In the San Remo Garage space hidden within the narrow streets of the historical heart of Milan, Max Lamb, London based designer, showcases a collection of his chairs. The exhibition “Exercising in seat-ing” that takes its title from the designer’s degree thesis at the Royal College of Art is a catalog of the past and on-going Lamb’s experiments and investigations on the materials. Each Lamb’s piece in fact is an example of a wide range of matters the designer regularly works with and various production techniques. Thus on display more than 40 objects that vary from the most natural wooden essences to 100% synthetic compounds. Each exemplify an always new production method: from the most simple and intuitive handmade trials to extremely sophisticated, complex end even chemically controlled processes.
Often the work of Max Lamb is defined as a neo-primitivism. However, his method always brings him to the final results that are controlled and not left free to have their own life.
Lamb’s works share the lexicon of concepts such as sincerity, honesty, truth and, often, brutalism. The solder seat is a good example of a roughly finished and “honest” object.
Initially, Lamb made the white Poly Chair. However, from the cuts and leftovers of the material he decided to complete the pair designing one smaller seat instead of a second identical chair. Lamb sees this works as a pair of opposites and his choice of colors – black and white – underline the contrast of the design processes used to create the two pieces.
The Soft Poly Chair was carved out of a single piece of expanded polystyrene. It weighs 11 kg.
Lamb’s approach envisions materials as a brute force from which to obtain energy. This pushes the designer toward very original and sometimes primitive processing techniques. Like this Copper Stool and the Pewter Stool.
This stool is probably Max Lamb’s most famous work to date. To produce it, he used only sand, sea, and molten metal. The production process was performed entirely on a beach by the sea using hand-crafted techniques. Besides the art-like execution of the object, this stool is characterized by evocative surface textures left by the sand grains and silken sea water.
This chair was shaped from one single piece of cypress log and weighs about 11 kg.
These two chairs are made out of 16g ERW mild-steel tubes. Each weighs about 10 kg.
At a deceptively heavy 38 kg, this chair is made of engineered marble. The marble’s pattern was designed by Max Lamb from various stones brought from all over Italy.
This stool is one of Lamb’s more recent works in which the designer explores the borderline between handcrafted and industrially produced furniture. The stool is made of the two contrasting components: mass-produced regular wooden boards on top and manually carved wooden trunk at the base... Read more & see all design chairs by Max Lamb in my article on Inhabitat USA.
Text and pictures exclusively for Inhabitat USA by Maria Novozhilova
Follow me on twitter at @NovozhilovaM
Follow me on instagram at @MN.Blog
Text and pictures exclusively for Inhabitat USA by Maria Novozhilova
Follow me on twitter at @NovozhilovaM
Follow me on instagram at @MN.Blog