This catalogue essay was published in ‘Mid-Century Modern: Australian Furniture Design’ National Gallery of Victoria 2014. It accompanied an exhibition of the same name curated by Kirsty Grant in the NGV.
MOULDED TO SHAPE
During the early 1970s Grant and I began working on the Numero Series of lounge seating. The idea for Numero was as simple as it could be; a moulded form with a pull-on stretch cover that fitted like a glove. The companion piece - Obo - a hollow spherical shaped chair was even simpler and could be said to meet the Bauhaus dictum of ‘reducing components to just one’.
The intent, as with all Grant’s furniture designs, was to use minimal materials, modularity and volume production techniques to create well-designed, affordable design. We shared the belief that the role of design was to enrich everyone’s everyday life.
At the time we were urgently seeking a manufacturer/client with whom we could establish a collaboration to replace Grant’s long and very successful, but recently terminated, relationship with Aristoc Industries, a metal frame furniture manufacturer.
In our searching we learnt that a local manufacturer of automotive components was successfully moulding resilient polyurethane foam for automotive seating. The process involved the introduction of chemicals into a hollow mould and allowing them to expand to fill the void – like rising bread dough. Such a process offered boundless potential for Grant to achieve subtle organic, curvilinear forms to support the shape and movement of the human body. And these forms could be produced in a fraction of the time of traditional furniture fabrication techniques – ‘like shelling peas’ as the chemist commented, and at much lower cost.
We made a visit to the small local company, South Australian Rubber Mills in Dandenong, Victoria and after an animated exchange it was clear that the adventurous engineers and chemists were intrigued by our project and eager to use their expertise to solve a new challenge of producing much larger mouldings. Another aspect in our favour was that they were currently updating their technology from ‘hot cure’ methods to ‘cold cure’, a process involving lower capital costs and simpler production methods.
But we had then to convince their American parent company, the global automotive parts manufacturer, Uniroyal, which was based in South Australia. Grant initially won their interest with a series of evocative, lusciously coloured, crayon sketches which illustrated the furniture potential of their technology. We suggested that there was a market for affordable, modular lounge units for informal living/rumpus rooms ‘where people spend most of their time’. But the item that really captured their imagination and a contract was the prototype of the Obo chair. The idea for this radical chair sprang fully formed into Grant’s head one day as he was experimenting with forms to exploit the plasticity of the moulded urethane. He formed a prototype from sheet foam, cut and glued to simulate the hollow sphere which he partially filled with polystyrene pellets before setting off for Adelaide with it over his shoulder in a large drawstring bag, looking rather like a bundle of laundry.
Grant always tested ideas and forms initially by making many tiny models. In this case he carved shapes from rigid polyurethane and eventually full size prototypes carved from blocks of resilient foam. The prototypes were used for testing size, shape and comfort and finally were the basis of our technical drawings for production. Meantime Uniroyal, a company with no prior experience in furniture production or marketing, set up their new furniture division in Adelaide.
In the 1970s foam furniture was being produced in Italy & America predominantly using cut and fabricated foam. Perhaps the most extraordinary expression of moulding technology and Pop culture was the ‘Up Chair’ (1969) by Italian designer Gaetano Pesce. This large moulding complete with integral cover was delivered as a small disc and on unzipping it re-inflated to assume its full shape. (Uniroyal imported a sample, inflated it in their boardroom and were unable to get it out.) In Australia, foam furniture was regarded as ‘cheap and nasty’ – a perception that proved impossible to overcome.
The most challenging aspect of the Numero research and development was to find an appropriate stretch upholstery fabric. The only available fabrics were one-way stretch and the compound curves of the Numero units required two-way stretch. After much searching by us and experimentation by several manufacturers, a Tasmanian company, Kelsall and Kemp, succeeded in developing a two-way boucle, wool/acrylic mix that was ideal. The structural integrity and durability of Numero’s foam mouldings was tested by the Furniture Industry Research Association in the U.K. Market testing carried out in Melbourne revealed strong disparities between approval and dislike based largely on postcode.
In 1973 the first series, Numero IV, which comprised three units – a high and a low back seat unit and a square ottoman unit, was launched onto the market. It was followed in 1974 by Numero VII which offered a no-arm corner seat unit, a curved two-seater unit (the largest moulding in the world at the time) and an ottoman. Though limited to a small number the units, which were lightweight, could be easily arranged into a wide variety of configurations with their easy-slide base making them easy to move.
Initial sales were promising; in 1978 sales reached seventy to eighty units per day. But sales started to dwindle as the marketing and promotion was poorly handled. Obo, which was launched in 1974, could not compete with the Bean Bag which was one third of its price. Also Australia’s conservative furniture retailers, who were not supportive of innovation, were demanding more traditional designs and exclusivity. In response Uniroyal began to bring in chairs from Italy and America which they tweaked for the local market, so avoiding design and development costs.
In 1981 Uniroyal’s Australian division was taken over by the Japanese global automotive tyre manufacturer Bridgestone. In the same year, in a boardroom in Tokyo the question was raised about why Bridgestone was operating a furniture division in Australia and the project was quickly terminated.
Some forty years on I retain vivid memories of the pleasure experienced during the early period of intense collaborative problem solving that lead to the development of the Numero series and Obo. And I believe this furniture, which was to be our last, epitomised our humanist, modernist approach to design.
Mary Featherston 2014