Chair #1: Wood and Steel

The Annunciation. Over the centuries, the intimate moment in which the archangel Gabriel delivers his message to Mary has provided a wealth of iconography for artists. In Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s Ecce Ancilla Domini! (The Annunciation), we see Mary in a simple room clad in a white gown not too dissimilar from the one worn by her heavenly visitor. Though lacking wings, the viewer knows Gabriel is not human from the fact that his feet are aflame and levitating a few inches above the tiled floor. Flanked by bold blue and red sheets of fabric symbolizing her purity and sacrifice, Mary appears unsure of Gabriel’s proposal. 

What if an object spoke of the interaction between the divine and the mundane through a dichotomy of materiality and joinery?

For the main body of the chair, wood has been selected as it exemplifies our organic world; subject to growth and decay. Standing for the divine, the top seat is composed of steel; a material made up of iron and carbon which have been melted and transfigured into an even more precious material.

The seat is curved and powder coated blue, making it impervious to the elements and opposing the porosity of the wood body and its orthogonal composition. Lastly, although appearing to delicately sit on the wood body, the metal seat is in fact inserted into the wood by means of four tabs alluding to divine control of our earthly realm.