1980s Tall Wooden Hand Sculpture Chair

This thoroughly stylish piece has become a very sought after vintage piece for so  many reasons, most wonderfully because it is evocative of the whimsical and surrealist designs of the 60s &70s. Whenever I see one I am immediately transported to a stylish beach somewhere in Brazil with Bebel Gilberto's songs on the radio! I'm not sure of the provenance of this particular chair sculpture (it is too tall to use as an actual chair), however it is in great shape and carved in the exact style of its original designer, Pedro Friedeberg.  Purchase with the smaller sister chair for a pair of style dynamos !

Though there were versions of hand chairs made in earlier cultures, this modern hand chair was designed in Mexico by surrealist artist Pedro Friedeberg, who was born in 1936 and fled to Mexico from Italy with his parents during World War II. The artist hired master carpenter Jose Gonzalez in the early '60s to carve the first chair from mahogany. Due to its mix of the fantastic and the practical, the hand chair became a cultural phenomenon. Friedeberg developed many variations, including using untreated wood, silver leaf, and black white, or red paint. Today, Friedeberg’s work is in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and many more.

39" H x 17" W x 18" D