The Wassily Chair
AS A LOVER OF MID-CENTURY, VINTAGE FURNITURE, OWNING A WASSILY CHAIR IS A DREAM COME TRUE. WHILE THIS IS NOT AN ORIGINAL, THIS 70s REPRODUCTION OF THE BREUER CHAIR MAKES ME SWOON EVERY TIME I LOOK AT IT.
Furniture: THE BED by FLOYD DETROIT, VINTAGE WASSILY CHAIR from RESIDE INC., SECONDHAND LAMP from FACEBOOK MARKETPLACE
The modernist period of furniture design, beginning with the Bauhaus movement in the 30s, is my personal favorite (shocking, I know...) because it’s relevant today. Every time I look at a piece of vintage furniture from this period, I’m mentally rearranging my compact bedroom in the hopes that I could accommodate something else. While I have managed to stave off the majority of my interior design whims, I couldn’t resist when I found a Wassily Chair.
The Wassily Chair was designed by Marcel Breuer, a Bauhaus designer and one of the most influential chair designers ever. After WWI, material innovations skyrocketed so designers were able to shape metal tubes into many forms without seams which is how the frame for the Wassily is built. My chair is not an original but rather a 1970s reproduction. What really drew me to this piece was the color — I hadn’t seen many in a cognac before and, as an equally passionate fan of the 70s color palette, I determined for this chair to find a home in my apartment. Nowadays, my nightly reading ritual is eagerly taken from the comfort of this beautiful seat.
I talk a lot about fast fashion but I want to talk about something that’s not at touched on — fast furniture. The U.S. tossed about 12 million tons of furniture in 2018 and it’s easy to imagine that this figure has risen in the past 2 years. Similar to fast fashion, overseas production and complicated supply chains has allowed for corporations to leverage unethical labor practices in order to bring down costs without significant scrutiny. On top of that, the emissions from shipping these furniture pieces globally is exorbitant at best. When furniture is made that cheaply, much like fast fashion, it’s easily seen as disposable, especially when it costs more to move a couch than it did to buy it. Boston is a city filled with universities and, without fail, there is a slew of sofas left at the curbside after the big student move-out period. While some of these sofas are picked up and given new homes, the majority of them are sent to the landfill.
I’m a huge lover of vintage furniture and do have the goal of purchasing as much of my furniture secondhand as possible (1) because I love mid-century design and (2) it’s better for the planet than buying something new. It’s not going to stop the huge environmental crisis we’re experiencing nor does that erase the exploitative labor practices that corporations are using. Neither will encouraging folks to buy sustainably-made or ethically-made furniture. The few furniture companies that do create long-lasting, ethically-made pieces tout a huge price tag. Besides, consistently buying new, ethically-made furniture is not that environmentally friendly. As so many advocates remind us, “you can’t buy your way into sustainability”.
Where do we go then? Similar to fast fashion, the most pressing issue is to support factory workers in securing livable wages and ethical working conditions. We have to hold brands accountable for their lack of transparency and their support for unethical practices like union busting. In tandem with this, we have to advocate for living wages for workers in the U.S., too. Laborers should be compensated appropriately for their work and, if we’re to purchase furniture that reflects ethical practices, we ought to have the financial capacity to honor the value of that labor.
There is no perfect solution for how to tackle the climate crisis that corporations are causing because Environmental Justice can be delivered in many ways. The best thing is that we center the experiences of fast furniture factory workers and support them in their pursuit of ethical labor practices by holding big fast furniture brands like Wayfair, IKEA, Target, and more accountable.