The many faces of Rickard

Emily has been hard at work modding the Rickard chair for her thesis. I like Citizen Cane, a nice mix of old and new. Pretty solid ideas, I must say.

She says, "I've been hacking away at the $19.99 Rickard task chair. I'm working on my MFA Design thesis exploring ways to extend the useful lives of task chairs, and how to create infrastructure to recover the parts for recycle at the end of the chair's useful life. One big reason people chuck out this kind of chair is that they get bored of it, so to combat that I've been trying to breathe new life into them and make them fresh, pushing the limits of what a task chair can be.  Here are some pics of my hacks so far...

Flower Child chair covered with Ikea's own flower pattern fabric, embellished (by me) with hand embroidery.

Citizen Cane chair with covers made with reclaimed caning from two old discarded chairs, and recycled wool felt. They're removable, the back cover is held on with velcro and the seat cover slips on like a shower cap, with elastic around the bottom.  

Wrap chair, this one's just a piece of stretchy fabric pulled all the way over the chair with an elastic holding it around the waist.  When you sit, the fabric stretches to allow regular sitting but when you get back up, it bounces back into this shape. 

The Maria, a play on the leather executive chair. For this one I increased the size of the back using foam-core that I taped onto the back, then covered the whole back in quilt batting and upholstered over it. The covers are made from recycled leather jackets - one maroon bomber jacket and one black leather trench coat. I kept the zipper and pockets of the bomber jacket and used them as a detail on the back of the chair. The pockets and zipper are still functional, so you can hide things in them. 

This one's named the Miyazaki, in honor of my favorite animator. For this one I again extended the back using foam-core taped onto the back, then padded it with quilt batting, and upholstered over it. The U-shape in the top is a neck cradle, so you can lean your head back into it, a little like when you're getting a shampoo at the hair salon - only more comfortable and without getting wet. I covered the legs and cylinder base in matching fabric to add to the cartoon-ish quality. The fabric is from Ikea as well. 

I'm currently working on a wingback version, stay tuned for that..."