Manhattan Home Design Reviews | The Womb Chair: a Next Level Seat

Manhattan Home Design Reviews. It’s easy to talk about modern chairs when the main features that make these types of pieces be classified within that category have been identified. Modern chairs are very convenient products in many cases for important reasons: they have a design that doesn’t look outdated, they work well with all kinds of ornaments and fixtures that can compose an updated interior layout, and, in addition, as a general rule, they are objects with great functionality and aesthetic value. However, among the various modern designs, there are also iconic models, and in this edition of Manhattan Home Design Reviews, we’ll give our attention to the fantastic Womb Chair by Eero Saarinen.

First, it’s necessary to clarify that the most prominent iconic chairs are famous precisely for having somehow transcended some paradigm within their style. In that regard, the Saarinen Womb Chair is not just a chair: it’s a first-class seat in every sense of the word. The brilliant designer made sure that the piece was made of top-notch materials: it has a fiberglass frame with foam rubber lining, molded with every intention of giving the user maximum comfort and just the right amount of support.

womb chair and ottoman

The Perfect Support For Your Body

The piece’s structure contains ergonomic components that make it unnecessary to fill it with cushions. In addition, there’s a very valuable justification for why the designer thought that the chair should have an organically shaped seat: so that it would be flexible and thus be able to easily adapt to any type of posture that the user wanted to adopt while using it. The armrests are parallel to the floor, at a perfect height for the average adult’s body to rest on, something that virtually no modern sofa can provide with the same efficiency.

One of the secrets that make it so cozy is its pleasant wool upholstery, which also covers the small square cushion on the backrest. It’s important to emphasize that the concept of “uterus” is not a random idea or a merely allegorical image: quite the contrary, the name of the chair has to do, more than anything, with the biomorphic characteristics that allow the user to feel the sensation that they are “protected” inside a seat that reminds them of a baby’s bassinet, with its walls surrounding the body and sufficiently supporting in virtually any position they want to put their body in, even curled up.

saarinen womb chair

Comfortable and Durable

The Womb chair also has a feature that only a few modern chairs boast: it’s a comfortable and durable piece at the same time. Not all modern chairs can offer you those qualities in addition to the iconic value that this design has. It’s a chair made to withstand intensive use, even in a home with children or pets. In addition, the vast majority of versions of the chair include a type of stain-resistant upholstery, so it should retain its aesthetic properties extremely well, removing the inevitable stains and traces of dirt with a water-based stain remover.

iconic modern chair

There is no doubt that Saarinen and Florence had a very specific vision when they decided to develop a high-quality chair. They consulted a boat builder to use industrial materials such as fiberglass and resin, and tubular steel for the legs. You only need to try it once to understand why it’s one of the chairs with the best reputation in history. The Womb chair and many other iconic models are available in the Manhattan Home Design catalog.

Manhattan Home Design Reviews: The Flag Halyard Chair and The Shell Chair

Manhattan Home Design reviews. What exactly defines a masterpiece? Its design? The materials? Or is it just enough that there’s a little luck for critics to praise it? In either case, it’s important to remember that masterpieces are those that pass all tests: that of time, that of fashion, that of quality, and very especially, that of originality. In this Manhattan Home Design reviews entry we will take into account two of the best-known creations of the Danish Hans Wegner: the Flag Halyard Chair and the Shell chair; two pieces that had everything they needed to become masterpieces and, precisely, in that they became.

The Hans Wegner Flag Halyard chair can give you much more than moments of relax. It’s a chair with a very particular and original aesthetic that, indeed, stands out for being a very different design from those that usually arose from the ingenuity of its author. Wegner has a catalog made up of more than five hundred pieces, (almost all modern-style wooden chairs) that became a benchmark of his time and of which this is one of his most outstanding works.

flag halyard chair
The Hans Wegner Flag Halyard Chair

Beyond the user experience, the chair represents an attractive piece, with a dazzling presence that’s impossible to ignore. At first glance, you’ll realize that it’s much more than a rest chair. In addition, due to the nature of its structure, the Flag Halyard chair is a piece that you can use both indoors and outdoors. It can be your perfect companion in your reading corner, in pleasant hours in front of the television, in your moment of relaxation in the bedroom, and your faithful support during those sunny afternoons on the balcony, in the patio, on the terrace, or in the garden, to enjoy the company of your favorite plants.

Another Piece Ahead of Its Time

On the other hand, the Shell Chair, born from the same mind but with totally different materials, is also one of those chairs that transcended space and time to become globally popular and earn a place of honor on the sales charts. After a long period of absence since its launch due to its poor commercial reception, this piece resurfaced in the market thanks to the furniture company Carl Hansen & Son. This relaunch meant a revaluation of the chair, which allowed it to win over an audience that previously didn’t know about it. The chair was destined to become a classic.

hans wegner shell chair
The Hans Wegner Shell Chair

Although one is made of steel and flag halyard and the other of wood, both pieces came from the same source of ingenuity and creativity. They are models that represent an amazing innovation because they didn’t resemble any modern chair archetype nor did they reproduce the typical paradigms of the design world of the time, which was a great advantage and paved the way for the Mid-Century Modern style to continue to be as an avant-garde style that was becoming more and more interesting.

The importance of the Flag Halyard Chair and the Shell chair was so prominent that, even today, they continue to arouse the interest of new generations of users and professional decorators who have recognized in them the value of products with their own identity and an unmistakable modern spirit.

modern setup
Modern Setup