Bend­ing Wood to Will

Lucy Ham­monds, cur­ator of the Ply-ability exhib­i­tion at Hawkes Bay Museum & Art Gal­lery, talks about Garth Chester and other aspects of New Zealand's ply­wood heritage.

Curvesse Chair (1944) by Garth Chester (b.1916 – 1968). Ply­wood con­struc­tion. Private Col­lec­tion, Auck­land. Photo: cour­tesy Art + Object.

ProDesign: I didn’t real­ise that New Zea­l­and had a strong his­tory in ply­wood fur­niture design. Mostly, when you ask people who they think of when you say ply­wood fur­niture they imme­di­ately say Eames. Was Garth Chester New Zealand’s answer to Charles and Ray Eames?
Lucy Ham­monds: I think that Chester and the Eames’ were design­ers work­ing in com­pletely dif­fer­ent con­texts; how­ever it is fair to say that through the rising status of the Curvesse chair Chester has become con­nec­ted to the idea of ply­wood design fur­niture in New Zealand’s his­tory. The con­nec­tion between Chester and the Eames’ ply­wood works is some­thing we were inter­ested in explor­ing in the exhib­i­tion as well, and we are using examples of Eames designs that Chester was involved with pro­du­cing in New Zea­l­and in the 1950s.

ProDesign: Curvesse is a won­der­ful piece of work. Did you have trouble sourcing pieces such as this for the exhib­i­tion? Do they sur­vive in great abund­ance?
Lucy Ham­monds: It wasn’t so much a ques­tion of find­ing one Curvesse, as it was about find­ing an excep­tional example. It is thought that around 500 were pro­duced, how­ever find­ing an example in good, ori­ginal con­di­tion was import­ant. Other works by Chester are some­times a chal­lenge – it would have been won­der­ful to include the Chester child’s barber’s chair, sim­ilar to the one on exhib­i­tion at Auck­land Museum, but another example of this has never been loc­ated. Other works have come from our col­lec­tion, as well as from other museums and private col­lec­tions and we hazve around seven in total. There are still Chester designs that we have images of which haven’t been loc­ated to date.
There are still examples of his­toric New Zea­l­and design fur­niture to be found in attics and op-shops around the coun­try. As interest grows, the demand for par­tic­u­lar New Zealand-designed objects also devel­ops and there is a smal­ler chance of stum­bling across a Curvesse in a second-hand shop. We often work with private col­lect­ors and design enthu­si­asts to get an idea of what is out there, and rely a lot on their sup­port to bring exhib­i­tions like this together.

ProDesign: Do you know any­thing of the tech­niques Chester employed? Curvesse has quite a simple form, but when you start to envis­age how it was con­struc­ted, it all of a sud­den becomes rather com­plex…
Lucy Ham­monds: Chester was a designer inter­ested in man­u­fac­ture, and he sought out inform­a­tion on how to build mech­an­ised presses with which he could pro­duce the Curvesse as a com­mer­cial enter­prise. When he first became inter­ested in work­ing with bent ply­wood, Chester sought advice from a local firm that were mak­ing bent ply radio cab­in­ets. From there he worked towards mak­ing his equip­ment on which to pro­duce his fur­niture. There is evid­ence that the earlier Curvesse chairs were made by tak­ing three sheets of three-ply, soften­ing them in water, sand­wich­ing them together with glue to make a sheet of nine-ply, and then press­ing this into a mould for the eight hours the glue took to set. How­ever, soon after design was made pub­lic Chester was advert­ising his abil­ity to pro­duce one chair every three minutes, which indic­ates that he had advanced to a faster heat-set process.

Dan Emery, with Sam Broad, Robot Laser Tea Party (2007). Con­struc­ted from pop­lar ply­wood. From the designer's col­lec­tion. Photo: David Frost, Hawkes Bay Museaum and Art Gallery.

ProDesign: Why do you think ply­wood was such an attract­ive medium for Chester, and more recently for the later design­ers that have explored plywood’s design abil­it­ies?
Lucy Ham­monds: For Chester I think that ply­wood cap­tured his ima­gin­a­tion as a designer. He was a forward-thinking per­son, and ply­wood was a mater­ial that was so closely con­nec­ted with the advances of mod­ern­ist fur­niture through­out the world. I ima­gine that the fact that ply­wood was inex­pens­ive and read­ily avail­able in New Zea­l­and in the 40s would have added to its attrac­tion. Also there was plenty of inform­a­tion avail­able on how to bend ply­wood, allow­ing Chester to explore ideas he would have seen through images of inter­na­tional work.
In terms of New Zea­l­and fur­niture design­ers over time, it seems that there are a range of dif­fer­ent reas­ons why ply­wood keeps com­ing back into the con­ver­sa­tion. Ply­wood was a pop­u­lar mater­ial in local mod­ern­ist archi­tec­ture and nat­ur­ally pro­gressed into fur­niture and interior design; it was avail­able and access­ible to stu­dent design­ers as their num­bers swelled in the 90s;
it's also a mater­ial that's being drawn into con­ver­sa­tions about envir­on­mental impact and sus­tain­ab­il­ity in New Zea­l­and design.

Ply-ability cur­ator Lucy Ham­monds with Tim Wigmore’s Hang-up (2006). Art­icle from designer's col­lec­tion. Photo: David Frost, Hawkes Bay Museum and Art Gallery.

ProDesign: Aside from the mater­ial aspect, are there any themes iden­ti­fi­able in the con­struc­tion of the pieces?
Lucy Ham­monds: I’ve used the mater­ial as a con­nect­ing motif in the exhib­i­tion – a way to high­light dif­fer­ent themes in a wider story of New Zea­l­and fur­niture design. It’s not an exhaust­ive sur­vey, but more of a way of look­ing at the way ply­wood can rep­res­ent or explore a moment of change in New Zea­l­and design. For example, we have a focus in the 1990s of the pres­ence of ply­wood in explor­ing a local ver­nacu­lar in design, and in the present day how design­ers work­ing in ply­wood can illus­trate the impact of advances in digital tech­no­lo­gies like CNC and laser cutting.

ProDesign: What’s the high­light of Ply-ability for you?
Lucy Ham­monds: I am really enjoy­ing Katy Wallace’s Floor Shelf (1998) — it’s a simple and suc­cinct piece of design. I would also hap­pily live with Tim Wigmore’s Hang Up (2006). How­ever aside from cov­et­ous­ness, the high­light of a pro­ject like this is to be able to offer some con­text to con­tem­por­ary prac­tice, and to enliven his­toric design by con­nect­ing it to the present day. I also find that using my cur­at­orial pro­cess as a way of begin­ning con­ver­sa­tions, rather than simply present­ing or inter­pret­ing objects, is also a reward­ing part of the exercise.

Katy Wal­lace, Floor Shelf (1997÷98). Stained ply­wood con­struc­tion from Nai­s­mith col­lec­tion, Auck­land. Photo: David Frost, HBMAG.

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