20th Century Hexagonal-Backed "Peacock" Chair from the Imperial Hotel

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20th Century Hexagonal-Backed "Peacock" Chair from the Imperial Hotel

About the Item

Original museum-quality 20th century American hexagonal-backed side chair salvaged from the imperial hotel (Tokyo, Japan), prior to demolition in the late 1960s. The iconic "peacock" side chair was designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, with an original drawing for an "overstuffed chair" dating back to 1921. The chair depicted above was likely fabricated between 1925-1935, with Rudolph m. Schindler as contracting supervisor. The hexagonal-backed chairs were used throughout the hotel. The earlier versions contained caned backrests, seats and sides. Several photographs of chairs "in situ" show variations with caming and oil cloth upholstery respectively. When the hotel was demolished in 1968, some of the furniture was distributed to some American museums. The shape of the chair echoes the hotel's interior design, with its hexagonal shaped forms in the cornice and ceiling. The side chair is comprised largely of oakwood, with original varnished finish. The faded oil cloth upholstery (originally a salmon pink) is likely original to the chair. The underside contains "property of imperial hotel" in an old red paint finish. The original imperial hotel in Tokyo was completed in 1890, backed by key Japanese leaders, such as foreign minister count Inouye Koru and Viscount Shibusawa Eiichi. Architect Yuzuru Watanabe designed the hotel, known as "Watanabe house", in the German neo-Renaissance style. French cuisine was the official banquet fare of the imperial palace, and the imperial hotel followed that tradition. By 1917, the hotel was no longer able to accommodate the growing number of visitors, and the design was seen as outdated. To replace the original wooden structure, the owners commissioned a design by Frank Lloyd Wright. Watanabe's imperial hotel burned down in 1919. The second imperial hotel, built from 1915-1923, was the best-known of Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings in japan. It was designed roughly in the shape of its own logo, with the guest room wings forming the letter "h", while the public rooms were in a smaller but taller central wing shaped like the letter "I" that cut through the middle of the "h". The Frank Lloyd Wright version was designed in the "Mayan revival style" of architecture. It incorporates a tall, pyramid-like structure, and also loosely copies Mayan motifs in its decorations. The main building materials consisted of poured concrete, concrete block and carved oya stone. The visual effect of the hotel was stunning and dramatic, though not unique; in recent years, architectural historians have noted a marked similarity with the cafe Australia in Melbourne, Australia (1916), designed by Prairie School architects Marion Mahony and Walter burley griffin. The architecture heavily influenced the style of the Koshien hotel, which was constructed by wright's apprentice arata endo. The structure famously survived the magnitude 8.3 great kanto earthquake of 1923. A telegram from Baron Kihachiro Okura reported the following: hotel stands undamaged as a monument of your genius hundreds of homeless provided by perfectly maintained service congratulations [.] wright passed the telegram to journalists, helping to perpetuate a legend that the hotel was unaffected by the earthquake. In reality, the building had damage; the central section slumped, several floors bulged, and four pieces of stonework fell to the ground. The building's main failing was its foundation. Wright had intended the hotel to float on the site's alluvial mud "as a battleship floats on water." this was accomplished by making it shallow, with broad footings. This was supposed to allow the building to float during an earthquake. However, the foundation was an inadequate support and did nothing to prevent the building from sinking into the mud to such an extent that it had to be demolished decades later. however, the hotel had several design features that minimized potential earthquake damage: the reflecting POOL provided a source of water for fire-fighting, saving the building from the post-earthquake firestorm; cantilevered floors and balconies provided extra support for the floors; a copper roof eliminated the risk of falling debris created by traditional tile roofs; seismic separation joints, located about every 20 m along the building; tapered walls, thicker on lower floors, increasing their strength; suspended piping and wiring, instead of being encased in concrete, as well as smooth curves, making them more resistant to fracture. The hotel survived an earlier earthquake that struck Tokyo during its construction. While many buildings in the area were destroyed, the hotel itself - while shaken - stood completely undamaged. The hotel came through World War II unscathed, despite the devastating bombings of Tokyo by the Americans. It was commandeered for a period by the occupation forces and managed by the us government, before being returned to its owners. As the guest wings of the wright building were only three stories tall, it actually had relatively few guest rooms, and so a new tower wing was constructed directly behind wright's building in the 1950's. The hotel eventually slipped into decay as time took its toll. In a controversial decision, it was decided to demolish the old hotel and replace it with a high-rise structure, to maximize the use of land. While most of wright's building was destroyed, the iconic central lobby wing and the reflecting POOL were disassembled and rebuilt at the museum Meiji Mura, a collection of buildings (mostly from the meiji era) in inuyama, near Nagoya, where they are open to the public.

Creator:
Frank Lloyd Wright (Designer)
Dimensions:
Height: 16.5 in (41.91 cm)Width: 15.5 in (39.37 cm)Depth: 38 in (96.52 cm)Seat Height: 17 in (43.18 cm)
Style:
Prairie School (In the Style Of)
Materials and Techniques:
Oak,Upholstery,Oiled,Varnished
Place of Origin:
Japan
Period:
1920-1929
Date of Manufacture:
1925-1935
Condition:
Wear consistent with age and use. Minor fading.
Seller Location:
Chicago, IL
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU248936429613

Shop All Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright

Without question the greatest architect the United States has ever produced, Frank Lloyd Wright and his philosophy of “organic architecture” — of buildings that exist in harmony with their natural surroundings — had a profound influence on the shape of modern life.

Wright gave us some of the most elegant and iconic buildings in America: residences such as Fallingwater, in rural Pennsylvania, the Robie House in Chicago, and Taliesin, Wright’s own home; and masterful institutional structures that include the Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois, the Johnson Wax headquarters in Racine, Wisconsin, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Whenever possible, Wright designed the furniture for his projects, to ensure an affinity between a building’s exterior and interior.

Wright’s wooden chairs and tables for his “Prairie Houses” of the early 1900s have sleek, attenuated forms, influenced by both the simplicity of traditional Japanese design and the work of Gustav Stickley and other designers of the Arts and Crafts movement.

For Taliesin and several residential projects, Wright designed severely geometric chairs that are marvels of reductivist design. He revisited many of these forms in the 1950s in furniture licensed to the North Carolina firm Henredon, adding a decorative frieze-like element to the edges of tables and stools. Owing to a cross-licensing agreement between Henredon and Heritage at the time, Wright's lines of the era are usually labeled Heritage-Henredon.

The works on 1stDibs also show how happily Wright embraced new forms and materials. His desks and chairs for Johnson Wax have a streamlined look and use tubular steel to the same effect as designer Warren McArthur, who collaborated with Wright in the interiors of the Arizona Biltmore Hotel. For the Price Tower (1956) in Oklahoma, Wright designed angular wooden desks as well as upholstered pedestal chairs made of chromed steel — audacious furniture for his tallest completed building project.

The beauty of Frank Lloyd Wright’s furniture designs is that while many of us wish we could live in one of his houses, his vintage sofas, storage cabinets and armchairs connect us directly to his architecture, and to the history he made.