Garry Knox Bennett
Wiggle Wright, 2004

On underside: In Oakland GKB Anno 04 #860 25

Material: Mahogany, Upholstered Mohair, 23k Gold Leaf

A humorous design by Garry Knox Bennett riffing on Frank Lloyd Wright’s design language. In this case, Wright’s gridded composition begins to wiggle and bend.

In an interview with curator Stefano Catalani (SC), in the exhibition catalogue “Garry Knox Bennett: Call Me Chairmaker”, Garry Knox Bennet Garry (GKB) explained:

SC: In Wiggle Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright is wiggling in your hands.

GKB: I was always going to make a Frank Lloyd Wrong, too.

SC: The hexagonal back is the reference to Wright’s architecture, for his houses often feature floor plans with hexagonal designs, as does the furniture he designed for those houses.

GKB: Right. This chair, the mohair is forest green. The back is painted green and I knew I was going to gold leaf that back. Green, real rich green works better with gold. It’s an amazing metal: when they make gold leaf, they can pound it so thin that when you hold a sheet of it up to light, it’s only like a couple atoms thick, and the light that comes through is green. That’s why the Arabs used gold and green.

SC: Did you start with the back for this chair? It’s the visual gravity point of the chair…

GKB: No, I started with seat and the wiggles. That back was really hard to do. It’s very strong too, and it’s also a classic Frank Lloyd Wright chair insofar as it’s brutally uncomfortable: you’re straight up and down, like a church pew. So, that’s how I really captured Wright, by making it uncomfortable. He works in all this rectilinear stuff, so I threw those wiggles in.”

(Garry Knox Bennett: Call Me Chairmaker. Bellevue Arts Museum, 1 Jan. 2006, p. 83).