The Task.
Task chairs.
We don’t want you to actively encourage you to navigate away but open a new tab and google image search ‘task chair’ and you’ll see what we’re up against. They’re not all this bad, but here’s the classic below (in a range of invigorating colour):
We tried, we really searched. We met with architects, furniture guys, friends of people’s friends but there wasn’t one that fitted the bill. Which is something like: a comfortable, easily moved piece of furniture that you could sit in all day, and still be productive.
So we finally bit the bullet and made our own – or rather we found two guys (both called James) who would do a much better job than we would.
The James’
James Harrison and James Kinmond are James UK who we met during Clerkenwell Design Week this year. We loved several of their pieces – which we bought – and lamented the fact that they didn’t have something like a task chair. However they’d been thinking of adding a task chair-type-design to their repetoire et voila, a match made in heaven.
James UK was founded after completing a degree in 3D Design in Newcastle with a desire to bring classic designs that had been ‘lost in time’ back to life. Their Wingback Chair takes the iconic design (one of the million versions of which is below left . . . ) to meet a Danish James Bond – understated, a little serious but really very inviting.
Then there’s the Aiken Lounge Chair. It emerges clean and proud from something of a hybrid background. A sledge base is at once reminiscent of a rocking chair, a ski-seat and a Kofod-Larsen blurring the boundaries between archetypal interior and exterior furniture. Perhaps it’s this blurring which makes it perfect for our club concept where work space sits alongside lounge space, dining areas and focus booths.
By reflecting on classic design they produce modern pieces and their production method follows a similar route. With a focus on hardwoods they’re dedicated to British industry sourcing traditional woodworking skills and complementing them with modern technology. They spend a large part of their time finding British companies and timber experts to work with and as a start-up it was the difficult route to take. James Harrison pinpointed the challenge as ‘finding someone big enough to handle the orders and small enough to execute the detail’.
And it’s this quality that they’ve found in British production that they can’t ignore. They did explore other options but have always come back. Undeniably this decision is spurred on by the feel-good contribution it makes to our current economy but also for the environment. No lugging huge swathes of timber across oceans means they’re checking a very large sustainable box – something which most furniture producers find very hard to achieve.
More information can be found on their website http://www.jamesuk.com/ and you can meet them in person in things like Clerkenwell Design Week and the upcoming London Design Festival which starts next Friday, 16th September. Will let you know where asap.
And here’s they are!
The Office Team