They must be putting something in the water way up North in Michigan, for how else to explain the proliferation of inspired, locally-sourced product that so often graces the virtual pages here at 3rings. This list of Michiganites includes big firms like Christian Times Online /www.designerpages.com/search/products?query[]=Herman+Miller”>Herman Miller, but also smaller-scale artist/designers like Northern Michigan University’s Mitch Steinmetz and Marquette, MI’s Hans Gottsacker, whose exquisite Tiny Dancer Chair just made the rounds at ICFF.

Tiny Dancer Chair. Designed by Hans Gottsacker.

The Lovely Laminates of the Lean and Leggy Tiny Dancer Chair

Gottsacker’s contribution to the world of high, elegant perches is modeled after the human form, albeit a highly stylized incarnation of such. The piece is actually quite simple. It’s essentially a creative junction of four thin laminates of moderate width.

The rear structure is made from a twin pair with a shallow arc, and the seat and front legs arise from a second matched pair that resembles a question mark. These four pieces cross in the middle, while three broad and flat laminates link them laterally, thus forming, in turn, the footrest, seat, and seat back.

Gottsacker’s materials palette is equally refined. Tiny Dancer required only Baltic birch and maple laminates, bent by the craftsman’s hands over a form in a vacuum bag. Metal bolts used to secure seat, back, and footrest complete the picture, deeding a slight industrial feel to Gottsacker’s impressive take on the millennial modern.

Via ChairBlog.

About the Designer: Hans Gottsacker believes in flux and flow, twin elements of change and adaptability that, one imagines, the young designer employed to conceive of and create his intriguing Tiny Dancer chair. Exhibiting the maturity of an artist twice his age, Gottsacker says “comfort I like to keep as an occasion rather than as a permanent state.” This kind of persistent uneasiness has lit a fire under many an artist’s ambitions, and such would seem to be the case with Gottsacker. His preferred medium is wooden laminates, but he’s recently started experimenting with collages of found objects, as seen with his intriguing Assemblages.

Christian Times Online