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Kingsley Brooks Returns To His Design Roots To Create Chairs You'd Love To Live In
Chairs that nourish you, invite you, stack up for you, serve you, and do all but bow before you--what a good chair. Even, shall we say, a well-behaved chair.
Kingsley Chapin Brooks has thought of it all when designing chairs. After a 17-year hiatus away from working as a designer and craftsman, Brooks has resumed making chairs and other furniture. He is now running his new business, Chapin Designs, part time, while still assuming responsibilities as Chairman of the Natural Law Party and teaching part time in the Fine Woodworking Department at Maharishi University of Management.
A Chair with Universal Appeal
The Chapin Chair, so called in honor of Brooks' middle name, is the company's flagship piece. An oak chair with sloping arms, it is made of laminated bends of wood curving from the elbow all the way down to the floor without a break. The chairs are carefully designed with a pleasant curve that arches out to fill your back and cradles your seat, dipping down for your thighs. Appropriate for the office, living room, or dining room, these chairs can live harmoniously in both residential and corporate settings.
Adding to its versatility, the Chapin Chair can be upholstered in a cane weave, breathable for warmer places; a foam-covered tapestry; or a unique mesh out of PVC-coated polyester fiber available in many colors that is very trendy in Los Angeles right now.
Sturdily made yet lightweight, these chairs can be stacked compactly in a corner to save space--or if you need to travel with them. When Brooks took four of his stackable chairs to a show in L.A., he easily fitted them into the airline's check-on baggage box.
"The chair really has universal appeal," Brooks says, "because of its stackability, size, and residential use--it spreads to many markets. And it's a niche that's not really being fulfilled."
The Chapin Chair starts at about $990, and the company offers discounts for large-quantity purchases. Eventually, the chairs will be manufactured in factories, allowing for a cost reduction. For now, however, the chair is still individually crafted.
New Markets
Currently, the Chapin Chair is on display at Menzie International, a showroom in Los Angeles. "I fall in love with good design," says owner Menzie McGinley. "When I saw Kingsley Brooks' Chapin Chair, a lot of things came together. I have long wanted to support an American designer who had a product I really liked and appreciated. The Chapin Chair has a transitional design with overtones of a craftsman product. It has a fine touch, with considerable attention to detail, comfort, and usability for both residential and contract markets. We are very happy to introduce the Chapin Chair."
User Friendly Design
In designing, Brooks works with full-scale drawings of the front, side, and top views, then constructs and tests a prototype to make sure it fulfills real-life standards of comfort. "Everything can't be drawn on paper," he says. "There needs to be a full-scale model of the piece, and I make many chairs while working out the details. You have to sit in it and work in it to know that it will be comfortable."
Besides being a peaceful place to rest, a chair can also be attractive to look at, too. "Furniture is something that you live with every day--it can be very pleasing," Brooks says. "There's a lot of room for creativity in a chair, because it speaks to someone in the same way that a painting does. The design of a chair is expressed in creative, subtle values, as in sculpture or any form of art. Yet in furniture, it is the construction rather than the design."
Furniture has been made for eons, and modes for construction have already been established. "There are elements that are traditional--inherent rules, structure, and technique that you work with," explains Brooks, "but there is infinite flexibility in the boundaries. I try to capture the boundless in the boundaries of furniture."
A History with Furniture Design
Brooks' interest in fine woodworking dates back to the '70s, when he studied the history of American furniture design at Marlboro College, graduating cum laude in 1974. He pursued graduate studies at Rhode Island School of Design, and graduated in 1976 with a Master of Fine Arts degree in Industrial Design. Brooks enjoyed a successful career in the late '70s and early '80s teaching woodworking as well as designing, customizing, and exhibiting furniture. In 1980, while Brooks worked as a furniture designer for Eloise Childs Associates, TIME magazine commissioned him to make pieces for an executive office in Washington, D.C.
Brooks' recent return to furniture design is fueled by "the urge to create. And I love beautiful shapes, lines, and things," he says.
Sampling the Chairs
Now it's time for me to test the Chapin Chair. "You know that chair is pretty but you haven't sat in it yet," Brooks tells me.
The proof is in the sitting. So I sample all of the chairs.
Chincia, the name of a sweet, dainty, feminine chair, simply slopes behind and under you, without restrictions; it'd be perfect for dining because it has no arms.
"Was that one made for women?" I ask.
"No," it's a comfortable chair for everyone, Brooks concedes.
Then there is a large chair with slats of wood gracefully extending down the back, with a four-inch foam-covered upholstered seat in a rich brocade of deep reds and greens--it's the Royale Chair.
"What shall we name that chair?" Leslie Brooks, Kingsley's wife, asks me about a pretty, slender chair with half-moon circles cut out of each side of the back, leaving a wide panel in the shape of an arching trunk in blossom.
"Chandra maybe," I suggest.
"I like that. Like the moon," Leslie says, referring to its meaning in Sanskrit.
Soon Brooks will also make coffee tables and stands to accompany his chairs. One of his signature tables is about waist high with three long, slender legs that are spread out on the floor like a ballet dancer in the plié position. They glide like a curving wave to meet at the top and unite right before the base of the table, without any breaks in the long lines of the wood. He's made everything from music stands, roll-top desks, and stand-up writing desks to stools and jewelry chests, in all different kinds of wood--cherry, walnut, oak, and maple.
Combining Function and Beauty
Brooks says his vision is to make every piece of furniture pleasing. "You can make a sculpture you can sit in," he says, "or you can make a chair that has the kind of interest and inspiration of a sculpture, but does not shatter its basic functional quality. I strive to create furniture that will fit harmoniously into a person's life in an unobtrusive yet expressive and interesting way--furniture that befriends rather than overpowers the owner."
In Chapin Designs, Brooks seeks to create forms that are simple, clean, and functional but at the same time soft and inviting. Just the sort of chair you'd like to live in.
