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Miniature Lazy Chair by Freshwest

The "Lazy Chair" is an experimental concept piece at the forefront of Freshwest's progression in to the collectors market. Based upon the small wooden animal toys held together by tensioned strings which when the base is pushed in, the tension is lost and the animal collapses. The seat has a different personality of its own, which collapses upon approach, and then rights itself in a random human-like manner after a few moments delay.

The Lazy Chair was first shown during London Design week in 2008, surprising and delighting the visitors. It went on to receive international acclaim when shown at the entrance to the Moooi exhibition at the Milan Furniture Fair 2009.

Later in 2009, Freshwest returned to London and previewed their first chair that you can sit on, a “useable” version of  the Lazy Chair that is available in three different finishes.

In 2010 for the latest chapter of the Lazy Chair story, it has been miniaturized to 1/6th scale through a collaboration between Laikingland and Freshwest.

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Nick Regan, the Co-founder of Laikingland explains:

“The Lazy Chair is such a crowd pleaser in design exhibitions that we knew a miniature version would be a perfect playful product for Laikingland.  However, as always for our brand we needed to be very careful to get the correct level of craftsmanship and quality into the kinetic object. To achieve this we opted for a 1/6th scale version of the original Lazy Chair rather than a much smaller, finger held version similar to a collapsible toy animals.  This 1/6th scale is the standard for the classic miniature chair market, which meant that for the project to succeed we would be need to match the quality levels of a company like Vitra, who make a beautiful miniature range of classic chairs.
In addition we listened very closely to Freshwest who were insistent all along that the charm of their design is the chair’s ‘laziness’.  They told us many times; “It’s Lazy,  It needs to pause after collapsing. It’s wondering whether or not to get up and when it does finally decide to raise, this should be as slow as possible.”

Image: Miniature Lazy Chair alongside the original Lazy Chair.

"So with these challenges we set off developing both the visual components, the chair and the base, and the hidden parts that make up our mechanism.
For the visual components we are fortunate to have fantastic local wood turning and routing suppliers who we had worked with on previous projects. These  suppliers always work to very high quality standard so we know we can absolutely rely on the components they supply."

"For the mechanism it was more difficult as we had very little space in the 1/6th scale version of the base.  After many design discussion and countless design loops we opted to keep the mechanism as simple as possible by creating a lever that protrudes from the front of the base.

A push of this lever and the Lazy Chair collapses.  The speed that it slowly returns to its standing position is dictated by a cam that is integrated into the lever and a silicon break system that works against the force of a torsion spring.

With these solutions we think we’ve found the right balance of engineering design, materials, processes, quality control and finally the “magic” of our highly skilled team of craftsmen.”

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See the Miniature Lazy Chair in the Laikingland Shop.