Not-so-instant furniture (perhaps)

Well I’ve now in hand the “Instant Furniture” book the landlord was telling me about.  Published 1976.  It’s actually by a real arechitect/designer, Peter Stamberg, with designs by such people as Enzo Mari.  Using these designs, it’s said one should be able to make easily cheap furniture with only precut wood, glue and finishing nails.

The designs are very wood slat 70s.  Some of the designs would make nice furniture….if you used expensive wood and labored over a fine finsih.  But then it wouldn’t be the “instant furniture” promised.  Pour potato flakes in pot, add water (or not) and you have a meal. 

Projects like these always sound easier than they are.  When you can’t hammer a nail then what you’re going to come up with is a piney crate looking thing that isn’t sanded at the raw edges and gives you splinters.  You will try to sand and sanding the rough edges of pine with elbow grease and sanding paper is almost impossible (in my exeperience) and the edges will just look rough and weird and more probably the ends will start to splinter off in big pieces while you’re sanding.  I know, I’ve done it.  You will try to hide how piney and unsanded it looks by layering on the paint and painting will be tedious as it has all those sides because it’s all slats, and lots of slats are frustrating to paint in the same way a fence is frustrating to paint.

Enzo’s bookshelf looks like it would be prone to toppling over.  I’d scan an image of it but my scanner is out.  (As is my printer now. It died.  Drat.)  You could conceivably put together a crate-like couch but then you must be able to make the cushions.  One of the beds looks like it could be however a good one to go under a futon except it’s something you will not be able to disassemble into pieces when you decide to move and would be difficult to transport.  “But I will never move!  I have my dream apartment…just as soon as I get rid of the pigeons and mice!”  Yeah, well, furniture like this sounds especially good to young people setting up a household and they tend to move every few months.  Don’t they?  I know we did.  Chased from one place to another by pigeons and rats and bats and roaches.

I have visions of 1970s type people trying to make this furniture and sitting or lying down on it or putting a book on it and the piece collapsing.  They knew, building it, it was likely to colllapse, could feel it in their bones that what was needed was skill and good wood, but they kept hoping that once it was put together a miracle would happen and furniture would appear.