Posted in Design Stories
Pierre Jeanneret: Fake vs Real
On the surface, there is a certain absurdity in drawing a distinction between real and fake furniture. As physical items we sit and lie on, work at and eat from, our bodily relationship with furniture renders it more material, more real than almost anything else in our lives. So what do we mean by a real piece of furniture, and by contrast, what is a fake?
In the beginning, before an original piece of furniture or design object takes physical shape, there is a particular motivation; a driving force. Most designed objects are responses to the specific conditions of a place, or to the functional requirements of a particular practice. Sometimes, an idea simply grows from curiosity and joy in making. In 1951, Swiss architect Pierre Jeanneret took on the challenge of designing a furnishing collection for the project he was working on at the time with his cousin, architect Le Corbusier.
Together, they were developing the architectural and urban design for the Capitol Complex in the city of Chandigarh in India. Located in the foothills of the Himalayas, the project needed furniture made en-masse that would be locally appropriate, hand-made, and climate and bug-resistant. Responding to these requirements, Jeanneret designed a suite of sturdy teak and cane chairs, tables and benches for the formal, geometric interiors. Thousands of these furniture pieces were then hand-made by local artisans, and installed into the vast concrete chambers of the new complex.
Decades later, when parts of the Capitol Complex fell into disuse or disrepair, thousands of the chairs were left as reminders of the once lively occupation. Discarded, they landed in garbage tips, dispersed across the Indian countryside, far from those original motivations. Being alerted to what was happening from afar, international design connoisseurs made trips to locate, collect and purchase these original pieces. In testament to the durability of the design, many of the discarded chairs remained intact despite their age, requiring only minor restoration to bring them back to original condition.
Since the first exhibitions of these refurbished collections in 2009, the Capitol Complex furniture has had a second life: revered, celebrated and sought-after. Today, some seventy years on from the original inception, it is nearly impossible to browse interior magazines or social media without seeing a cluster of Pierre Jeanneret Capitol Complex chairs.
But there is an undercurrent to this story of renaissance; a dark side to the hyper-popularity of the Capitol Complex chairs. Popularity indicates widespread desire, and capitalising on that desire is an opportunity for profit. And so, much like in the world of fast-fashion, furniture and object design is increasingly the victim of knock-offs, with a proliferation of fake designer pieces appearing on the market. Fakes are parasitic; their value depends completely on the real pieces. They live off the original design, cling to the aesthetic and brand, and ride the marketing waves.
The prevalence of fakes is a growing issue for the design industry. The replica furniture industry began in earnest in the mid-2000s, as a way to reproduce the many iconic mid-century designs that were no longer protected by the copyrights that had ceased years after their designers’ deaths. But changes in how we notice, identify with and acquire objects for our homes have extended the role that fakes play in the global design landscape. As our lives have shifted online, visual sharing platforms such as pinterest and instagram have accelerated not just the visibility, but also the desirability of specific objects and pieces. Suddenly, everything feels attainable. If a certain chair reappears frequently on social media feeds, there is a sense that everyone else owns one — and that by association, you should, and can, too. While vintage originals from the Corbusian city at the base of the Himalayas might be in limited supply, an online search yields multiple dealers offering products that appear to have the same names, shapes and specifications. Clever marketing makes the relationship of these manufacturers to the original design and licenced reproducers even murkier. The growing prevalence means many people are buying fakes without realising it, unaware of the hidden costs and impacts.