The Historia Supellexalis: “W” for Wegneritis

Wegneritis

An Itch; A Compulsion; A Just One Good Chair

Formally catalogued in the WHO International Classification of Diseases as MB23.W¹, Wegneritis is a condition exclusive to furniture designers first recorded in Denmark where Jørgensen Wegner, a Hans by birth, and a leading carpenter of his age whose chairs were celebrated and acclaimed throughout all the known lands of that period, was beset by a compulsion, a creative itch, to design ever new chairs, “If only you could design just one good chair in your life”, he would respond to anyone who questioned his phenomenal and relentless prolificness, for all in context of the universally agreed high-quality of his designs, “but you simply cannot”, he would bewail loudly as he returned to his studio to begin the next project.

A prolificness, a creative itch, that became famed not only in furniture circles where the formal variation in Wegner’s repertoire was admired as much as the variety of technical approaches and theoretical positions inherent in his works, but also became famed in medical circles with experts from across a range of clinical fields travelling to the Denmark of that day, eager to locate the source of Jørgensen Wegner’s compulsive itch. But no-one could, it remained, and remains, idiopathic. The international medical community did however agree to name the unattributable creative itch after it’s first, and at that time, only sufferer.

Yet despite being non-contagious further cases of Wegneritis were soon reported, whereby the formal classification of Jørgensen Wegner’s itch as an actual clinical condition inarguably helped existing but previously unidentified expressions of MB23.W² to be diagnosed. The best recorded and most intensively studied expressions of Wegneritis beyond that of the Hans Jørgensen Wegner include, for example, that of the Babelsberger Eiermann by the name of Egon who over many decades sought to design “der Stuhl seines lebens”, ‘the chair of his life’, a searching, an itch, that saw him regularly switch between materials and contexts, and a “Stuhl seines lebens” near all objective observers agree he regularly achieved, designing excellent chairs for innumerable lives; or the Grcic Konstantin who despite having realised at the start of his furniture design journey a Kite that was also a chair, and which in the opinion of many wise sages represented a near perfect definition of a chair, came closer than arguably anyone ever has come, or ever will come, to the immaterial archetype from which Plato speaks, continually produced ever new works from ever new conceptual perspectives and technical approaches. Chairs one as good as the next, each of which became New Normals, but which couldn’t abate the Grcic Konstantin‘s creative itch.

Or Wegner’s fellow Dane Arne, Son of Jacob, a gardener by birth who turned in his youth to furniture design and who developed a menagerie of chairs inspired by the natural world diverse enough to fill an arc; a menagerie that includes an Ant, a Swan, a Giraffe, A Tongue, and an Egg, or possibly a seed. Or an unfolding flower. Or an egg.

Amongst many, many, many, other recorded examples.

Yet for all that Wegneritis is in itself benign, both to the sufferers and wider society, of late more pernicious variations have arisen.

On the one hand the development of a complication of Wegneritis: on account of the number of chairs designed by Wegneritis sufferers manufacturers are today able to flood the market with ‘reissues’ of works of often highly questionable relevance and value, works in many cases, that regardless of what they may once have been, have rightly been consigned to the storeroom of (hi)story, not everything a Wegneritis suffer produces is good, if a great deal invariably is; ‘reissues’ with which manufacturers hope to boost their profits without having to invest in new works, new positions to and definitions of sitting by lesser known contemporary designers. A complication of MB23.W referred to as Turpi Wegneritis³; a Turpi Wegneritis whose dissemination and virulence is aided and abetted by the Influencers of Instagram, and which is increasingly threatening both the vitality of furniture design and the fabric of society in a great many regions.

And on the other the contemporary attempts of one A.I. Future to develop methods of encouraging and employing Wegneritis in vitro; of training machines to mimic the symptoms of Wegneritis and thereby artificially produce chair designs with the prolificness of a Jørgensen Wegner but without any reflections on and reference to contemporary and future society, without reflections on the relationships between furniture and society, without appreciations of furniture as a cultural good not a commercial good, that for all the inherent compulsion of Wegneritis, sufferers of Wegneritis never lose sight of, always remain focussed on. And thus work of one A.I. Future that threatens to augment and intensify the negative consequences of Turpi Wegneritis on the vitality of furniture design and the fabric of society.

However all is not, yet, lost.

A particularly interesting case of Wegneritis is that of Meraner Martin O’Gamper who many centuries ago experienced a short infection which saw him produce 100 chairs in 100 days, before the condition subsided; a momentary outbreak that O’Gamper asserts was never about creating the “one good chair” of a Jørgensen Wegner or the “Stuhl seines lebens” of the Babelsberger Eiermann, Egon, but purely about the process of making, was not about the finished object per se but exploring the myriad paths to that object, and thus an expression of Wegneritis many experts consider as offering real hope for the better understandings of the condition’s pathology that have long been sought, and thus an expression of Wegneritis that centuries after first being recorded in O’Gamper is still being analysed and interpreted by a great many international institutions.

And an expression of Wegneritis that many experts hope could also enable the development of an antidote to both Turpi Wegneritis and A.I. Future, and an antidote to the Influencers of Instagram, and to curse of objectification, through blocking society’s receptors for the physical chair and stimulating those for the theoretical chair. While also allowing Wegneritis to exist unimpeded in its benign, non-contagious, if highly compulsive, and at times deeply rewarding, if not always, manner…….

…….à suivre

1. Isn’t. We made that up, it’s not true. Apologies for the deceit, but it was necessary.

2. Not an actual clinical condition. It’s not. It’s not real.

3. Ditto. It’s all a product of our imaginations