Photograph by Colin Conces.
A characteristic maneuver in midcentury weaving—perfected by such luminaries as Lenore Tawney, Sheila Hicks, and Ed Rossbach—was the insertion of non-fiber elements that could be held taut in the warp, just like a weft thread. Weavers tended to favor organic elements for this purpose: sticks and stones, feathers and grass. Luam Melake has updated this technique for today, incorporating emotive and unconventional materials such as metal, cement, asphalt, plastics, and rubber into her wall hangings. She was originally trained in architecture, and her wide-ranging practice also takes in furniture design, which she approaches in an equally experimental way—coating urethane foam in pigmented rubber, for example.
Melake’s Listening Chair recalls Italian Radical Design of the 1960s and figures such as Gaetano Pesce. It is motivated, however, by a distinctive contemporary humanism. The chair is a compressed psychological landscape, which prompts unconventional seating positions in order to, in her words, “organize bodies in ways that make room for intimacy, eye contact and direct acknowledgment of others.”¹
¹ Luam Melake, personal correspondence with Glenn Adamson, November 16, 2019.
Listening Chair in urethane, polyurethane foam, and dyes. Designed and made by Luam Melake, USA, 2019.
24" L x 37" W x 33" H
61cm L x 94cm L x 83.8cm H
LC1426