Community Story
Abstraction in Seating Design
Seating Design
Typochair (Chair, Chair). Folayemi Wilson, 2004
Green Patterned Stool. Mark Grattan, 2021.
Chairs are designed with the body in mind. Their arms, legs, and backs correspond to the human body and provide functional remedies for work and rest.
Some designers go further, transforming everyday furnishings into expressions of pure form, imagination, and cultural resonance. This story examines seating design by contemporary Black designers from the National Museum of African American History and Culture's collection.
African Inspirations
Several of these designers draw inspiration from cultures across the African diaspora. The resulting designs reflect traditions connected to African art, aesthetics, and cultural expression.
Africana Rocking Chair. Norman Teague, 2020.
Norman Teague’s Africana Rocking Chair
Norman Teague describes this rocking chair from his Africana series as “being comfortable in its ‘Blackness,’ perfectly human and intentional.” Markings on the surface of the wood connect the rocking chair to skin. As Teague notes, “Hand carvings and depth of color staining reference face paint and bodily scarring practices that bear significance to indigenous African tribes.”
Dan Chair. Michael Puryear, 2010.
Michael Puryear’s Dan Chair
Dan Chair refers to a style of chair used by the Dan people of West Africa. Michael Puryear built this American version with wood sourced from Thomas Jefferson’s and George Washington’s plantations. Puryear includes raised, lash-like marks on the chair’s legs to suggest the brutality African Americans endured under slavery.
Every item I design is a reincarnation of a preexisting African theme.
Jomo Tariku
Negress Chaise by Simone Brewster
Simone Brewster’s Negress Chaise is a classic chaise lounge, constructed with supports representing the Black female body, including breasts and legs. Referencing works like Wifredo Lam’s painting The Murmur, Negress Chaise illustrates how Black women’s bodies have historically provided support for others. Brewster has stated that “if you use it as an object, if you sit on it, you’re taking part in the oppression of the body.”
Negress Chaise. Simone Brewster, 2010.
The Murmur. Wifredo Lam, 1943.
Nyala Chair by Jomo Tariku
Nyala Chair is named after the spiral-horned nyala antelope of Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains. Jomo Tariku, an Ethiopian American industrial designer, shaped the chair to reflect the antelope’s “distinctive soaring horns and sturdy hind legs.” Tariku seeks to capture the spirit of the sly but graceful animal. The chair’s silhouette echoes the movement and posture of the animal that inspired its design.
Nyala Chair. Jomo Tariku, 2020.
Nyala antelope
Designing Posture
The Time Is Near (End). Naudline Pierre, 2023.
Washington Skeleton Aluminum Side Chair. David Adjaye, 2013.
Seating shapes both posture and perception. For example, a rocking chair provides reclining and soothing movement. A large throne may inspire feelings of royalty and value. The seats we choose can shift our physical and emotional states.
Naudline Pierre's, The Time is Near echoes the artist's intense, religious-themed paintings. Her fiery throne summons the sitter to otherworldly settings and its steel-crafted vertical shape gives the chair a regal presence.
Similarly, David Adjaye’s Washington Skeleton chair mirrors the body’s contours and silhouettes. He has stated that “the primary idea behind the design was to mimic the form of a seated person . . . so that the chair almost disappears when in use.”
Cosmic Contemplation
Stargazer. Ini Archibong, 2022.
Starshine. Hadiya Williams, 2025.
A recurring theme among the designers featured here is their interest in connecting design to the surrounding environment. Design that encourages cosmic contemplation and metaphysical connection allows us to expand our horizons.
Resembling West African birthing chairs, Stargazer is carefully angled so that holding a book or looking at one’s phone while seated causes discomfort. Instead, the chair positions sitters to gaze upward and outward. Ini Archibong connects the chair’s design to his Nigerian heritage, explaining, “You’re looking to the ancestors in the sky and . . . there is the idea of the ancestors remanifesting themselves in the children that are being born.”
A chair can shape how we commune with the night sky. And like the North Star, a lamp can illuminate our path into the unknown. Hadiya Williams’s states that her Starshine ceramic lamps “offer illumination and invite clarity, spirituality, and grounding.”
Related Exhibit
Transcendent Visions in Abstract Art
Abstract art can suggest passageways to different worlds. As with lighting and seating designs, visual artists also use abstraction to make revelatory connections that transcend time and space.
Choreographing the Body
Choreographer Alvin Ailey’s masterpiece Revelations chronicles the African American experience. While the designers featured here did not directly reference Ailey’s ballet, their designs share similar forms and movements. In Revelations, Ailey shapes the dancer’s body through movement. In a similar way, seating designers shape how the body sits, bends, and extends.
The seating designs of Michael Puryear, Jomo Tariku, Ini Archibong, and Naudline Pierre echo the deep angles and graceful extensions of “Pilgrims of Sorrow,” the opening piece of Revelations. The lines and contours of these designs suggest how the body might stretch, bend, and move—like dancers responding to choreography.
Dan Chair. Michael Puryear, 2010.
Inspired by West African design and crafted from wood sourced from former plantations, Michael Puryear’s Dan Chair recognizes slavery’s brutality and his pride in being a descendant of those who overcame enslavement. Dan Chair’s layered history holds sorrow and resilience in tension.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performing “Pilgrims of Sorrow”
In this movement, the dancers’ low squatting and elongated arms mirror the form of Puryear’s Dan Chair—a seat designed low to the ground. Ailey choreographs this section to exemplify strength and restrained yearning as dancers express the striving of a people to rise up.
Grounded Energy
Revelations dancers exhibit reservoirs of energy and grace that Ailey depicts with earth tones and grounded movements. These features convey spiritual resilience and the undeniable strength of a people.
Jomo Tariku’s Nyala Chair exhibits both sturdiness in its three-legged design and elegance with its curving lines. Like the dancers’ movements in Revelations, the chair’s form appears to harness energy within, even as it pulls upward toward a life force beyond.
Nyala Chair. Jomo Tariku, 2020.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performing “Pilgrims of Sorrow”
Deep Memory
Alvin Ailey used the term “blood memory” to describe experiences remembered in the body across generations. For him, this scene recalled the church processions that held deep meaning and connection to his own family and community.
Ini Archibong’s Stargazer invites sitters to look to the sky and communicate with the ancestors. Like Ailey’s ‘blood memory,” Archibong’s Nigerian heritage recalls that ancestors remanifest themselves in newborn children.
Stargazer. Ini Archibong, 2022.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performing “Pilgrims of Sorrow”
Spiritual Transcendence
Long vertical lines help Alvin Ailey express a people attempting to rise up. The movement not only conveys empowerment but also impending release.
Naudline Pierre’s throne-like seat, The Time Is Near (End), empowers its sitter, pulling the back straight and the body upward. Pierre’s design invokes fire symbolism to suggest purification, transcendence, and otherworldly becoming. Exploring spiritual transformation, both Pierre and Ailey engage African American histories of endurance and faith.
The Time Is Near (End). Naudline Pierre, 2023.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performing “Pilgrims of Sorrow”
Featured Video
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Performs Revelations
Revelations was first performed by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1960. Watch the company's 2015 performance at Lincoln Center.
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