(Sascha Mikel - Martin Schnabl - Michael Tatschl), Austria 2012, white monobloc garden chair, waxed bentwood (beech), stamped Breaded Escalope brand mark, height 150 cm, width 80 cm, depth 90 cm, height of seat 115 cm. (DR)

Accompanied by a certificate.

A unique specimen (prototype) from the series “Love Me Bender”, which so far comprises ten different models, each of which was made within the framework of a performance.

Breaded Escalope’s ”Olymp” was produced during a performance in La Pelota in the context of the Milan Design Week in April 2012. The object consists of a white monobloc garden chair (an object found in Milan) and beech slats bent over steam. The project “Love Me Bender” combines industrially manufactured mass products and traditional arts and crafts. This contrast is visualized through the objects and their performative process of creation. A mobile shipping crate serves both as a bentwood workshop and kitchen. While water for soup or tea is boiled on customary hotplates, the rising steam is gathered in a closed stove pipe – the steam chamber – in which the beech slats are exposed to the hot steam for 30 to 40 minutes, until they are ready to be bent.

The first performance of this kind took place in October 2011 at the MAK (Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna), and the resulting object, called “Erlkönig”, subsequently entered the MAK furniture collection. Further performances took place in Stockholm, London, Bratislava, and Vienna. In the course of this project, altogether ten models have by now been produced in an edition of three specimens each, which differ from each other in details.

The technology of steam-bending wood is known since centuries but only got to a broader consideration when Michael Thonet patented a refined method for making bentwood furniture in 1856. It was a cornerstone in the ways of furniture processing and logistics. Whilst Thonet visualised the flexibility of his revolutionary system by storing 36 disjointed No.14 chairs for shipping inside a 1m³ box; As a result of different production performances, breadedEscalope developed a 0.72m³ box that embodies an entire steam-bending workshop to be shipped to any place around the world.