Chairs from Thierry Barbier-Mueller’s collection, including, clockwise from left, the *Thing 10,* in solid birch wood, designed by Richard Hutten; the *Bessie Smith,* in metal, by Robert Wilson; and the *Klassenraumstuhl,* in black- and red-lacquered wood, by Stefan Wewerka.

The *Poodle Chair,* in synthetic fur and wood, designed by Van Eijk & Van der Lubbe.

The *Zig Zag* chair, in burned and lacquered wood (right), designed by Maarten Baas, and the *Redesigned ZigZag,* in wood, by Alessandro Mendini.

The *Post-Steltman* chair, in colored acrylic glass, by Alessandro Guerriero.

A selection of Barbier-Mueller’s chairs, including the *Wiggle Side Chair,* in corrugated cardboard (left, rear) designed by Frank Gehry; the *Feijão* chair, in pink *peroba,* *imbuia,* and cinnamon wood (center), by Rodrigo Simão; and the *Little H* chair, in birch wood (right), by Caroline Schlyter.

The *Optimist’s Chair,* in lacquered wood, by Malcolm Temple.

The *Eckstuhl* chair, in wood, by Wewerka.

The *Brick Chair,* made from old building sets for children, by Pepe Heykoop.

Clockwise from left: the *Cross Check Chair,* in laminated birch, by Gehry; the *Bamboo Chair,* in herbicide bamboo, by Tejo Remy and René Veenhuizen; and the *Chair of the Rings,* in beechwood, by Martino Gamper.

The *Victorian Chair,* made from park railings, coal hole, and plumbing components, designed by Tom Dixon.

Musical Chairs

Thierry Barbier-Mueller’s collection of more than 650 chairs, by designers including Ron Arad and André Dubreuil, is celebrated in a dazzling coffee-table book

When the curator Clarisse Colliard asked the Swiss collector Thierry Barbier-Mueller, “Do you even know how many chairs you have?,” he didn’t have an answer. When she told him he had more than 300, Barbier-Mueller was stunned. He had never counted his chairs—because he hadn’t set out to build a collection.

Barbier-Mueller died of a heart attack on January 24, at age 62. His chair collection, which now comprises more than 650 pieces, is one of the world’s largest.

Collecting ran in Barbier-Mueller’s blood. In 1908, his great-aunt Gertrud Müller was still a minor when she acquired Vincent van Gogh’s controversial Portrait of Trabuc, an Attendant at Saint-Paul Hospital. In the 1930s, his grandfather Josef Müller bought a Cuno Amiet at age 20, which he hung on the wall of his shabby student apartment, in Zurich. In 2000, his mother, Monique, gave way to the questionable charms of Jeff Koons’s open-legged sculpture Woman in Tub.

Barbier-Mueller started collecting in his 20s. To purchase the Georg Baselitz painting Eagle (1978), he negotiated an installment plan with the Swiss art dealer Ernst Beyeler—then bought a second Baselitz from Beyeler before he’d finished paying for the first. Though Barbier-Mueller’s mother wasn’t talkative, it was a tacit sign of approval when she allowed him to hang Eagle in her home’s entrance.

The chair collection started in the 1980s. Outlandish designs by artists such as Ron Arad, Tom Dixon, and André Dubreuil kicked things off; later came chairs by Mary Heilmann, Maria Pergay, and Richard Tuttle. Functionality was never interesting to Barbier-Mueller. These were “Do not sit” chairs—sculptures as well as objects. Though early acquisitions were carefully curated, Barbier-Mueller’s whims soon got the better of him. “It was like a thread that you pull and unwind slowly at first, with curiosity and caution,” he wrote, “then with increasing speed, faster and faster, and finally, with conviction and freneticism.”

In The Spirit of Chairs, a glossy volume that accompanies the exhibition “A Chair and You,” curated by Robert Wilson and on at the mudac, in Lausanne, a large portion of the Barbier-Mueller collection has been photographed. “There are only two lines in the world,” says Wilson, “there’s a straight line and a curved line.” Here’s a chance to study the way lines add up to a chair. —Elena Clavarino

Elena Clavarino is the Senior Editor for Air Mail

Photos: © Patrick Goetelen (Poodle Chair, Post-Steltman chair, Brick Chair, Victorian Chair); © Nicolas Polli & Stefan Wewerka (Eckstuhl chair)

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