Greens Restaurant manager Mike Hale helps unload and install 140 Greens Chairs
Early this week I delivered 140 newly minted, Greens Chairs I designed specifically for San Francisco’s Greens Restaurant in honor of its 30th anniversary and subsequent interior renovation. Fourteen of the chairs are made of walnut and will surround a functional sculpture by J.B. Blunk (1926-2002), dating to the restaurant’s origins. The commission came to me through my friend Mariah Nielson, J.B.’s daughter, who runs the J.B. Blunk Residency and was hired to consult about how best to honor the carved, massive redwood sculpture, in keeping with its contemporary surroundings. The other chairs are made of maple to compliment handmade tables and furnishings crafted by Paul Discoe and other artisans associated with the San Francisco Zen Center in the late 1970’s.
My design for the Greens Chair evolved from my Elder Chair, a design I originally prototyped for the School Lunch Initiative associated with Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley. The Greens Chair was inspired as much by the Buddhist ethos of its namesake restaurant as by the restaurant’s dramatic setting on the Bay, with views of the Golden Gate Bridge.
As Greens Restaurant manager Mike Hale helped unpack the chairs, they happily basked in the California sun and were kissed by a stiff sea breeze coming off the Bay, before finding their way home inside the iconic restaurant at Fort Mason. I’m very proud of my chair’s uniquely Bay Area pedigree and hope to see it become a contemporary classic.
To read more about the development of the Greens Chair, please click here and scroll down.