Relaunched by &Tradition in 2024 in partnership with the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation, Daysak Collection exemplifies functional utility and an appreciation of simple forms. Demonstrating Day’s dedication to craft, the collection conceals its complex construction in a visually minimal form.
Robin Day, one of the most significant British furniture designers of the 20th century, reissued after more than 70 years under new name: Daystak.
In 1948, British designer Robin Day, in partnership with Clive Latimer, won first place in the storage section of the International Low-Cost Furniture Competition held by New York’s Museum of Modern Art, leading to countless prestigious partnerships and commissions. One such partnership was Day’s Hillestak, now renamed Daystak – a three-part series designed in 1951 which began with his first low-cost stacking chair for British furniture company Hille. These designs were inspired by the potential of moulded plywood as a material and the ethos of the MoMA competition, which aimed to find affordable housing and furniture options suitable for compact living spaces.
Evident from the production of these early works, Day’s democratic designs were made to suit the needs of people living in realistic spaces, meaning they were made with durable materials, such as wood, and their proportions well-suited to typical homes. His affinity for organic shapes is apparent in each join and curve of the Daystak collection, which consists of a side chair, a table and a desk.
Daystak Side Chair RD1
The Daystak chair holds a significant place in Day’s design history. Standing as one of his earliest creations for Hille, it was envisaged shortly after he and Clive Latimer won first place in the storage unit category in the International Low-Cost Furniture Competition, organised by the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1948.
Now among the first of his works to enter &Tradition’s classics collection, the Daystak Side Chair is reminiscent of Day’s time crafting furniture from found materials while residing in his first flat in Markham Square, London, with Lucienne Day, his beloved wife and renowned textile designer. During this period, Day employed innovative techniques such as bending plywood by hand with steam from a kettle to fashion subtle, ergonomic curves for his designs, akin to those seen in the Daystak side chair.
“The chair was made in volume and used in schools, canteens and church halls, as well as for domestic spaces,” Paula Day, daughter of Robin Day and Chair of the Robin Day and Lucienne Day Foundation, comments. “It was incredibly successful. Until his Polypropylene Chair launched in 1964, the Hillestak was probably Robin’s best-selling design.”
Today, the Daystak side chair is offered in two original versions: an all-beech variant, alongside a second variant which includes a beech frame with the addition of a walnut veneer applied to the front of the backrest and top seat for a dualtoned, contemporary aesthetic. The chair’s legs meet in the centre of the seat to create a striking A-formation – a defining feature which serves functionally as the pieces stack in numbers of up to 8. Both variants are made with a combination of wood veneer and solid wood legs.
Daystak Table RD2 and Daystak Desk RD3
Designed as part of Day’s first low-cost furniture collection for Hille in 1951, the Daystak Table and Desk work in perfect tandem with the Daystak Side Chair. Both pieces correlate aesthetically with the Daystak chair, showcasing the same striking, A-shaped legs for their base. The table has a unique stacking capability for convenient storage, while the desk also features a solid wood drawer add-on with visible dovetail joinery work.
“The Daystak Table is yet another example of Robin highlighting furniture construction – celebrating rather than concealing it,”
Paula Day comments.
“As in the chair, the leg construction is the signature feature of the design.”
Influenced by the notion of flexible design, a requirement set for entries to the International Low-Cost Furniture Competition, the drawer can be fixed on either side of the desk at the time of its installation. The table reinforces the sentiment of adaptability, as it can be transformed into the desk by implementing the Daystak drawer at a later stage. Both the Daystak Table and Daystak Desk come in solid beech, with or without a Fenix Nano laminate top in shade Verde Comodoro. They each arrive as flat pack pieces, while the drawers arrive preassembled.
Wanting to keep the essence of the collection intact, &Tradition worked with the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation to ensure all reissued pieces remain as true to the original design as possible, including only some minor adjustments to meet the needs and impact considerations for 21st century users.
The Robin and Lucienne Foundation is an independent organisation chaired by Paula Day and run by a Board of Trustees, all of whom donate their time and expertise to further the charity’s objectives. The Foundation is the proprietor of all intellectual property rights in the works of Robin and Lucienne Day. It is committed to managing their designs in such a way as to maintain the integrity of their legacies. The Foundation endorses and licenses only high-quality, authentic productions of Robin and Lucienne Day’s original designs, and all royalties are paid directly to the Foundation to support its work.
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