PROFILE by Victoria O'Brien April 1997
“In the future, furniture design will be considered alongside sculpture, painting and poetry as a fine art – one that combines all the technical virtuosity and mechanical skill these disciplines often lack. Peter Harvey’s designs show this hybrid in its purest form – his manufacturing processes and inspiration lie midway between aeronautics and anatomy, where human and mechanical forms are merged to create the ultimate machines for sitting on, in and around.”
•Peter Harvey’s official background is in precision engineering – his unofficial soul lies in surrealism.
Though his creative output often takes on the guise of bizarre forms and references, his early training in the meticulous mechanism of production has stood him in good stead – Harvey has now become one of Britain’s most innovative contemporary furniture designers.
Harvey’s Venus chair at once the sinewy musculature form of its namesake, the natural organic silhouette of a mushroom sliced in half, and in its most undressed state, a perfect incarnation of the riveted, thin plywood structures of early aeronautics – a Mosquito plane designed for posturing on, destined to only ever leave the ground in our imagination.
For Harvey, it was not enough to simply create functional mechanisms – sculptural and beautiful as they may be. Even whilst studying mechanical engineering, pure passion led him to create ‘Resurrection’, Henry Moore like biomorphic sculptures in his spare time.
•In 1980, Harvey left his first job in industry to design cutting edge retail interiors and window displays for Harrods. Here, he was soon to be appointed window display manager, creating some of the most pertinent and inspired window displays of the era – combining contemporary design with high fashion and furniture.
•In 1991, Peter Harvey established his own design company creating his first furniture collection: Diva, Future Classic Collection. Simple pieces of furniture have been transformed into surreal excess of anthropological references: table legs bear the voluptuous outline of a female thigh. The elongated form of Harvey’s sensational Diva standing light revels in the tactile, aerodynamic curves employed by the artist in reaction to his female muse.
A wish-bone shaped component, which makes up the back of Harvey’s Princess chair, show how far his technical virtuosity belies an apparent simplicity of construction. Naturally, and perhaps unknowingly, Harvey has appropriated a rudimentary mechanism of the human body, allowing the anthropomorphic, bone-like structure to hold in place the upholstered back by means of a simple mechanical fixing. Harvey’s Smile chair, which supports and cossets the sitter in the manner of a womb, is masterfully stretched and elongated, still following the lines of the human body, to form his Smile Chaise Longue
•In true surrealist fashion, Harvey has also created the Tongue-in-Cheek chair, in Paloma Picasso lipstick red, to sit alongside his two initial oral pieces. Women look immediately provocative, sensual and appealing when they use it. Transient and suggestive, this sculptural piece metamorphoses into various forms and shapes, taking on imaginary outlines, according to the inclination of the viewer.
•All furniture is functional but few designers have the unique vision to create technically precise pieces, which are also mind altering. What Peter Harvey is moving towards is a new language in furniture design, where form no longer simply follows function, but is inspired by and takes on the ergonomics of the human body form.
Victoria O’Brien is a design journalist for THE TIMES.