Tennis Furniture

Speaking as a perpetual fan but never a player, what I really admire about tennis is how it unfolds as a character drama, how—in watching a great match—one gets a sense of warring dynamic personalities. Hence, the best tennis stars are bad boys, those who exude a noisy charisma.

All this by way of a timely introduction—presently writing mid-way through week one of what I like to call the anti-Wimbledon, bastion of the likes of ruffians Connors, McEnroe, and Ilie Nastase, New York’s U.S. Open—to a collection of tennis-themed furniture.

Tennis Ball Bench

Dutch Designers Tejo Remy and Rene VeenHuizen’s interest in the played-out tennis ball stems from a broader concern with found objects and re-purposed sustainability rather than a fascination with racket sports. Either way, their —made from a simple steel frame and hundreds of well-placed balls, does double duty as homage to the sport and jokey reclamation; and it’s sufficiently visually striking, as well as comfortable, to have won a place as permanent seating for Rotterdam’s Museum Van Boijmans Beuningen, where it fits right in among the work of Surrealist Man Ray and Iconoclast Marcel Duchamp.

Ball Boy Stool

Next, the “Ball Boy Stool” by Charles O’Toole for Charles Furniture features a seat of 117 tennis balls strung together on an unseen shaft perched atop four simple steel rods. Originally designed as an exhibition piece, it’s now being released in limited runs for consumers. The designer describes it as “An experiment of shape, color and material using the tennis ball.”

Tennis Ball Chair

Finally there’s the “Tennis Ball Chair”. Made by DesignerWill Holman of 50 balls (25 for the seat and 25 for the back), the chair is a simple chrome frame holding plywood sheets with tennis-ball sized holes. The key according to Holman is that the holes are of different depths and diameters, which allows the balls—when sat upon—to move and compress and conform to the body’s curves. There with answering the oft-voiced question “is it comfortable?” with a resounding “Yes!”

These three pieces represent an intriguing contribution to the increasing roster of furniture that’s found or made from re-purposed material. It’s always exciting to see designers come up with a new use for stuff that’s typically thrown away, so beyond appealing to the closet tennis fanatic within, they each do their small part to save the world…