The Honey Pop Chair is made entirely of paper. 120 layers of honeycombed, glassine paper.
Designed by Tokujin Yoshioka, who is known to use materials in unexpected ways, the chair starts out as a completely flat honeycomb and then unfolds into a semi-chair shape. The first person who sits in it has an important role to play, because the chair will mold to her body, and start to look more like a chair.
Several museums have a Honey Pop chair (or two) in their permanent collections, including The Art Institute of Chicago, the V&A in London, MoMA, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Israel Museum, and many more.
As you might imagine, making sure that a chair like this will survive well into the future without discoloring or even disintegrating is quite an undertaking for museum conservation experts.
In this video, hear from Annie Hall, our Senior Objects Conservator, and Cindy Trope, our Associate Curator of Product Design, speak about this piece from a curatorial and a conservation perspective.