What Are You Collecting?

Alexis Smith does not consider herself a furniture collector--though she does collect picture frames for her collages. But, for two years, she and her husband, artist Scott Grieger, flirted with buying an Eames chair, debating whether to go old or new. Recently, in honor of her 50th birthday, the couple bought two chairs from manufacturer Herman Miller. For her, a lipstick-red Eames “potato chip” chair. “The only modern thing in the house,” Smith says. “It looks like a piece of sculpture sitting among a lot of upholstered club chairs.” And for him, an adjustable black Aeron chair by designers Bill Stumpf and Don Chadwick. Part of what attracts Smith to the Eames designs in particular is “the quality of when people thought the future would be something sensational. I don’t think we have that anymore.”