Perhaps
They are using it as lawn art.

Take it
And leave a ransom note.


Or better yet, leave a Louis Ghost chair in its place. That'll show them!

Didn't
we go through this whole stealing furniture thing once before?

Yes, if I remember right, I t...
Yes, if I remember right, I think the consensus was that you (or thou or Riki) shall not steal, unless, of course, you see something similar in a McDonald's parking lot.

Sounds like good advice.

Well, gang
we have 3 years to ponder this question. What to leave in place of the appropriated Bertoia?

I'm thinking something in the Mahogany Association line of Grandma's discards. Brent? What do you think?

Or, perhaps, a nice Di Frutta-inspired aluminum lawn chair with plastic webbing in a faux leopard print.

The possibilities are endless. However, rest assured, this Bertoia will be liberated from its' cruel environment. After all, it was only 18 degrees Fahrenheit today. It's just sad on so many levels.

No,
you can't spikey, you win.

Patrick & Alix
I know you have been missin' my posts. Just thought I'd liven things up a bit around here.

Whitespike you win...
..hands down every time with that story, hilarious. Why not just ask for it as I have done on two different occasions. First time I saw a black Eames chair drove past it several times night and day the chair was just outside. Finally decided to inquire about it, the owners didn?t speak English, so I sent my friend who speaks Russian and got that one. The Bertoia chair I saw it sitting on a porch in a country house drove right up and asked if he would sell it. He ended up giving it to me for the best price of all FREE99.

Wait, Riki are you serious?...
Wait, Riki are you serious? Why is the chair in MS? If so, THANKS!

Just offer some money for...
Just offer some money for it. They may say Yes!

No --
of course you do not take someone's property without permission -- I'm sorry.

The Golden Rule -- you know that one ? How would you feel if someone did that to you ? It's an insult, if nothing else: "He's stupid, and I'm smart." Thanks a lot !

Come on -- if you want it, ask for it. It shouldn't even be a question, for heaven's sake, and I'm sure you know that -- right ? [smily face here]

If a bank or a faceless and greedy corporation (for instance) used the reasoning "I know what to do with this property better than you do," what do you think we'd say ? How is an individual's action any different ?

You might even make a new friend (or in this case, improve a relationship) !

'
As long as it is joking.
I have one in the field outside my garden.
it'll pinch ya!-broken spokes!
It looks good from a distance. But i rescued it from a E Village
garbage heap. Not worth restoring.
I like it where it is. If someone drove along and thought
i was some hillbilly and had no business owning it and took
it, that would be stealing.
I have way too many spare emeco chairs that i often leave out.
(from a NJ asylum that went out of business for obvious political reasons)
They look good around the garden table. They were free. From the garbage.
Hundreds of them.
And they look great on the landscape...and around my old airstream.
We only go up on weekends in the better seasons.
(wood stove heat only, a bit off the grid) Sucks that we have to lock
everything up all the time.

Interesting !

Sounds like there may be a theme going, there -- three Bertoia yard chairs and counting. . .

I also saw a pair of black tu...
I also saw a pair of black tulip arm chairs (Saarinen) by a swimming pool (above ground) outside of a trailer once ... in the middle of nowhere MS. That was funny.

I watched this old Panton chair
move around the yard for weeks in this realy bad neighborhood. I knew someone had to be using it, but am quite sure for them it was only a place to sit their fat ass. Finally, one week it got closer to the fence and I thought about lifting it over the fence and throwing a nice folding patio chair back over...but the next day it was gone! I am sure someone else had there eye on it to. I see nice chairs on patio's in bad neighborhoods all the time! I guess I should learn enough spanish to translate "Give me your chair or I'll have you deported! A couple a years ago on the Big Island of Hawaii I had to take the trash to the dump as they don't have pick-up service and low and behold the Trashmen where lounging on two "Elda" chairs by Colombo...I offered them 50 bucks for the chairs, they declined, saying they where not allowed to resell the trash!

http://i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff125/visitord4/IMG_4112g...

Dear Riki...
I think we all agree that it is indeed a Harry Bertoia creation and that the garden of a former Supreme Court judge in Switzerland seems to be an appropriate place for it. It is better than having it in the possession of a Swiss banker, where it would be completely hidden...or the Swiss police who would send it back to an American prison for suspicion that a naked child has been sitting on it...What we do not like is the suspicion of disrespect that comes with the way it is treated, so my proposal is to provide for a suitable black marble base and put it on top as we would do with any piece of art displayed in a park. The next step is of course to provide it with a name plate spelling out the artist's name, the dates marking the beginning and the end of his life, and a short explanation on what it represents. In this case "chair" would be closest to the truth, and finally, the materials used.
Beyond that we can only hope that the judge understands the sudden value of the piece, remembers that his neighbour, who is probably American because her German is not very good and in French she always orders dinner and wine is probably the right person to appreciate this art. Considering his need for redemption for spitting a journalist in the face he will certainly consider giving it to her?.which would be a happy ending.

...
...I am blushing...

The photograph is better
than owning the chair. 4.0 from a former University photography teacher!

I'd respray it green, gradual...
I'd respray it green, gradually, bit by bit, over a few months.. the owners will think it disappeared, quite naturally, in their lovely garden. Then steal it..

...when I was 18 or so...
...my dear mother mentioned in one of these serious mother/son conversations that I should get used to the idea of never getting married. She warned me that there was something with my looks and character that did not appeal to the opposite sex.
...a sudden revolt of those hormones that had a direct interest in the matter made me speechless at the time...
now almost 50 years later I know I should have answered: "...just wait until a Swiss supreme court judge get too busy with his Ukrainian wife and abandons a Bertoia chair in his garden!..."
I also know my mother enough to know the answer: "you see! That's what I mean!"

shame..
shame.. I'm thick and boring..

Dear DC
...I fear that what you are suggesting could be seen by the Swiss authorities as the equivalent of building a minaret, a structure that has been voted illigal by the Swiss people...

@DCW
...personally I prefer the genuine article to reproductions in minature

Elvis lives!
Elvis lives!

Koen...
What you suggest about Switzerland caused me to Google:

Which country in the world has the most sexually satisfied women and which has the least? I found this.

By The Associated Press, Apr. 19, 2006

The top five and bottom five nations on scale of rates of sexual satisfaction reported to University of Chicago researchers:

Most Satisfied:

1. Austria: 71.4 percent satisfied with their sex lives.
2. Spain: 69 percent.
3. Canada: 66.1 percent.
4. Belgium: 64.6 percent.
5. United States: 64.2 percent.

Least Satisfied:

25. Thailand: 35.9 percent.
26. China: 34.8 percent.
27. Indonesia: 33.9 percent.
28. Taiwan: 28.6 percent.
29. Japan: 25.7 percent.

Freud may have thrown up his hands trying figure out what women want, but his fellow Austrians persisted and seem to have made some progress. :-)

Dear DC...
I am still searching for the reason you found in my contribution to google the published results...you must have had other and better reasons?but I am pleased that Belgium and Canada are so close. In other words in these pre-Olympic days, I can not be blamed for taking the Canadian average down...I also know why Austria would be this high on the list. It has nothing to do with the length of the lederhosen and the ease with which the average Austrian can get out of them. Anybody that has visited Austria knows the legendary comfort of their beds (in keeping with the subject of this forum: design)Not only are they soft, the softness caresses your resting body while a warm cloud-like cover hovers over you in gravity defiant lightness. A slight odour of fresh cut cedar competes for your attention with a diminuendo last movement of a Mozart symphony in some remote rococo mountain chapel?.who needs a partner for whom you are just another feather in his hat?

I'm sorry Koen
but I think the Austrian women are so satisfied because the men-folk are otherwise occupied out in the barn and they are on the slopes with the hot ski instructors "learning to make the turns smoothly". :)

Olive and Rikki...
Rest assured that I was thinking only of Olive's admirably open appreciation for the original...and its massing. :-)

Truly sensuous and erotic women are so rare and so desirable that men who love to love them quickly learn that weight--high, low, or in the middle--is irrelevant.

Besides, haven't you noticed? Everyone, including one's self, looks 20 pounds lighter and ten years younger after an orgasm.

Ah, romance and sex! They are the only things I will really miss, when I leave this mortal coil.