The Harkonnen Chairs are a series of

H. R. Giger Hans Ruedi Giger ( ; ; 5 February 1940 – 12 May 2014) was a Swiss artist best known for his airbrushed images that blended human physiques with machines, an art style known as " biomechanical". Giger later abandoned airbrush for pastels, mark ...

's furniture designs. They were manufactured by hand chiefly out of

aluminium Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. I ...

or black

fiberglass Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass ( Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass clo ...

and made to resemble a human skeleton. The chairs were initially designed for an unproduced movie version of the 1965 Frank Herbert

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

novel '' Dune'' that was to be directed by

Alejandro Jodorowsky Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky (; born 17 February 1929) is a Chilean-French avant-garde filmmaker. Best known for his 1970s films ''El Topo'' and '' The Holy Mountain'', Jodorowsky has been "venerated by cult cinema enthusiasts" for his work ...

in the 1970s. Baron Harkonnen is the villain of Herbert's novel. The series consisted of a regular chair and a more elaborate "Capo" chair intended to be used as Baron Harkonnen's main chair. The most prominent feature of the Capo Chair is a crown of three noseless skulls stacked on top of each other in a column above the back of the chair. This feature is what distinguishes the Capo Chair from regular Harkonnen Chairs, which lack the triple skull crown as well as armrests. Giger sold replicas for $30,000 (fiberglass) to $50,000 (aluminium). Versions of the regular Harkonnen Chairs are in use at the two Swiss

Giger Bar A Giger Bar is a bar themed and modelled by the Swiss artist H. R. Giger. There are two Giger Bars: the first, the H.R. Giger Bar in Chur, Switzerland, which opened in 1992, and the second is The Museum HR Giger Bar, located in Château St. Ger ...

locations. File:Harkonnen Möbel by H. R. Giger (246327819).jpg, A complete set of chairs showing both the regular and "Capo" versions. File:Giger Bar Gruyeres Ben W Bell 30 5 2005.jpg, Harkonnen Chairs are used in

in Gruyeres.

References

External links

* Chairs Dune (franchise) H. R. Giger Individual models of furniture {{decorative-art-stub