Paper Furniture (1961)

M/S of a woven circular chair being tested for durability by having a weight repeatedly pushed down on it. Commentator tells us it is made from rolls of paper. Various shots in a factory in Bromley By Bow, London, as we see the processes involved in making this paper furniture: strips of cellulose fabric from large rolls are twisted into a thread then plaited into a flat ’rope’. The body of the chair is formed by twisting the paper around steel rods that are cut to the required lengths and woven with the plaited ropes to produce the reinforced chair fabric. The emerging flat fabric is seen on a huge roller. For certain pieces of furniture, the fabric is produced from a circular loom, softened, placed over a mould and then hardened to the required shape in an oven. M/S of two men cutting and pulling pieces of the flat fabric into shape over the metal framework of a circular chair like the one we first saw; they hammer it in place over the frame. Another man is seen spraying a finished chair of a