A chair is a chair is a . . . rutabaga?
Or maybe it's a chunk of cheese. Or a cracker swing suspended from some broccoli trees. Or a collection of red and green peppers.
All those and more were part of the fourth-annual Incredible Edible Chair Contest, sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Chapter of International Interior Designers Association.
Rules for the contest are very simple, said Alison Mitchell, who helped coordinate this year's event. Chairs have to be 90 percent edible, have to be able to stand on their own strength for eight hours and have to be true to scale. In past years, an occasional full-size chair has shown up, but most of the contestants opt for scale models.
"Other than that," said Mitchell, "the sky's the limit."
The variety and creativity are amazing, added Judy Schvaneveldt, programs director for the Salt Lake Center Rocky Mountain Chapter of IIDA, who also helped put this year's contest together. Major prizes are awarded — this year's top winner received an executive leather swivel chair, and other artworks and gift certificates sweetened the pot.
The event is a fund-raiser for the organization but also includes a hefty share of bragging rights for the winners among their peers. "It's just a lot of fun," said Schvaneveldt.
Chairs, of course, have been a part of interior design ever since the first cave people began carving seats out of solid rock. Over the centuries, like the search for a better mousetrap, the search for the perfect chair has engaged the world's greatest designers. And styles have ranged from the elaborate to the quirky.
The first chairs were mostly wood, but in modern times everything from tubular steel to molded plywood to inflatable and bean-filled plastic have been used.
Function's probably the most important part of chair-design, says Schvaneveldt. But proportion, scale, materials and, these days, ergonomics, are all considerations.
So, when the interior designers and architects and students of IIDA began creating their edible chairs — and there were close to 40 entries this year — many of these same principles came into play. But more important were two other considerations — these chairs had to hold up and look good.
Building materials of choice included everything from cheese and pasta to licorice, chocolate, crackers, marshmallows, blueberries, potato chips, popcorn, apples, cookies and a variety of candies.
Nancy Busby took a minimalist approach. Her "Honeymoon Chair" featured "lettuce alone." Karen McClendon, Victoria Hodson and Brittany Ward molded their "Official Snack Chair of Utah" out of green Jell-O. David Morris went straight for the sensuous — his "MCD (Messy Chocolate Divan) Chair" was fashioned from luscious-looking chocolate cake.
Chocolate, melted and poured in intricate patterns, also worked for Rachel Williams' "Delectable Macintosh Collection." Stacie Long and Wendy Taylor demonstrated innovative use of materials in "Grandpa's Fruit Leather Chair," just the kind of soft and lumpy chair you'd like to snuggle in with a grandpa and a book if you had the real thing.
There were more — chairs showing off modern-design forms, chairs of favorite TV characters, rocking lounge chairs and futuristic space chairs.
And when the judging was done, Julie McHood took "Best of Show" honors with her "Cold Therapy Couch," made of melted cough drops molded and formed into an austere bench imbedded with other creature comforts — herbal tea bags, citrus peel.
She was home suffering from a cold when inspiration hit, McHood said. And it was only fitting that the rest of the family suffer with her; the menthol in the melted cough drops stunk up the house for hours!
A chair is a chair is a . . . cold remedy? Who'd have thought?
E-mail: carma@desnews.com