July 10, 2010

Oh! Bamboo Is Your New Bicycle Seat For Kids

bamboo_bikeseat_jalinyeh.jpg

While trying to figure out the Taiwanese family bicycle world, I stumbled across this bit of bentwood awesomeness: a Thonet-meets-bamboo kid's bicycle seat.

Blogger AnMin spotted it last spring at a bike rental shop when the family went riding through the newly reopened Old Caoling Tunnel, a 2.7km trip through a mountain to the sea, a little soot-covered souvenir of Taiwan's days as a Japanese colony.

And seriously, about those Japanese. If you'll remember the story [retold here, and meant to be sung to the theme song from Gilligan's Island] of Charlotte Perriand and Bruno Taut visiting Kawai Kanjiro's bamboo furniture factory in 1941, looking for modernism-sympatico folk manufacturing techniques they could show off in Paris, you'll remember that Kawai imported [sic] his workers from Taiwan because they had the maddest wood bending skills.

And anyway, that's really not bamboo, but its close cousin, cane, with a woven seat. Which means I should probably change the title to something like, "Yes We Cane!"

雙鐵:福隆-舊草嶺隧道:路線探勘 [Family Fun Times, google translate]
Previously: Hey, Little Buddy! Mingei Bamboo Stool/High Chair

2 Comments

While on holiday in Japan we saw lots of parents riding their children around on bicycles. Very nice.

I ran across this charming iteration while surfing today. On the whole, it's probably a safer arrangement for dolls than for humans.

Google DT


Contact DT

Daddy Types is published by Greg Allen with the help of readers like you.
Got tips, advice, questions, and suggestions? Send them to:
greg [at] daddytypes [dot] com

Join the [eventual] Daddy Types mailing list!


Archives

copyright

copyright 2024 daddy types, llc.
no unauthorized commercial reuse.
privacy and terms of use
published using movable type