Special #1256

Kathy Grant's Wunda Chair

3 min - Special
36 likes

Description

Cara Reeser shares with us an original Wunda Chair made by Joseph Pilates himself for Kathy Grant's Bendel's Department Store studio. It was made back in the 50s and designed to be a chair for daily use that could be converted into a Wunda Chair for exercise.

To see more of the Legacy of Kathy Grant, click here.
What You'll Need: Wunda Chair

About This Video

(Pace N/A)
Oct 16, 2013
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Transcript

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Hi everybody. I'm at Kara Research Studio here in Denver, Colorado. [inaudible] aligned. Kara, what in the world is this? All right. So this is actually an original wonder chair. This is a chair that was built by Mr. Paul Addis is what I was told. It was for the vendel studio that Kathy, um, took over eventually in the 1970s.

So our guesses that this was built in probably well before he died. So 1950s or sixties. It has this wonderful little sticker here that says PyLadies universal reformer blahdy studios of Contralto judgy. I know, I love it. And it says New York, London, Berlin, Paris. So, you know, it's great. It's like, what is that? I want you to take it around the world. Kathy gave me this chair when she was still living, so it's a wonderful gift.

Um, so it had a cushion. All of the Bendel's equipment was, was with this color and it had a cushion. And so, you know, Mr [inaudible], his idea was that you would use it at home as a seat, read a paper and then you know, you'd be reading the paper, read a book and then you'd be like, is it time to work out? It's time to work out. So let's take it and then let's just be really careful. That's exactly what you want to do. We're going to take it that way. Slide it through. Perfect Amy and let's spin it around and then here you are, you have a wonder chair. We're going to let the pedal down. There we go.

And we'll put the springs on. Great. And what we're doing here is using grot springs. I took, um, I took, I took the original springs off cause they were not in integrity and I kept those. Um, and here it is, the things that you'll notice that are different about this is that this is really solid and not padded. This was the original chair. This is also quite firm. And um, yeah, this a little piece of history right here in my studio. I'm honored to have it. And, um, yes, have a seat. I'm going to jump on. Yeah. Well let's see. We have it on you two middles. That's awesome. You know, just give it a go.

Give it go. Oh yeah. Right. So these are still, the springs are still hard as a yeah. This is what I did is I bought the crotch springs so it would match what Mr Plod has had on there. Cause it was, this is how the original springs were. So it's nice, right? Yes. Yeah. Super Fun. So yes. Welcome to the one two chair, Mr Potties.

Um, it was Cathy grant's, it lived at Bendel's, the studio of Bendel's department store. It lived, um, in somebody's apartment in Brooklyn for a while and then it came to Colorado. We're happy to have it. Thank you for watching this episode and please subscribe to our channel if you haven't done so already. For access to full platas classes, tutorials and workshops, go to [inaudible] anytime com. See you all next week. Bloodies anytime is a virtual philosophy studio where you can take real classes with real students. We offer classes at all levels and we add about five new classes every week a lot. He's anytime is always here for you, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Comments

Yeong Cheol C
wonderful.
Very cool!
1 person likes this.
Thank you for sharing this special piece of Pilates history
1 person likes this.
My pleasure to share, come and visit and play on the chair some day!!!!
Wow, thank you Cara for sharing!!!
Love the history....so do we pronounce it with a W or a V?
"Wunda" or "Vunda"
I love love love these little tidbits that you post on Pilates history. Thanks for sharing Cara!

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