Sean Yan
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paperback chair
May 2025



Measurements: 36” H  x 17” W x 11” L



Materials: Recycled Books, Recycled Bookself, Metal Easel



The Paperback Chair was constructed entirely from discarded materials sourced from a recycling center in Queens. The materials used includes decommissioned bookshelves, an easel, and a stack of unwanted books, challenging me to engage with wood not as lumber, but as its afterlife — paper, shelving, and display structures.









Concept Development
After the class visit to Materials for the Arts in Queens, this project emerged from an impulsive process that challenged me to work directly with the materials in front of me.  The piece reframes wood products not as finished objects, but as mutable material systems. It questions the hierarchy between “raw” and “processed” wood and proposes that material value can be regenerated through reinterpretation.






final product