“There’s something historical about it.” While he doesn’t know who had his own desk, some of the desks do have names of the previous users written on the underside of the drawing table. “When you sit at one of these desks, you can’t help but wonder what legendary artist was sitting at this desk 50 years ago,” Dave said. A recessed channel on the upper portion fit into a corresponding raised channel on the lower portion to fit them together. “In some of the early Kem Weber designs, he actually had indicated that there was this whole elaborate foot pedal mechanism so the artist could use both hands to adjust the drawing surface angle by using the foot pedal, but from my research, I suspect that creating the whole custom foot mechanism was probably cost-prohibitive, and they just went with the straight-on lever,” Dave said.Ī modular design allowed the original users to customize the desks’ lower section into the particular drawer or shelving configuration that suited them, with the upper sections based on their particular discipline. Also located underneath the drawing boards was a light box capable of illuminating multiple levels of animation paper the brightness of the light box was also adjustable. There’s all these different types of desks that have different attributes and features specific to that particular discipline,” Dave said.įor example, on the desks with drawing boards, a lever underneath the board allows for adjusting the drawing surface to any suitable angle. “There’s an animator’s desk there’s a background artist’s desk there’s a layout desk there’s a storyman’s desk. Weber’s furniture designs for the Disney studios encompassed a variety of pieces styled for particular jobs within the hand-drawn animation industry. “Having worked on the furniture, having heard stories about the different things with the furniture over the years in conversations with colleagues,” Dave found himself uniquely qualified to be the one to write that book: Kem Weber: Mid-Century Furniture Designs for the Disney Studios (published by The Old Mill Press in 2018). Disney Studio version of Air Line Chair image above Kem Weber Animation Desk photo credit for both-Heritage Auctions, HA.com While Dave sat at the desk, now located in his home office, and worked on a book about one of the Disney films he’d worked on, it occurred to him that the Kem Weber Disney animation furniture itself was deserving of a book. Weber, a mid-20th century designer and creator of the iconic “Airline” chair, was the architect and furniture designer for the creation of the Burbank, California, Disney studios complex in the 1930s. When Dave Bossert “retired” from Disney Animation Studios after 32 years, he received a parting gift: the Kem Weber-designed animator’s desk he’d been using for over three decades.
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