Armchair 12 by Poul Kjaerholm
Denmark, 1962

This chair is made up of two bent steel tubes forming legs, arms and back, fixed
to a flat-section steel seat frame. This is filled with a flat seat pad, upholstered
in natural canvas, or either parchment or ox-hide, with a matching braided cover on the top back rung.

The structure relies entirely on the strength of the seat frame, to hold the other two elements. This chair has been influenced by Thonet's bentwood forms, but it embodies a fresh use of the properties of tubular steel.

There has been a revival of interest in the past few years in the use of tubular steel for furniture construction, and this is a good exarnple. considering how many of the recent attempts have resulted in vulgarized versions of earlier classics.

I find this a rather uncomfortable chair, as the back rung cuts painfully across the spine, but it is undoubtedly a beautiful chair. The apparently simple spatial arrangement of the elements, with curving lines around the wide flat seat, makes for a very finely proportioned structure.

Armchair 19 by Magistretti