Paris Chair

Furniture

1929

Paris Chair

In 1929, Arne Jacobsen designed the Paris chair as a modern light-weight alternative to the heavy and costly cabinetmakers’ furniture that was popular at the time.

YEAR:

1929

DESIGN:

Arne Jacobsen

Early model with densely woven wickerwork. Photo: Stjernegaard Fotografi.

The Paris chair is one of the earliest examples of Arne Jacobsen’s ability to incorporate contemporary trends and turn them into simple, sculptural form. As part of the Bauhaus-inspired interior design of the innovative ‘House of the Future’, which Arne Jacobsen and Flemming Lassen presented at Forum in 1929, the Paris chair helped bring modernism to Denmark and pave the way for new times in Danish architecture and furniture design.

During the 1920s, Danish architects and designers began to realize the potential of wicker furniture as an alternative to the heavy and costly cabinetmakers’ furniture used in Victorian-style home interiors at the time. Furniture in rattan, bamboo and wicker provided Arne Jacobsen and his contemporaries with an opportunity to create chairs in an affordable material that is light in both appearance and physical weight.

Arne Jacobsen and Flemming Lassen’s drawing of the House of the Future. On the patio, Arne Jacobsen’s wicker chair. Photo: Royal Danish Library - Danish National Art Library

Paris Chair
Manufactured by

Sika Design

The only 27-year-old Arne Jacobsen designed the wicker chair for a competition held by Kurvemagerforeningen (Basket Makers’ Association) in 1929. Arne Jacobsen’s design was inspired by the older chair type of the deck chair, with a seat and back shaped as a continuous shell. The sleek design also points towards the 1950s, when Arne Jacobsen created the famous shell chairs, which were game-changers due to the design of a seat and back created as a single, double-curvature plywood shell.

The model Arne Jacobsen designed for Kurvemagerforeningen was made in bamboo and wicker, with dense wickerwork sections underscoring the continuous surface. Later, Arne Jacobsen developed new models in bamboo with a more open expression that highlighted the chair’s lightweight character.

In 1929, the year when Arne Jacobsen designed the Paris chair, it was on display in Forum in Copenhagen as part of the furniture of ‘House of the Future’ in a slightly modified version titled ‘Chair of the Future’. The house that Arne Jacobsen co-designed with Flemming Lassen was spectacular in every regard: a spiral-shaped ‘machine for living’ that contained three garages – for a jet boat, a car and a helicopter – as well as an array of inventive technical solutions. The door mat had a built-in vacuum cleaner that removed any dirt from the visitors’ shoes; the tables automatically rotated to place the food in front of the person seated at the table; and the house was equipped with a post tube conveyor that whisked mail directly to the local post office.

As part of the Bauhaus-inspired interior design of the innovative ‘House of the Future’, which Arne Jacobsen and Flemming Lassen presented at Forum in 1929, the Paris chair helped bring modernism to Denmark and pave the way for new times in Danish architecture and furniture design.

With the House of the Future, Arne Jacobsen and Flemming Lassen helped bring European modernism to the Nordic region. The young architects drew inspiration from the German Bauhaus school and the work of the Swiss architect Le Corbusier, among other sources, and translated this inspiration into both exterior structures and modern interiors. In the living spaces inside the house, the padded easy chairs and exclusive cabinetmakers’ furniture in mahogany were replaced with tables in glass and steel and Mies van der Rohe’s MR chair from 1927. They appeared alongside Arne Jacobsens elegant Paris chair, whose dynamic lines echoed the building’s remarkable spiral form and underscored the promise of a modern, forward-looking lifestyle.

The chair was originally nicknamed the ’Forest Slug’. From 1997 to 2013, the chair was in production at JV Holding/Fletmageren. This was where it was named the Paris chair (based on the mistaken notion that Arne Jacobsen had exhibited the chair in Paris in 1925). Since 2014, the wicker chair (AJ 236) has been produced by SIKA Design under the name ‘Paris Chair’.

Sources: Arne Jacobsen Design Archives. / Arne Jacobsen’s drawings. The collection of architectural drawings, The Royal Library – Danish Art Library. / Arne Jacobsen’s scrapbooks. The Royal Library – Danish Art Library. / Stenum Poulsen, K., Skaarup Larsen, A., & Staunsager, S. (2020). Arne Jacobsen – Designing Denmark. Kolding: Trapholt. / Thau, C., & Vindum, K. (1998). Arne Jacobsen. Copenhagen: Danish Architectural Press.

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