Göte­borg Chair

The Göte­borg chair is an extra­or­di­nary design from the 1930s that reflects Erik Gunnar Asplund’s profound shift from a career that had been char­ac­ter­ized by a style asso­ci­ated with Nordic Clas­si­cism to the designer’s whole­hearted embrace of the newly emerg­ing move­ments of Modernism and Func­tion­al­ism – this shift coin­cided with the land­mark Stock­holm Exhi­bi­tion that cele­brated both of these move­ments in 1930. Göteborg’s form is actu­ally a fasci­nat­ing fusion of Thonet’s iconic No. 14 café chair from 1859 and the extant Machine Age ​“tubular aesthetic” that was preva­lent through­out conti­nen­tal Europe from the late 1920s through the 1930s.

The Göte­borg chair features a thick tubular wood struc­ture with subtly flared legs; its back employs tubular steel that has been padded and uphol­stered to mimic the thick­ness of its tubular wood frame engen­der­ing a contin­u­ous fluid outline. The thick seat cushion is composed of polyurethane foam and becomes a delight­ful hori­zon­tal foil to the gently tapered legs. The Göte­borg chair is avail­able in several wood finishes – natural or black-stained ash wood as well as natural or stained walnut. Numer­ous uphol­stery options in both textiles and leather are also available.