1920s Kaare Klint Danish Red Chair

Description

Architect and designer Kaare Klint’s Rød (Red) Chair is an icon of Scandinavian design that has been admired by connoisseurs … more Architect and designer Kaare Klint’s Rød (Red) Chair is an icon of Scandinavian design that has been admired by connoisseurs since it appeared in 1927, at which time it was created for the lecture hall of Copenhagen’s new Danish Museum of Art & Design. (Today, the institution is known as Designmuseum Danmark.) For the side chair — and a matching armchair that was devised a few years later for a Danish prime minister’s office — Klint (1888-1954) was inspired by the work of the 18th-century English talent Thomas Chippendale. Rud. Rasmussens Snedkerier, a legendary cabinet making firm in Copenhagen, produced the Rød Chair, utilizing Cuban mahogany, Niger leather (a reddish West African goatskin often used in bookbinding), and brass-plated steel nailheads. Klint’s elegant masterpiece received a grand prize medal at the 1929 Exposición Internacional de Barcelona, where several furnished the Danish Pavilion, a structure that a visitor described as “shapely and unpretentious”. It is an observation that could just as easily be used to describe Klint’s famous seat. Irwin and Lane’s Rød Chair, recently acquired from the private collection of an art dealer, is a 1930s example graced with profiled legs as well as beautifully aged original upholstery. On the underside of the seat can be found a Rud. Rasmussens Snedkerier paper label (serial number 14577), as well as the ghost of Klint’s monogrammed round paper label.

35 × 22 4/5 × 22 in | 89 × 58 × 56 cm less