Harry Bertoia & Gunnar Aagaard Andersen in collaboration at A fold of chairs
The latest chair to be added to our collection is Harry Bertoia’s iconic Bird Chair for Knoll, designed in 1952, upholstered in an extraordinary graphic textile by Gunnar Aagaard Andersen. The fabric was originally designed in 1955 and has more recently been reissued by Kvadrat.
The two brought together in this way feels like a surprisingly natural collaboration. Although Bertoia and Andersen were working on opposite sides of the world. Bertoia primarily in the America and Andersen in Denmark, their approaches to design and art were remarkably similar. Both moved fluidly between disciplines, treating furniture, sculpture, textiles and fine art with the same visual approach. I’ve no idea whether they ever met or were aware of one another’s work, but it’s difficult to imagine they wouldn’t have appreciated each other’s way of thinking.
Harry Bertoia reclining on a bird chair
Harry Bertoia (1915-1978) was born in San Lorenzo, Italy, before emigrating to Detroit with his family as a teenager. He studied at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, where he became part of an extraordinary creative circle that included Charles and Ray Eames, Florence Knoll and Eero Saarinen. Although now best known for his wire seating collection for Knoll of which this Bird chair was part, Bertoia always considered himself an artist and sculptor first. His furniture designs translated sculptural ideas into functional objects using thin industrial steel rods bent into light, seemingly transparent structures that played with shadow and space. The Diamond Chair and Bird Chair remain some of the most recognisable designs of the twentieth century.
The diamond chair, Harry Bertoia for Knoll International (1952)
Following the commercial success of the Knoll collection, Bertoia largely stepped away from furniture design and returned his focus to sculpture.
Untitled (Monumental Wire Construction) Harry Bertoia 1965.
His later works included monumental metal pieces and “sonambient” sculptures, sounding metal rods designed to create tones and vibrations through movement and touch. Even in these later works, you can clearly see the same thinking that shaped the chairs - rhythm, repetition, openness and structure.
Gunnar Aagaard Andersen
Gunnar Aagaard Andersen (1919-1982) was born in Orhus, Denmark, and originally trained as a painter. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts before later spending time in Paris, where he became involved with post war concrete and abstract art movements. Like Bertoia, Andersen resisted being confined to a single discipline. Across his career he worked as a painter, sculptor, textile designer, architect and furniture designer, moving easily between applied and fine arts.
Gunnar Aagaard Andersen, untitled, 1951, oil on canvas
His work often explored geometry, modularity and colour, but there is always warmth and movement within it. The textile used on this chair demonstrates that perfectly. Bold graphic forms arranged in an abstract not rigid format. Alongside textiles and paintings, Andersen also designed furniture for companies including PP Møbler. His bentwood stool designs and woven leather seating pieces have the same sculptural essence found in his paintings and constructions.
Square easy chair by Gunnar Aagaard Andersen (1980)
Ash stool by Gunnar Aagaard Andersen for PP Møbler (1980)
What connects both designers for me is the way they approached objects as spatial experiments rather than just products. Their work sits somewhere between art and utility. The Bird Chair already feels sculptural in its structure, but upholstered in Andersen’s graphic textile it becomes something else again. I think it’s a wonderful meeting of two creative minds.
The Bird chair is available to view in store and online now.
