Florinda chairs by DePadova

Monica Förster has created some fantastic contemporary products for companies such as Modus, Poltrona Frau, Cappellini and De Padova. Based in Stockholm her work has a strong sense of pure form mixed with a never-ending curiosity for new materials and technology.

The Florinda chair, designed in 2011, is a mixture of beech wood and plastic combined in a simple shape that was conceived to erase the boundaries between zones, and lends itself to a wide range of different interpretations: from the dining area to the home studio, it can also easily adapt to restaurants, cafes and public areas, due to its contemporary look and versatility.

Bend Seating

Bend Seating was founded by Gaurav Nanda, a designer and entrepreneur. Gaurav always loved to create. As a kid growing up in the suburbs of Detroit, Gaurav would find himself building something, joining something, or bending something, whether it be constructing a teepee, painting with oils, or throwing pots. Once he made a screen printing machine, where he built a frame, stencil, and got a squeegee to pass paint thru. It was to mark the beginning of his t-shirt printing business. Needless to say, he gave it up for bigger and better things. Today Gaurav is doing the same thing. He is creating.

Jon Harrison’s ash kitchen chair

There are often interesting looking objects around the office, from chairs, to lamps, to tables and sometimes large mattresses make their way in to the reception.

Something that caught my eye was the ash kitchen chair from designer Jon Harrison. His website is surely a minimalist delight, although slightly more than comfortable as it appears to be missing any information about his chair.

Designed for his Royal College of Art show in 2008, the ash kitchen chair has yet to be manufactured. Made from a Corian base and back, the ash frame works really well against this modern material.

I hope that it does make it into production, at an affordable price as this chair could really take the place of many other chairs of this ilk. Jon Harrison certainly has a talent for producing products that are well thought out that, as consumers, we need.

Air chair by Jasper Morrison

When asked why he had selected the Air chair for the Design Museum’s 25/25 exhibition a few years back, Dieter Rams replied “I like it. Plain and simple.”

In these few precise words, Rams, who has been at the forefront of industrial and product design since the early 1950s, captured the laconic spirit of Jasper Morrison’s ascetically elegant, gas injected polypropylene chair.

Morrison began work on his stackable Air chair in 1999 when Alberto Perazza, the owner of Magis in Italy, showed him a length of tube made by gas injection, a plastic moulding technology widely in use in the car component industry. The process involves inert gas being pumped through the hollow centres of still-molten plastic inside a mould, creating enough pressure to ensure the plastic does not shrink away from the mould’s surface. The tooling is expensive, but allows for complex and aesthetically challenging forms that production runs allow for low unit costs, democratising sophisticated design by making it affordable.

My favourite thing about this chair is that everyone can afford it, and so everyone buys it. I have seen it in Cornwall coastal restaurants to Design Museum events and it takes on its surroundings with much ease… which must be why Rams likes the chair so much – much like his products they fit in with your life rather than the other way around. I love it!

You can pick up one of these wonderful chairs for approximately £85 from mydeco.com.

Jens Risom by Benchmark and Rocket

One of the first designers to bring the traditional Scandinavian values of function and craftsmanship to the United States was designer Jens Risom. As part of a new vanguard that helped establish post-war America’s leadership role in the world of modern furniture design and manufacturing, Risom (born in Copenhagen in 1916) was highly influenced by his award-winning architect-father who encouraged Jens to pursue academic studies in business and contemporary design.

After completing two years at the Business College of Niels Brock in Copenhagen, Risom worked briefly for Danish architect Ernst Kuhn and he created several furniture designs for Gustav Weinreich.

You can read more about Jens Risom at Wikipedia.

At 94, Risom has collaborated with Rocket gallery and Benchmark, who have jointly secured the European rights to reissue his 1950s and 1960s furniture designs.

This first collection of nine pieces has been creatively directed by Jonathan Stephenson of Rocket and made by Sean Sutcliffe and Terence Conran’s Benchmark Furniture company in their Dorset and Berkshire workshops – with the close involvement of Risom himself.

Risom has also worked for Ralph Pucci to create a collection of furniture… this work is an evolution of Risom’s work and it is clear to see that as needs have changed in design, so has this designers work.

Still with some of his signatures but with a greater amount of upholstery and cushioning, these pieces are suitable for today’s homes.