Bohlin’s concrete chair

One of the highlights of this summer’s furniture auction is no. 12 of Jonas Bohlin’s “Concrete” chair, one of a limited edition of only 100 ever produced.

A provocative breakthrough

Jonas Bohlin (b. 1953) is a qualified interior designer, and “Concrete” was presented as part of his graduation project in the Konstfacksskolen graduation exhibition in 1981. With this, Bohlin’s name was “set in concrete” in the international design world, because this provocative chair kick-started a debate that continued well into the 1990s. The question was: Should a piece of furniture have a function?

One thing is for sure: Bohlin’s chair is not comfortable to sit in. It is made of two concrete slabs surrounded by a steel tube. It crosses the line between sculpture and furniture by breaking free from the functional demands to which furniture design has forever been subject. Quite simply, it jars with the conventional perception of a piece of furniture. 

Although the chair was the talk of the town back then, it did not sell. The general public simply were not asking for “Concrete”. For that, the chair looked too complicated and only had limited utility value for sitting in. Sven Lundh, owner of the renowned furniture company Källemo of Småland, Sweden, once remarked:

“We put one out on the street overnight, and it was still there in the morning.”

1980s icon

Paradoxically, however, “Concrete” assumed classic status from the outset. This is the piece of furniture most likely to spring to mind when people cast their minds back to the furniture design of the 1980s. It distils the essence of the emancipation and playful approach to design of that decade. Bohlin later wrote this about his chair: 

“Concrete. My first piece of furniture. There’s no getting away from it, even twenty years on. A balancing act of structure and geometry; an encounter of mind and matter”.

It cannot be put any more elegantly than that, and Bruun Rasmussen is marking the 30th anniversary of this ground-breaking chair as it goes under the hammer in the afternoon auction on Thursday 9 June at 2 pm, at Bredgade 33, Copenhagen.