Flemming Lassen Sets World Record

We have just completed this autumn’s international auction in Bredgade. On offer on the last night of the auction was Nordic design – including the upholstered chair "The Tired Man", designed in 1935 by architect Flemming Lassen and made by cabinetmaker A.J. Iversen. The chair was valued at DKK 500,000, but reached a hammer price of DKK 1.42 million, thereby becoming the most expensive designer chair ever sold in Denmark. The hammer price also set a world record for furniture by Flemming Lassen.

Dad’s Chair

It was not only here at Bruun Rasmussen that Monday evening, when the chair was sold in Bredgade, turned out to be quite nerve-wracking. The gentleman who with some sadness had decided to put the chair up for auction a couple of months earlier followed the auction closely:

”It made my hair stand on end when the bidding war for my chair continued, and I had never imagined that it would achieve such a high hammer price. In my childhood home, my dad would sit in this chair every evening, when he came home from work tired. Over the years, I have also grown to like these upholstered pieces of furniture, and it is fun for me to see the renaissancethey are experiencing these years.”

The chair has been in the family since the 1950’s. His parents had a passion for soft upholstered furniture and bought just about all their furniture directly from cabinetmaker A.J. Iversen. The childhood home was therefore populated by, for example, Viggo Boesen’s ”The Little Petra” and this copy of Flemming Lassen’s  ”The Tired Man” – furniture which even back then was a costly affair. ”It was therefore not a home, where you would play football or eat chocolate sandwiches in the living room”, explains the happy seller. 

A Polar Bear Cub Held by its Mother

According to Flemming Lassen himself, the aim of the chair was for the person sitting in it to feel "like a polar bear cub held by its mother in the middle of the ice cap feeling warm and safe”. It was originally designed for the Joiners’ Guild Exhibition in 1935, and because of its heaviness and soft upholstery out of sheepskin, the chair comes across as an almost ironic comment on the light and stringent contemporary furniture designs. Today, the chair is considered an iconic design classic from the mid-1930’s, and is a rare guest on the auction market. 

An International Name

There is no doubt that Flemming Lassen was one of the most forward-looking Danish architects, and when the prices on his pieces skyrocket on the auction market today, it is due to the fact that his name also has a resonance for international collectors. Characteristic for his furniture are the soft, organic shapes, which may be described as being in the tension field between international modernism and Nordic humanism. The most famous pieces are ”The Tired Man” and its partner ”The Hussar”, which was also designed in 1935. Many people have, however, only become familiar with his idiom over the past year, as his pieces have been sold at extremely high prices.