Delivered to the door

The chairs in the studio were chosen from a Gispen catalogue. Like the majority of the furniture and lamps in the house, they were mass-produced and delivered to the door. The family made a selection from Gispen catalogue no. 52, issued in 1933. The range of basic items of furniture in the catalogue was still relatively limited. The interior drawings show these ‘old models’ but the family eventually selected items from the new catalogue, no. 52, which came out in 1934.

The Gispen chair exhibits great similarities to the B302 swivel chair designed by Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999), Pierre Jeanneret (1896-1967) and Le Corbusier (1887-1965) a few years earlier. Charlotte Perriand designed the prototype of this tubular-steel chair in 1927 before she met Le Corbusier and started working in his office. The chair was first used in the apartment in Paris she designed for herself and her husband. In 1928 it was presented as a dining chair at the Salon des Artistes Decorateurs. The chair is upholstered with peau de peche fabric, which was quite a difficult task: because there was no way to fix the tubular backrest to the frame, it had the tendency to slip and lose its shape.

W.H. Gispen, Office chair no. 353, 1933, collection Het Nieuwe Instituut