Bruno Mathsson

Bruno Mathsson (13 January 1907 – 17 August 1988) was a Swedish architect and furniture designer whose ideas aligned with functionalism, modernism, as well as the Swedish crafts tradition.^[1]

Biography

Mathsson was raised in the town of Värnamo in the Småland region of Sweden, the son of a master cabinet maker.^[2] After a short time of education in school, he started to work in his father's gallery. He soon found a great interest in furniture and especially chairs, their function and design. In the 1920s and 30s he developed a techniques for building bentwood chairs with hemp webbing. The first model, called the Grasshopper, was used at Värnamo Hospital in 1931.^[3]

Edgar Kaufmann Jr., director of the Industrial Design Department at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), collected Mathsson's chairs and included them in several exhibitions in the 1940s.^[4] Kaufmann considered Mathsson's importance in furniture design on par with that of Alvar Aalto.^[5] Kaufmann and his family also had a Mathsson chair at their house Fallingwater.^[6]

Mathsson was also an accomplished architect; he completed about 100 structures in the 1940s and 50s.^[7] He was the first architect in Sweden to build all-glass structures with heated floors. His furniture showroom in Värnamo (1950) was a significant example; it is well-preserved and open to the public today. For his glass houses, he developed double- and triple-pane insulated glass units called "Bruno-Pane".^[8]

He traveled extensively in the United States and was strongly influenced by the solar houses of George Fred Keck. Mathsson's architecture was also influenced by a visit to the Eames House by Charles and Ray Eames in March 1949 just as it was being completed.^[1]

Works

Furniture

Grasshopper (1931)
Mimat (1932)
Pernilla (1934)
The Eva Chair (1935)
Folding table (1935)
Paris Daybed (1937)
Swivel chair (1939-1940)
Pernilla Lounge
Jetson Chair
Super-Ellipse™ table series, with Piet Hein (1966)
Annika nesting tables (1968)
The Karin chair (1969)^[9]
Milton Swivel chair (1975)

Architecture

Bruno Mathsson furniture showroom, Värnamo (1950)
house at Danderyd (1955)
Villa Prenker, Kungsör (1955)
Kosta Glassworks exhibition hall and worker's residences (Kosta Glashus [sv]), Kosta (1956)
weekend cottage at Frösakull (1960)
- "one of the most daring examples of his glass houses."^[3]
Södrakull, outside Värnamo (1965)^[10]

References

^ ^a ^b Widman, Dag; Winter, Karin; Stritzler-Levine, Nina (2006). Bruno Mathsson: architect and designer. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300121919.
^ "About Bruno Mathsson". Bruno Mathsson International AB. Archived from the original on 2020-08-08. Retrieved 2019-04-20.
^ ^a ^b "Bruno Mathsson: Architect and Designer, Past Exhibition, March 22 – June 10, 2007". Bard Graduate Center.
^ "Bruno Mathsson". Museum of Modern Art.
^ Kaufmann Jr., Edgar (1947). "Modern rooms of the last fifty years" (PDF). Museum of Modern Art.
^ "The Fallingwater Collection".
^ Christiansson, Carl E. (1966). "Bruno Mathsson: Furniture/Structures/Ideas". Design Quarterly. 65 (65): 1–2, 5–31. doi:10.2307/4047313. JSTOR 4047313.
^ Kiss, Bernadett; Neij, Lena (2011). "The importance of learning when supporting emergent technologies for energy efficiency: A case study on policy intervention for learning for the development of energy efficient windows in Sweden". Energy Policy. 39 (10): 6514–6524. doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2011.07.053.
^ "Bruno Mathsson". Duxiana. Duxiana. Retrieved 2 May 2024.
^ Xie, Jenny (December 5, 2017). "Swedish Designer Bruno Mathsson's Home Is a Perfect Midcentury Time Capsule". Dwell magazine.