Item Description
A Gispen model no.412 armchair designed by Willem H. Gispen for his company Willem Hendrik Gispen’s Fabriek voor Metaalbewerking N.V. This is one of the most comfortable armchairs ever designed, partly thanks to the floating seat design. Upholstered in the original slightly faded ribcord. Marked.
Willem Hendrik Gispen (7 December 1890, in Amsterdam – 10 May 1981, in The Hague) was a Dutch industrial designer, best known for his Giso lamps and serially produced functionalist steel-tube furniture. He studied design at the Academy for Visual Arts and Technical Science in Rotterdam (Academie van Beeldende Kunsten en Technische Wetenschappen) at the architecture department. In 1916 he founded Gispen’s Factory for Metalwork (Gispen’s fabriek voor metaalbewerking n.v.). The success of the company was to a great extent based upon the qualities of Willem Hendrik Gispen as an industrial designer, designing many artistically en technically qualitative lamps and furniture. Many of these serial produced designs, like armchair no. 412, still belong to the highlights of Dutch design. With his Giso lamp-designs from the 1920s and 1930s he was a part of the international avant-garde interested in light innovations. The same can be said of his steel-tube chairs and furniture, with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Mart Stam and Gerrit Rietveld among his inspirations.
