Some chairs are made simply to be used. Others change the way we sit — and the way we inhabit a room. The Wooden armchair belongs to the latter. It begins not with a formal gesture, but with the body. At the same time, it is as much a piece of furniture as it is a place in its own right.
Large, but light. Simple, but never simplistic. A piece that holds contradictions.
A chair sits closer to the body than most of the objects we live with. Our relationship to it is shaped less by appearance than by how it feels to use. The Wooden armchair begins there. It is designed around bodily experience — where support is needed, where resistance occurs, and how the body is allowed to move.
The aim is not to create one ideal posture, but to allow sitting to remain varied over time. The form does not follow an image, but an experience. That is where the design begins.
The Wooden armchair holds a number of contradictions.
It is embracing, but never enclosing. Generous in scale, yet visually light.
It can appear almost ceremonial — like a throne — while still settling naturally into a room. The distinctive spindle back is central to this balance. It supports the body while allowing light and sightlines to pass through. You sit in the chair, but also within the room around it.
The ambition was never to reject complexity, but to hold it together in one piece.
The chair is crafted from solid wood — oak or beech — alongside natural materials.
Beneath the seat, layers of webbing, hemp, linen, horsehair and cotton create a structure that supports rather than collapses. It gradually adapts in response to the body.
The finish shapes the way the chair meets the hand. Soap and oil allow the wood to change slowly over time. Egg oil tempera settles as a matte layer that remains open and alive.
What emerges over time is not wear, but depth.
The Wooden armchair is tall, almost architectural in its silhouette.
The back legs rise straight through the construction, forming a clear frame alongside the armrests. Arriving at this simplicity was one of the greatest challenges — something that appears self-evident, yet remains structurally precise. In a room, the chair acts almost as a vertical marker, like branches rising among lower surfaces. It occupies space without closing off to the room around it.
It is not an object that demands attention, but a presence felt in the way it quietly holds a space together.
The Wooden armchair existed as an idea long before it became a finished chair. The first sketch was drawn in 1992, but several years passed before production began in 1995. It was not a solution arrived at quickly, but something that slowly took shape over time.
Nor is it quite finished once it leaves the workshop. It continues to evolve through use — in the body, in the materials, and in the room around it. It can be cared for, adjusted and renewed. Surfaces can be restored, textiles replaced. At Norrgavel, furniture can also be returned to the workshop in Lammhult for repainting, reupholstering or restoration.
Over time, something emerges that could never have been added at the beginning — not character applied, but character formed.
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With time, the Wooden armchair becomes less an object than a place.
A place to land. A place to return to.
