Bruno Mathsson

Master of the ergonomic chair.

Bruno Mathsson from Värnamo designed bentwood chairs shaped to the body, such as Eva and Pernilla.

Bruno Mathsson was born in 1907 in Värnamo in Småland into a family of cabinetmakers. He was apprenticed in his father's workshop and had no higher education, but he read widely about architecture and design and followed the modern movement in Europe.

Mathsson was fascinated by the way people sit. He studied the shape and movements of the body and wanted to make chairs that were comfortable without thick upholstery. In 1931 he designed the Grasshopper chair for Värnamo Hospital. A few years later came Eva, a chair of bent, laminated beech with a seat and back of woven webbing. It showed how a light, inexpensive material could be shaped to fit the body.

His breakthrough came with an exhibition at the Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg in 1936. His furniture also attracted international attention, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired his work. Among his best-known pieces are the Pernilla lounge chair from the 1940s, as well as tables and beds in the same simple, light style.

After the Second World War he turned to architecture and designed glass houses with underfloor heating and large windows, including some in Värnamo. In the 1960s he worked with the Danish mathematician and poet Piet Hein on tables with a superelliptical shape, a form between a circle and a rectangle.

Bruno Mathsson died in 1988. His furniture is still made in Värnamo. He is regarded as one of the Swedish designers who made the concept of Scandinavian design known around the world and as a pioneer of ergonomic furniture design.

• Scandinavian design and mid-century
• The post-war era and Concretism