Tired Man chair: a classic reinvigorated
Flemming Lassen's Tired Man chair by Flemming Lassen is a robust and characterful piece of design. Find out more about the design in the twentytwentyone Journal.
Tired Man chair: a classic reinvigorated
Despite its name, the Tired Man chair is a robust and characterful piece of design that is currently enjoying something of a resurgence.
This charismatic and capacious easy chair was designed by Danish architect and designer Flemming Lassen, who submitted it for the Copenhagen Cabinetmakers’ Guild Competition in 1935. Born in 1902, Lassen was at the vanguard of the Danish modern movement, working alongside Arne Jacobsen on projects such as the pioneering House of the Future and Søllerød Town Hall.
But this dedicated follower of the International Style clearly had a softer side, describing his intention to design a chair that would make its occupant feel “as warm and safe as a polar bear cub in the arms of its mother in the middle of the ice cap.”
An immediate success on its initial launch, the Tired Man chair has been consistently recognised as a landmark in modern chair design.
In 2014, a Tired Man chair upholstered in lambskin was sold at auction in Denmark for more than 190,000 euros, becoming the most expensive chair ever sold at auction in that country.
Now, 80 years after it was first designed, the Tired Man has been relaunched by Danish company by Lassen – the family-run company dedicated to preserving the design legacy of Flemming Lassen and his brother Mogens, an equally talented designer.
And in a twist that Flemming Lassen would doubtless appreciate, the reissued Tired Man chair has just been shortlisted in the Comeback of the Year category at the 2015 Danish Design Awards.
Of course, many would argue that this icon of Danish design never really went away.
The Tired Man chair is on display at twentytwentyone’s River Street showroom and can be purchased online.
