Side Chair by Martino Gamper for Mundus, 2000s

This chair, along with two other models, was commissioned by The Conran Shop in 2008 to the designer Martino Gamper for The London Design Festival and for the shops ”Inspirations Collection”. It´s made of bentwood. The title of this particular model is ”Back Of The Chairs”. The design process was that Gamper did go to the Thonet factory in Mundus, Croatia and was given a pile of old parts from well known Thonet models and then reinterpret the classic Thonet bentwood chair by reassembling those parts to make three new models. After that, Thonet took those examples and produced these three models to be displayed at The Conran Shop in London, Paris, and Tokyo. This was not a true so-called Limited Edition but could only be bought when ordering them directly from one of the Conran shops at this particular time. After contacting The Conran Shop they confirm that a very limited number of these chairs were ever produced for customers and they estimated that around 10-15 pieces of each model may have been ordered at the time. This example was bought and ordered from The Conran Shop in Paris in 2008.

Gamper had, before this project, made quite an impact on the contemporary design scene with his highly acclaimed ”100 chairs in 100 days” concept where he re-designed 100 famous and infamous chairs in 100 days by taking them apart and reassemble them in new and surprising ways by mixing parts from different chairs so the end product was completely different.

The chair is in a very good condition with minimal wear. These chairs were never intended to use as real chairs to be sat on but should rather be seen as a sculpture or work of art. Perfect for a museum or a collector.