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Price category: 5,000 - 7,500 usd / eur

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As one of his country’s most distinguished furniture designers, Bruno Mathsson gained an international reputation for Swedish design, thus his work of over 50 years has become a significant contribution to Sweden’s design history.

Mathsson was an advocate of simplicity, beauty, and elegance in form, which also applied to the furniture he designed, including this table model “Mi 759”. His furniture was innovative in technique as well as design, similarly to his production methods. Deservedly regarded as a master of the functionalist language, Mathsson designed this cleft legged dining table model in 1948. The stained beech structure consists of four tapered and cleft legs connected by a cross stretcher at the top. The elaborate structure supports the circular top that showcases the pattern of the wood beautifully. From a young age, Mathsson was fascinated by the challenge of designing functional furniture combined with high technical quality, and it was the ideas of the functionalist movement that were to inspire him. Infamously, in search of the perfect seating curve he sat in a snow-drift to study the imprint his body had made. Resulting from his extreme care for functionality, his pieces are perfectly measured and crafted with impeccable quality. Mathsson and Eric Ljung from DUX met in the 1950s and began a close and creative partnership in the 1960s. Mathsson devoted much of his time to research and development with an uncompromising commitment to form and function.

Although his designs are from the 30s and 40s, his models like this “Mi 759” dining table are among the classic furniture of our time. Thanks to his uncompromising attitude towards quality, his designs and innovations are now widely acclaimed as timeless modern classics.

Condition:

In good vintage condition. Wear consistent with age and use. Some marks and scratches on the wood.

Dimensions:

55.9 in Ø x 27.36 in H

142 cm Ø x 69.5 cm H

About the designer:

Bruno Mathsson (13 January 1907 – 17 August 1988) was a Swedish furniture designer and architect whose ideas aligned with functionalism, modernism, as well as old Swedish crafts tradition.

Mathsson was raised in the town of Värnamo in the Småland region of Sweden, the son of a master cabinetmaker. After a short time of education in school, he started to work in his father's gallery. He soon found a great interest in furniture and especially chairs, their function, and design. In the 1920s and 30s he developed techniques for building bentwood chairs with hemp webbing. The first model, called the “Grasshopper”, was used at Värnamo Hospital from 1931. Edgar Kaufmann Jr., director of the Industrial Design Department at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), collected Mathsson's chairs and included them in several exhibitions in the 1940s. Kaufmann considered Mathsson's importance in furniture design on par with that of Alvar Aalto.

Mathsson was also an accomplished architect; he completed about 100 structures during the 1940s and 50s. He was the first architect in Sweden to build all-glass structures with heated floors. During the 1960s, Bruno Mathsson returned to creating furniture producing a wide range of designs in both wood and steel. Together with the Danish poet and mathematician Piet Hein, he developed the Superellipse table and the Spanleg.

On his return to Sweden from his worldwide travels, the tireless Bruno Mathsson continued designing. He had won such worldwide recognition that on his return to New York to exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in 1978, the New York Times wrote a headline "Bruno is back". During his lifetime he was awarded a number of distinctions including the Gregor Paulssons-statyette (1955), Prince Eugens gold medal (1965), Knight of the Royal Swedish Order of the Wasa (1967), member of The Royal Society of Art, London (1978), and was assigned the title ‘professor’ by the Swedish government (1981).