Bruno Mathsson

Bruno Mathsson (13 January 1907 – 17 August 1988) was a Swedish architect and furniture designer whose ideas aligned with functionalism, modernism, as well as the Swedish crafts tradition.¹

Mathsson was raised in the town of Värnamo in the Småland region of Sweden, the son of a master cabinet maker.² 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 a technique for building bentwood chairs with hemp webbing. The first model, called the Grasshopper, was used at Värnamo Hospital in 1931.³

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.⁴ Kaufmann considered Mathsson's importance in furniture design on par with that of Alvar Aalto.⁵ Kaufmann and his family also had a Mathsson chair at their house Fallingwater.⁶

Mathsson was also an accomplished architect; he completed about 100 structures in the 1940s and 50s.⁷ He was the first architect in Sweden to build all-glass structures with heated floors. His furniture showroom in Värnamo (1950) was a significant example; it is well-preserved and open to the public today. For his glass houses, he developed double- and triple-pane insulated glass units called "Bruno-Pane".⁸

He travelled extensively in the United States and was strongly influenced by the solar houses of George Fred Keck. Mathsson's architecture was also influenced by a visit to the Eames House by Charles and Ray Eames in March 1949, just as it was being completed.¹

• Grasshopper (1931)
• Mimat (1932)
• Pernilla (1934)
• The Eva Chair (1935)
• Folding table (1935)
• Paris Daybed (1937)
• Swivel chair (1939-1940)
• Pernilla Lounge
• Jetson Chair
• Super-Ellipse™ table series, with Piet Hein⁹ (1966)
• Annika nesting tables (1968)
• The Karin chair (1969)¹⁰
• Milton Swivel chair (1975)

• Bruno Mathsson furniture showroom, Värnamo (1950)
• house at Danderyd (1955)
• Villa Prenker, Kungsör (1955)
• Kosta Glassworks exhibition hall and worker's residences (Kosta Glashus), Kosta (1956)
• weekend cottage at Frösakull (1960)
  • "one of the most daring examples of his glass houses."³
• Södrakull, outside Värnamo (1965)¹¹