Jens Risom’s influential, simple design continues to impress

One of mid-century modern's founding fathers, Jens Risom, died last month aged 100. While not as well known as others working at the time such as Charles and Ray Eames, the Danish-born furniture designer was one of the first to bring a pared back, blond-wood Scandinavian aesthetic to the US. The son of an architect, he studied at the Copenhagen School of Industrial Arts and Design. He then worked in small design studios in his home country followed by a move to the US aged 23 in 1939. By 1943 he had designed the lounge chair that would help make his name. Manufactured by Knoll – he helped establish the influential company with Hans Knoll – it is a testament to wartime austerity. The original version was made of a cherry frame – factory off-cuts – with the seat and back made from discarded parachute webbing, waste from the many parachute factories. Risom described his first range of furniture, of which the lounge chair is just one piece, as "very basic, very simple, inexpensive, easy to make". The designs became an instant success not least because wartime restrictions had impacted hugely on the supply of new furniture and consumers in the US were hungry for new products. The New York Times in 1943 reported how the thoroughly modern Risom chair was "prefabricated furniture … the latest output of a streamlined manufacturing system born of war. The influential Risom Lounge Chair – it has spawned many imitators – is still in production.