Design|April 2025
The simplicity of the Skedblad chair
The wooden Skedblad chair is a distinctive and quickly recognisable feature of our cafés and store furnishings. Designed in 1933 by Carl Malmsten, one of the most well-known furniture designers and interior architects in the Nordics, the chair is as simple as can be, consisting of only six pieces, with a soft, oval backrest resembling the bowl of a spoon.
A self-taught designer, Carl Malmsten’s ideal was an organic style based on Swedish nature, local materials, and traditional crafts, and he often drew inspiration from historic models.
He highlighted the importance of the home as ‘an intimate place for gathering and repose’ and was a firm critic of the new functionalist principles of his time. But in retrospect, Malmsten played a central role in shaping the aesthetics and functionality of modern Swedish design, as well as the notion of beautiful everyday goods accessible to a wider audience.
Combining simplicity with timeless elegance and meticulous attention to detail, his Skedblad chair was a reinterpretation of a rustic, hand-carved folk design, originally made from lightweight pine.
Today’s version was revived from the archives exclusively for ARKET in 2017, now rendered in solid oak at Tre Sekel in Tibro, a centre for woodworking and furniture design in the southwest of Sweden. For us, it embodies the idea of everyday beauty and stands as proof of the longevity of good design.
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