Bruno Mathsson

Designed in 1931 for Värnamo hospital.

When a decision was made to expand Värnamo Hospital, Bruno Mathsson saw an opportunity to contribute to the environment with modern furniture. How the dialogue unfolded is unknown. But it ended with Bruno receiving his first order for the women's clinic from the chief physician Gunnar Vidfelt, to design a small, simple, lightweight chair to be placed at the foot of each bed and to serve for nursing. The chair was named BB.
Bruno, who had been following the development of international modernism in furniture design through architecture and design magazines he borrowed from the Röhsska Museum's library, was surely aware that Alvar Aalto was designing the new hospital in Pemar, from the building to the smallest detail like door handles. The hospital's furniture was part of the commission, and it was important that they were easy to clean – to disinfect. Tuberculosis was the scourge of the time. Bruno had seen Axel Larsson's chair with a seat and back of woven saddle strap at the Stockholm Exhibition and studied Aalto's experiments with creating soft forms using laminated wood. He had also followed Marcel Breuer's development of using metal, bending tubes in load-bearing structures, but he decided to proceed with laminated wood.
The hospital's small visitor chair, with its finely curved backrest in solid wood, featured a seat woven from saddle strap. How he then persuaded Vidfelt to also order more comfortable visitor chairs, the future Grasshopper, is not known. But he moved on and worked with a laminated wood frame that supports a seat curve in the shape of a saddle strap hammock. The finishing wooden frame of the backrest has the same shape as the small chair's backrest. The chair was delivered, but the staff, according to legend, were horrified, did not understand his modern design language, and it was long relegated to the attic's storage. When he later became famous in the late 1930s, the chairs were allowed to return.

-Hedvig Hedqvist.