This collection is the Swedish architect Sigurd Lewerentz’s last work, completed merely a year before his death in 1975. Although intended for serial production, only a handful of copies were initially made. The design of the chair emerged from a mock-up Lewerentz developed some ten years earlier, for testing out the ergonomics of his brick benches in the St. Peter’s Church in Klippan. The table resembles the design for the doors developed some fifteen years earlier, for the St. Mark’s Church in Björkhagen.

Lewerentz’s collaboration with the producer, the glulam manufacturer Töreboda limträ AB, had started at the middle of the century and became intensified during the construction of St. Mark’s Church in Björkhagen. Without the close relationship between the architect and the company, the collection would probably never have seen the light of the day. Important support was also provided by Bernt Nyberg, architect and close partner to Lewerentz during the final phase of his life.

The original collection was made of varnished glulam (pine) and painted steel (tomato red). Tallum provides the original version, and a version made in electroplated steel.

Shop the collection here.

Sigurd Lewerentz’s (1885–1975) oeuvre spans almost seven decades. Born in Bjärtrå in northern Sweden, Lewerentz studied architecture at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, followed by a period of apprenticeship in Germany. After settling in Stockholm, he opened his first studio in 1911. The breakthrough came in 1915 when he, together with Gunnar Asplund, won the first prize in the International Architecture Competition for the design of a new cemetery in Stockholm (Woodland Cemetery). On his own, Lewerentz designed the Neoclassical Resurrection Chapel (1925), and he was also responsible for much of the site planning and landscaping.

For the 1930 Stockholm Exhibition, Lewerentz designed such various things as housing, furniture, and graphics. In addition, he presented high-end door and window units made from metal under the brand Idesta. The most important project from the functionalist phase was, however, the National Insurance Board Building (1932). Just a few years later his “white period” was over, and he began to develop an architecture of pronounced materiality, manifest in Villa Edstrand in Falsterbo (1937). A similar emphasis on materiality, but with more subtle detailing, characterizes the chapels St. Knut and St. Gertrud at the Eastern Cemetery in Malmö (1943). The Malmö City Theatre (1944), Lewerentz designed in collaboration with David Helldén and Erik Lallerstedt.

At the end of his life, Lewerentz completed two unique brick churches that earned him international fame: St. Mark’s Church in Björkhagen (1960) and St. Peter’s Church in Klippan (1966). At the age of 84 he finished his last building, the iconic Flower Kiosk at the Eastern Cemetery in Malmö (1969).