Although Sigurd Lewerentz is less known outside of his native Sweden, within Scandinavia he is now recognized as one of Sweden’s most important architects of the early to mid-twentieth century. His oeuvre included homes, cemeteries, churches, exposition and graphic design, interior furnishings, and commercial buildings and their industrial fittings. Most notably, he collaborated on competition entries with Gunnar Asplund, a fellow student at the Klara School. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the two won many commissions and went on to design seminal projects.

 

One of Lewerentz’s most significant buildings is the 1932 Riksrevisionsverket (Swedish National Insurance Board Building) designed in the Swedish Functionalist style. In 1928 Lewerentz began the design process for the building, with a classical exterior and more Modernist interior. By the time it was coming to realization, the effects of the 1929 stock market crash in the United States were being felt globally, and Lewerentz’s expensive materials and detailing for the interiors and their furnishings were cut and replaced by more modest designs.¹

 

Lewerentz designed this Armchair for the director general’s office and at least one meeting room.² Lewerentz had begun designing furniture as early as the 1910s in the classical style using veneers to express quality and luxury. By 1925 he was designing furniture for commissions such as the Resurrection Chapel at the Woodland Cemetery in Stockholm (1925). These designs ranged from purely functionalist chairs for the chapel to higher-style, classical, throne-like chairs for clergymen and decorative pieces for the mourner’s room. A 1929 proposal for an exhibition poster for the 1930 Stockholm Exhibition depicted, among images of architecture and transportation, a series of housewares that included five chairs ranging from the traditional to Art Deco to modern functionalist styles. Interestingly, the form of one of those chairs closely resembles the Riksrevisionsverket Armchair, though without the crossbars.

 

Lewerentz’s armchair was produced for the project by Gemla, one of Sweden’s oldest and most revered furniture manufacturers. It was not otherwise placed in production, perhaps due to its unusual style, which had one foot in classicism and the other in the prevailing functionalist of the time. It is unknown how many of these armchairs were made for the Riksrevisionsverket, but they were in use until the 1960s, when they were sold or given away to employees.³ —Cindi Strauss