Child's chair, 'Lilla m', moulded laminated birch wood, painted red, designed by Caroline Schlyter in Stockholm in 1990, manufactured by Forsnäs Form AB in Sweden in 2006.

This child’s chair is made from a single piece of laminated birch plywood, moulded into the shape of an abstracted letter ‘m’. The whole chair is painted in ‘fire engine red’.

Given by Jan-Erik Ekblom

Caroline Schlyter is a Swedish artist/designer. Born in Stockholm in 1961, she first studied fine arts, then specialised in sculpture at Konstfack (University of Arts, Crafts and Design) and Kungl. Konsthögskolan (Royal Institute of Art) in Sweden. Working across a variety of fields including sculpture and installation, Schlyter is perhaps best known for her furniture.

'Lilla h', the archetype of the children’s chair 'Lilla m', was created during the first years of Schlyter’s Master’s studies in sculpture, when she was given an assignment to design a three-dimensional work with reference to a letter of the alphabet. Selecting the letter ‘h’, she made h-shaped models in diverse materials (e.g. wood, paper, fibre-glass and metal), and the general resemblance of an ‘h’ to a chair inspired her to create letters that can be sat on.

Fascinated by the idea of moulding furniture in wood, Schlyter designed the children’s chair 'Lilla m' using a single piece of laminated birch veneer. According to the artist, her aim was ‘to create a clean, unbroken line and avoid joints and connecting details’. With her background as a sculptor, she enjoyed playing with lines and exploring the boundary between volume and void – the shapes that a line can create, both two dimensionally and three dimensionally, in an architectural space. Carved a prototype in styrofoam, she invited children to visit her studio to ‘find out the right ergonomics to fit them all’. The hole at the back of Lilla m is made for easy carrying, hanging on a wall, and creating a peephole for children.

Designed in 1990, the first edition of 'Lilla m' was manufactured by Forsnäs Form AB in Sweden in 1995. This particular example is from the second edition, which was produced in 2006. The first edition consisted of thirty-three chairs, the second of fifty-four chairs. The chairs were made in different colours, with some covered in lambskin or cow hide.

Another example of a single-piece laminated wood chair in the V&A collections is Gerald Summers’ armchair (museum no. W.26-1978).

'Lilla m' calls to mind the post-war enthusiasm in exploring laminated woods, which is a technique that began to be processed commercially from the nineteenth century. In the 1930s, the Scandinavian designer-architect Alvar Aalto created chairs with moulded plywood seats and backs. Also famous for their bent wood chairs, Charles and Ray Eames began their experiments on moulding plywood three-dimensionally about a decade later. Both Aalto and Eames designed furniture specifically for children. Schlyter’s chair demonstrates the international interest in the use of laminated wood as a material for furniture design in the long twentieth century.
The first edition of 'Lilla m' was manufactured by Forsnäs Form AB in Sweden in 1995. This particular example is from the second edition, which was produced in 2006.

B.145-2017