Matthew Hilton, one of Britain's best-known contemporary furniture designers, combines modernity with respect for tradition. This chair was designed for the Italian manufacturer Montina. Founded in 1919, Montina remains a specialist producer of chairs using traditional techniques and materials, such as the unornamented solid timber seen here. Montina thus typifies the major strength of Italian furniture manufacturing, which is high quality specialist production on an industrial scale. The floor-level stretchers and the boxy shape of this chair recall Austrian Secessionist designs of about 1900, notably chairs by Josef Hoffmann. The original full-size timber prototype for the Juliet chair, complete with annotations about amendments to the profile and other details, is also in the Museum's collection.