The collection
Chair made of corrugated cardboard cut and assembled into a squiggle shape with a straight seatback.
1972

Chair, Easy Edges

Designed by
Frank Gehry (born 1929)
Material
Corrugated cardboard
Produced by
Stitch Pack Co., Inc., Toronto, Ontario
Dimensions
83 x 38 x 61 cm

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Liliane and David M. Stewart Collection, gift of Luc d’Iberville-Moreau, D92.213.1

Frank Gehry is one of the world’s most famous architects today, but the popularity of this chair and the press it received in 1972 are what first made him a design celebrity, and he felt the publicity interfered with his reputation as an architect. The idea of furniture made out of cardboard was not new, but Gehry’s lamination process was innovative, fortifying the material and creating a chair so strong that a group of the chairs could support a Volkswagen Beetle, as one advertisement illustrated.

Its wiggle form was cartoon-like and appealing like no other furniture before. The Easy Edges line was inexpensive and easy to assemble, and its sustainable materials satisfied looming environmental concerns.

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, photo: Giles Rivest.