At first glance, you might mistake this elegant tubular design for a simple riff on a Bauhaus classic such as Marcel Breuer’s 1920s cantilevered ‘Cesca’ chair. But a more careful observation will reveal that it is very much one-of-a-kind – a meticulously detailed creation by Nicos Zographos (1931–2023).
An architect and designer whose career spanned 60 years, Zographos was greatly influenced by the Bauhaus, worked under modernist master Gordon Bunshaft, and collaborated with some of the leading designers of the time, including Walter Gropius, I.M. Pei and Phillip Johnson. Today he is remembered as a perfectionist who endlessly refined his designs, producing bespoke – and now extremely collectible – pieces.
‘CH66’ chair by Nicos Zographos, for Karakter x Cassina
Case in point: Zographos' ‘CH66’ chair, originally designed in 1966 and reissued this year by Karakter with Cassina, a company whose first collaboration with the designer dates back to the 1960s. The design reverses the s-shaped Bauhaus cantilever, creating instead an equally elegant b-shaped seat using a continuous line of chromed tubular steel with gentle curves.
‘The chair is resilient, elastic, and so light it doesn’t encumber space with its mass. It was the closest I came to a pure and precise kind of chair,’ wrote Zographos of the ‘CH66’, today part of MoMA’s permanent collection in New York.
It was the closest I came to a pure and precise kind of chair
Nicos Zographos
Its manufacturers describe it as ‘the essence of a chair, a calibrated balance between structural lightness and dynamic tension’, highlighting its rigorous and elegant silhouette that is the result of an in-depth study carried out in collaboration with the designers’ daughters Athena and Fotini Zographos.
The reissued chair, in respect of the original design, is made of four chrome or painted black stainless-steel tubes which have been bent and shaped with extreme precision and fastened with screws, intentionally left visible on the back to keep its upholstery in place. The seat and backrest, which have the exact same curve, are upholstered with fine saddle-leather available in a range of colours, secured with metal springs that ensure elasticity as well as comfort.