Grand Prix-stolen / Grand Prix Chair / FH4130 by Arne Jacobsen 1957
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Grand Prix in the permanent collection of Designmuseum Danmark in Copenhagen
The chair was shown at the XI Triennial in Milan in 1957 - where the design was awarded the Grand Prix from which it takes its name - and then shown at Charlottenborg, in Copenhagen, later in the same year.
In the original version the shell was made with a teak or beech finish or the chair could be upholstered.
The shape of the back is closely related to the FH3103 but here, rather than a straight line across the top of the back, the back has a truncated or stumpy Y shape that makes it, somehow, almost anthropomorphic.
There is a pronounced scooping out to the shape of the seat and at the front a pronounced down turn or lip.
Initially the chair had four separate legs that were L shaped and in laminated beech with a strong moulding to the cross section presumably, in part, to make it look less solid or less heavy. The legs mimicked the profile of the metal legs on the other shell chairs so were angled out towards the floor and at the top were curved but under the seat they were shaped to form a long hammer or hockey-stick shape to form as long a face as possible along the top for the legs to be glued to the underside of the shell. This proved to be unstable - presumably under the weight of a person the centre of the seat moved down or the legs splayed out and even if the glue of the leg held then the face layer of the plywood would presumably split away from the layer below.
The design was changed and the individual legs were replaced with two n-shaped pieces of steam-bent beech that cross at the centre where they are halved over each other to form a robust join and fixed to a circular plywood plate at the centre of the underside of the moulded shell. That form is closely related to the frame of legs in wood made for the Giraffe - the dining chair that Jacobsen designed for the SAS Royal Hotel.
A version of the Grand Prix chair with steel legs was also produced and in catalogues is identified as model FH3130.
designed by Arne Jacobsen
made by Fritz Hansen
height: 78 cm
width: 48 cm
depth: 51 cm
height of seat: 42.5 cm