Fritz Hansen have relaunched the Oxford Chair that was designed by Arne Jacobsen in 1962 for St Catherine’s College in Oxford.

For 3daysofdesign, store showed not only the new chair but also Oxford Chairs from the companies archive collection. Designmuseum Danmark has a high back version in laminated wood with an oak veneer and steam-bent base that was designed for the high table in the great hall of the college but this was the first time I had seen the lower version of the chair with arms (right).

The current versions of the chair have metal bases with a column and five feet in either steel or powder coated black, with or without castors, and with or without thin and very elegant metal arms.

Upholstered in leather or one of the FH textiles it is a strikingly contemporary chair. It has that distinct, elegant, scroll-shaped profile from the side but unless you recognise that, most would be hard pressed to spot that the design is now 60 years old.

Fritz Hansen,
Valkendorfsgade 4,
Copenhagen

Along with the displays about the Oxford Chair, Fritz Hansen set out a number of desks and chairs in the store as their suggestions for possible home work stations as, still caught up with the Coronavirus pandemic, substantial numbers are working from home or splitting time between home and office to reduce the number of people in an office at any one time.

As the pandemic runs its course, it is unclear just how many workers will return to their offices for a full five days every week. If people work from home then there will be a growing market for, at the very least, chairs that are ergonomically designed, so are comfortable, and chairs that can be moved and that swivel. Sitting on one of the chairs from the dining room or balancing a laptop on your lap for eight hours - even if you think being stretched out on the sofa all day is fantastic compared with the noise and hassle and distractions of the office and even if you can do it in your underwear rather than the normal work outfit, it’s still far from ideal.

Fritz Hansen

Being very predictable, for my desk at home, I have an aluminium soft pad chair from Vitra that was designed by Charles and Ray Eames in 1958 but at least I have half a Fritz Hansen work station because my desk is the Plano table by Pelikan Design - the design partnership of Niels Gammelgaard and Lars Mathiesen. *

It’s ideal because although it is relatively compact at 120cm wide, it’s 80cm deep so with the Apple screen pushed to the back, there is still plenty of table space for keyboard, books, papers and so on.

The main frame of the table, a metal rectangle, is inset from the edge of the top but there are diagonally set spurs that take the tubular legs at each corner that can be unscrewed when the table is packed up and moved ….. this is the fifth apartment it has been in in nearly twenty years. Not so much home office as mobile office.

* note: no longer in the Fritz Hansen catalogue