A very rare piece of Dutch design: a custom and unique lounge chair in complete original condition.  Although not signed this chair can be attributed to to one of the leading Dutch designers of the 20th century. Kho Liang Ie. Similarity in shape of the seat can be found in his designs by Stabin Woerden from the same period.

Kho Liang Ie was born in 1927 to Chinese parents. After Indonesian independence in 1949, he came to the Netherlands, where he initially started studying medicine, which he soon exchanged for a course at the Institute for Applied Arts Education. After graduating in 1954, he became an employee of the Goed Wonen foundation and was editor of the magazine of the same name from 1957 to 1963. From 1958 until his death he was active as a furniture designer for Artifort and he designed for Car Katwijk, Fristho, Bruynzeel and Mosa.

Provenance:
This chair is purchased from the family of the original owner. This owner collected art and design was close friends with a hotel entrepeneur who furbished his hotel with Artifort furniture in the early 1970s. It’s there where the link between Artifort and Kho Liang Ie is established. As far as the family is concerned this chair was a custom piece made especially for the original owner.

Looking closely at the chair itself it becomes clear the chair was made experimentally but professionally (rubber feet, plywood seat shell, etc.), which makes it a custom project or prototype. There are no comparable models in the Artifort collection, but in the collection of Stabin Woerden, there is  men’s model 703 which is very  is very similar to this chair.(The seat shape, the use of tube)  Models 703&704 were produced by Stabin 1968-1970’s.