Bla Station: Evolution No.1 2020, 24 36

Fredrik Paulsen | 2O19 - 2O2O
“Comfortable, but not too comfortable! I want my love for construction
to include everyone. You should understand the construction, how the
chair is put together: no surprise moment, no magic, it’s almost an
anti-design, a truly engineered product.” Fredrik Paulsen
A truly unique chair
Fredrik Paulsen didn’t expect one of his art pieces to be turned
into an industrial product but with the reopening of Röhsska,
Sweden’s foremost design museum 2019, it seemed the perfect
occasion. Invited to stage an exhibition with the title Unmaking
Democratic Design, Fredrik was more than willing to collaborate
with Blå Station’s design manager Johan Lindau.
The chair appears to be as basic as possible, heavy on the
raw material. But the first impression is deceptive; there is a
great attention to classical geometry with the slightly inclined
backrest and not too flat seating. Or as Fredrik exclaims:
”Comfortable, but not too comfortable! I want my love for
construction to include everyone. You should understand the
construction, how the chair is put together: no surprise moment,
no magic, it’s almost an anti-design, an engineered product.”
Fredrik Paulsen definitely prefers to work in wood that enables
him to experiment. This time he used beech, these days a
neglected but nonetheless perfect wood material for furniture,
technically dense and very hard. The exclusivity lies not in the
material itself though but in the work invested in each prod-
uct. The sustainability issues are of course close at heart for a
Swedish designer. The Röhsska chairs are uniquely handcrafted
objects whilst at the same time industrially produced.
Röhsska at the bar
So simple and at the same time so unique. Röhsska is 100%
wood in different shades that makes every individual chair one-
of-a-kind. Fredrik Paulsen’s folky chair has already embarked on
a career all of its own. Röhsska is now forming a family with
a new barstool for the Design Bar at Stockholm Furniture Fair
2020.
With geometrically exact construction in beech and seating
and backrest in pine plywood Fredrik has striven for a unique
glaze that ranges from almost clean wood to pigment saturated
recesses: head-on and uncompromising.