Ambiente Frankfurt 2016: Feinserie

In our interview with Marcel Kabisch, founder of and creative force behind German label Feinserie, he told us that what interested him in design, and part of his motivation to study design, was the idea of “bringing a certain intelligence into a product”, and of achieving “an efficiency in design”

Principles which are elegantly displayed in his new Griffbereit Chair.

In many ways an extension of an idea begun with his award winning Griffbereit Stool/Side Table, the Griffbereit Chair is formed from a mix of ash and birch plywood, is based a round a small number of machine produced pieces and is hand finished for Feinserie by a small, traditional wood working workshop in Marcel’s native Erzgebirge region of southern Sachsen, Germany.

We first saw a prototype of the Griffbereit Chair last year, Ambiente Frankfurt is the object’s formal public launch. What initially attracted us to the work, and what continues to impress, is on the one hand the neat proportions and clarity of the design and on the other the simplicity in terms of form, production and materials. Or put another way, it is a very well thought through and realised piece of contemporary chair design. That and the fact that while very much its own chair, with, and as a typical Erzgebirgler, a self-confident sense of its self-worth, the Griffbereit Chair radiates an uncomplicated, familiar, accessibility; something we think is largely attributable to the bentwood backrest.

According to Marcel Kabisch the inspiration came from studying the form and construction of wood chairs from the 1930s; for us it possesses something of the spirit of Denmark in the 1950s, to an understanding that traditional, vernacular forms were/are just as relevant as innovative contemporary forms, did/do however need to be updated to reflect changes in, for example, domestic realities, market conditions or production processes and technology.

In such a context one could understand the Griffbereit Chair as a contemporary Bauernstuhl, the rustic every day chair of simple country folk.

Stackable, weighing in at around five kilos and available with an optional felt cushion Feinserie is, for us, suitable for a wide range of domestic, commercial or hotel/catering uses and with its assuming confidence should feel a home even outwith the confines of the Erzgebirge.

More information on the Griffbereit Chair, and the complete Feinserie collection, can be found at www.feinserie.de

A few impressions from Feinserie at Ambiente Frankfurt 2016.