THE TIRED MAN – THE MOST EXPENSIVE CHAIR EVER SOLD IN DENMARK

Flemming Lassen designed the overstuffed easy chair, The Tired Man, for The Copenhagen Cabinetmakers’ Guild Competition in 1935.

It is characterised by organic, bearlike shapes and then as now it created a sensation with its curved form and voluminous armrests.

Sitting in the chair should, in Flemming Lassen’s own words, be ”as warm and safe as a polar bear cub in the arms of its mother in the middle of the ice cap”. The family man Flemming Lassen valued intimate relationships – with its warm exterior, The Tired Man invokes domestic cosiness and socialising by candlelight.

Upholstered furniture has become directly synonymous with Flemming Lassen and today the ”Flemming Lassen style” is hotter than ever. The style was introduced by Lassen in the 1930s and with its chubby, vigorous idiom, The Tired Man is a perfect example of it.

The increased interest in Flemming Lassen’s unique furniture was underlined at a historic auction at Bruun Rasmussen Auctioneers in September 2014, where the chair’s price massively exceeded the estimate at no less than 1.42 million Danish kroner, setting the record as Denmark’s most expensive chair ever sold at auction.

Out of respect for the original design, by Lassen is relaunching The Tired Man in two versions, one in wool and one in sheepskin. The easy chair is one of a small number of furniture items from Flemming Lassen and as Denmark’s currently most sought-after furniture architect in the auction world, there is no doubt about The Tired Man’s position as a masterful icon.