'Grandpa Beaver' Easy Chair, from the Experimental Edges Series, circa 1986

This work is number twenty-three from an edition of fifty.

Known as one of the most important architects of our time, Frank Gehry's oeuvre playfully deconstructs the pillars of modernist architecture and design. Gehry's architectural commissions consistently surprise and his furniture designs are no different. In 1969 Gehry debuted "Easy Edges", his first line of furniture which was made entirely out of cardboard. Ten years later, in 1979, Gehry followed up with his "Experimental Edges" line, a series of 12 designs employing thicker cardboard than his initial line. Gehry's cardboard designs encompass an array of furniture types such as chairs, stools, and tables, all comprised of layered cardboard.

"Easy Edges" follows a long standing tradition of experimental design dating back to the Michael Thonet's groundbreaking bent wood designs of the 1830s. Marcel Breuer's chairs built from bent steel tubing in 1925 continued Thonet's innovative practice and brought his design principles into the Modernist age. Charles and Ray Eames continued the century of experimentation as they toyed with bent plywood furniture. All of these designers aimed to create inexpensive yet stylish furniture available to the mass market using innovative technology and practices. Gehry's cardboard furniture is a playful continuation of this tradition; he stated his "intention was to design the ultimate inexpensive furniture; something that could be sold cheaply and that would be acceptable to the mass market." 'Easy Edges' was met with immediate market success, leading to his second series of cardboard furniture 'Experimental Edges.' However, he pivoted in this second series and focused on designing exhibition pieces, not intended for the mass market.