Frank Gehry’s Legendary Wiggle Chair Started With a Pile of Scrap Cardboard

Throughout the 1960s, furniture designers played around with cardboard, but the lightweight and durable nature of plastic was hard to top. Explorations of cardboard were waning, when, in the early ’70s, Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry released the Easy Edges collection. 

The starting point was a pile of corrugated cardboard Gehry saw on the street outside of his office. "I began to play with it, to glue it together, and to cut it into shapes with a hand saw and a pocket knife," he later said, calling corrugated cardboard his preferred material for building architecture models. While other designers had been using single pieces of cardboard reinforced with folds, slots, or tabs, Gehry’s innovations resulted in a sturdy, long-lasting material. "I discovered that by alternating the direction of layers of corrugations, the finished board had enough strength to support a small car, and a uniform, velvety texture on all four sides," Gehry told the Christian Science Monitor. "I found I could cut these edgeboard sections into geometrical forms, or bend them into sculptural, ribbon-candy folds." Glued together, the alternating strips of corrugated cardboard offered new possibilities for cardboard furniture that was low-cost and, as a bonus, impressively sound absorbing. 

When Easy Edges launched in 1972, the series of curved, corrugated cardboard tables and seating garnered immediate attention. The centerpiece was the Wiggle Side Chair. Its twisted lines with a previously inconceivable construction technique signified a striking departure from the cardboard furniture designed in the preceding years. 

Overnight, Gehry became a sensation. But, instead of enjoying his success, Gehry was concerned that his furniture designs would overshadow his work as an architect. Gehry stopped production of the Easy Edges collection in 1973 and quit cardboard furniture altogether by 1982, eventually ceding rights to Vitra. That relationship turned out to be fruitful: just a few years later, the architect went on to design the Vitra Design Museum and manufacturing facility in Weil-am-Rhein, Germany. 

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Top photo courtesy of Hans Hansen

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