Because of my background in architecture, I have always admired the classic furniture designed by architects of the 1930s: Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Marcel Breuer, Mart Stam, and others. Their work had a simple, disciplined quality that never felt dated. For years, I quietly dreamed of designing a piece of furniture that wouldn’t try to be a “classic” (I’m not that arrogant) but that would share the same spirit: clean, honest, and made to last.
The moment that dream turned into action happened on a flight back to the U.S. after a trade show in Italy. I was exhausted, and frankly fed up, with what passed for design at the time: overwrought, noisy objects driven more by ego than by purpose, produced by so-called modern archistars. Somewhere between frustration and jet lag, I thought, “there must still be a way to design furniture with the discipline and intelligence of the classics.”
People often say that everything has already been done. I refused to believe that. So I started sketching on the plane.
At first, I hit a wall. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t find a way forward, nothing felt both simple and meaningful. I began to understand what Mies meant when he said that “A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier,” That thought stayed with me, especially after a private conversation I once had with Philip Johnson, who spent more than 70 years creating architectural masterpieces, including some of the world’s most recognizable skyscrapers. I suggested that he design a piece of furniture and even offered to help find the right factory. After taking a sip from his bottled frappuccino, he replied with disarming honesty and a smile: “I wish I could, but I have no idea how to design furniture. I tried once or twice and it was a disaster. Now, the very idea terrifies me.”
Back on the plane, bored with my own lack of progress, I started making aimless circular doodles. At some point, one of those circles became a loop …specifically, a loop-shaped chair back. I paused. Hmm… maybe.
I kept working on it. The idea refined itself into a simple, continuous loop. My first reaction was excitement. My second reaction was doubt. It’s too simple. This must already exist. When I got home, I redrew the sketch properly, with dimensions. I liked it even more …but the doubt grew stronger. I worried I had unconsciously borrowed the idea from something I’d seen before. For a long time, I thought I might be a victim of cryptomnesia.
After more than 30 years in the furniture industry, attending the world’s major shows, I couldn’t recall anything like it. Still, I asked colleagues, manufacturers. No one had seen it. I searched extensively, Google, archives, every resource I could find. Nothing. After months of searching and second-guessing, I finally decided to move forward.
The Loop Chair was first produced as an upholstered piece, then as a fully aluminum version for outdoor use, followed by a bench. The rest, as they say, is history.
For more than 15 years, the Loop Chair has quietly lived in commercial interiors, proof that simplicity still has power, that restraint can be bold, and that sometimes a timeless idea really does begin with a single loop drawn on a piece of paper at 35,000 feet.
