Southeast Asian Steel Chairs

Kenneth Cobonpue is a multi-award winning furniture designer and manufacturer from Cebu, Philippines. His passage to design began in 1987 while studying industrial design at Pratt Institute in New York.

While completing his studies, Cobonpue apprenticed for a leather and wood workshop near Florence, Italy. He went on to study furniture marketing and production at the Export-Akademie Baden-Württemberg in Reutlingen, Germany, under a private and state scholarship program, and subsequently worked in Bielefeld and Munich.

Cobonpue returned home to Cebu in 1996 to manage Interior Crafts of the Islands, Inc., a furniture design and manufacturing company founded by his mother, Betty Cobonpue, in 1972. Discovering that modern design could have a new face using natural fibers and materials, Cobonpue created pieces of functional art, offering an alternative to the Western definition of modern design. Today, the KENNETHCOBONPUE brand has become known globally for its unique designs and extensive roster of clientele, which includes Hollywood celebrities and royalty.

With his masterful way of integrating nature, traditional craft and innovative technologies in his work, designer and creative director Cobonpue has earned international awards and recognition for his creative, organic and expressive pieces. Working closely with some of the world’s leading designers — from household names to emerging talents — Cobonpue has been pushing the envelope for design in the Philippines and sharing his vision with a global audience.

Awards to Cobonpue’s credit include five Japan Good Design Awards, the grand prize at the Singapore International Design Competition, the DFA Design for Asia Award from the Hong Kong Design Centre, the American Society of Interior Design Top Pick selection and the French Coup de Coeur award. Several of Cobonpue’s designs were selected for several editions of the International Design Yearbook published in London and New York. Phaidon’s book, & Fork, underscores Cobonpue’s position as a leader of a new movement incorporating new technologies in crafts. In 2007, TIME magazine called him “rattan’s first virtuoso.” Cobonpue was named the Designer of the Year in the first edition of Maison&Objet Asia held in March 2014 in Singapore.

Cobonpue reveals new work each year in the design shows from Milan to New York, and he speaks regularly about Southeast Asian design all over the world. He has also appeared in European television and in countless international magazines and newspapers around the world. Various Cobonpue designs have also appeared in full-length feature films and television, such as Oceans 13 and CSI.

Find a collection of Kenneth Cobonpue furniture today on 1stDibs.

(Biography provided by Galerie Philia)

The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw sweeping social change and major scientific advances — both of which contributed to a new aesthetic: modernism. Rejecting the rigidity of Victorian artistic conventions, modernists sought a new means of expression. References to the natural world and ornate classical embellishments gave way to the sleek simplicity of the Machine Age. Architect Philip Johnson characterized the hallmarks of modernism as “machine-like simplicity, smoothness or surface [and] avoidance of ornament.”

Early practitioners of modernist design include the De Stijl (“The Style”) group, founded in the Netherlands in 1917, and the Bauhaus School, founded two years later in Germany.

Followers of both groups produced sleek, spare designs — many of which became icons of daily life in the 20th century. The modernists rejected both natural and historical references and relied primarily on industrial materials such as metal, glass, plywood, and, later, plastics. While Bauhaus principals Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe created furniture from mass-produced, chrome-plated steel, American visionaries like Charles and Ray Eames worked in materials as novel as molded plywood and fiberglass. Today, Breuer’s Wassily chair, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair — crafted with his romantic partner, designer Lilly Reich — and the Eames lounge chair are emblems of progressive design and vintage originals are prized cornerstones of collections.

It’s difficult to overstate the influence that modernism continues to wield over designers and architects — and equally difficult to overstate how revolutionary it was when it first appeared a century ago. But because modernist furniture designs are so simple, they can blend in seamlessly with just about any type of décor. Don’t overlook them.

Chairs are an indispensable component of your home and office. Can you imagine your life without the vintage, new or antique chairs you love?

With the exception of rocking chairs, the majority of the seating in our homes today — Windsor chairs, chaise longues, wingback chairs — originated in either England or France. Art Nouveau chairs, the style of which also originated in those regions, embraced the inherent magnificence of the natural world with decorative flourishes and refined designs that blended both curved and geometric contour lines. While craftsmanship and styles have evolved in the past century, chairs have had a singular significance in our lives, no matter what your favorite chair looks like.

“The chair is the piece of furniture that is closest to human beings,” said Hans Wegner. The revered Danish cabinetmaker and furniture designer was prolific, having designed nearly 500 chairs over the course of his lifetime. His beloved designs include the Wishbone chair, the wingback Papa Bear chair and many more.

Other designers of Scandinavian modernist chairs introduced new dynamics to this staple with sculptural flowing lines, curvaceous shapes and efficient functionality. The Paimio armchair, Swan chair and Panton chair are vintage works of Finnish and Danish seating that left an indelible mark on the history of good furniture design.

“What works good is better than what looks good, because what works good lasts,” said Ray Eames. 

Visionary polymaths Ray and Charles Eames experimented with bent plywood and fiberglass with the goal of producing affordable furniture for a mass market. Like other celebrated mid-century modern furniture designers of elegant low-profile furnishings — among them Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Finn Juhl — the Eameses considered ergonomic support, durability and cost, all of which should be top of mind when shopping for the perfect chair. The mid-century years yielded many popular chairs.

The Eameses introduced numerous icons for manufacturer Herman Miller, such as the Eames lounge chair and ottoman, molded plywood dining chairs the DCM and DCW (which can be artfully mismatched around your dining table) and a wealth of other treasured pieces for the home and office. 

A good chair anchors us to a place and can become an object of timeless appeal. Take a seat and browse the rich variety of vintage, new and antique chairs on 1stDibs today.