{"id":433188,"date":"2026-01-23T09:17:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T14:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.1stdibs.com\/blogs\/the-study\/?p=433188"},"modified":"2026-01-23T12:23:56","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T17:23:56","slug":"frank-gehry-chair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.1stdibs.com\/blogs\/the-study\/frank-gehry-chair\/","title":{"rendered":"This Frank Gehry Cardboard Chair Elevated a Humble Material to High Design"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Frank<\/a>
Frank Gehry Grandpa Beaver chair, 1987<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

When Frank Gehry<\/a> died, in December 2025 at the age of 96, he was universally praised as the most important American architect of the past half century. A trio of late-career buildings \u2014 the Guggenheim Bilbao (1997), L.A.\u2019s Walt Disney Concert Hall (2003) and the Fondation Louis Vuitton<\/a>, in Paris (2014) \u2014 established his reputation as a master of sculptural forms realized in eye-catching materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But long before these city-transforming deconstructivist structures garnered international attention, Gehry was experimenting with form and materials on a much more intimate scale. In 1978, he transformed his own home, a traditional 1920s bungalow in Santa Monica, California, with a wrapper of corrugated steel, plywood and chain-link fencing. Just a few years earlier, he had created a line of furniture called Easy Edges, which used corrugated-cardboard strips laminated in such a way that they achieved surprising strength. Pieces like his Wiggle side chair<\/a> already evinced the mixture of ingenuity and playfulness for which Gehry is most admired today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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