Theban Daybed

While renowned furniture company e15 was named for the London postcode district where it opened its first workshop in 1995, the now Frankfurt-based brand has grown to become one of the most celebrated German manufacturers and a premium option for modern, solid-wood furniture across much of Europe.

In 1995, German-born architect and designer Philipp Mainzer founded e15 with Farah Ebrahimi, who currently serves as the company’s head designer and art director. After majoring in product design at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and architecture at the Architectural Association, Mainzer had what he has called “a gut feeling” to produce wooden furniture to counter the cold aluminum and glass structures that were popular at the time. E15 became a vessel for Mainzer to explore contemporary design with a somewhat minimalist profile and to highlight the natural characteristics of quality materials, especially oak, as seen in Mainzer’s Backen­zahn stool.

Setting e15 apart is its unrelenting passion for sustainability. Many of e15’s talented collaborators pride themselves on this philosophy, including British architect David Chipperfield, German industrial designer Stefan Diez and Danish architect and interior designer David Thulstrup. 

Many of the company’s designs have earned awards and have been exhibited extensively in Germany, such as Chipperfield’s Leighton coffee table at the 2016 IMM Cologne furniture show. Mainzer and Ebrahimi won two prizes for separate modular sofas: the SHIRAZ sofa received the 2008 Design Award of the Federal Republic of Germany and the KERMAN took home the gold for Interior Innovation in 2017. Select e15 pieces can also be found in museum collections worldwide. 

On 1stDibs, find e15 tables, seating and storage case pieces.

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.

Sit back, relax and get all of the ergonomic support you could ever need by introducing an alluring antique or vintage chaise longue in your living room or by your outdoor fire pit.

The chaise longue is an upholstered piece of furniture that was made popular in France in the early 16th century. This low reclining seat — a “long chair” in English — boasts an elongated form and low back that extends about half the length of the furnishing, affording the welcome opportunity for a sitter to put their feet up and relax. A comfortable common ground between sofas and daybeds, early iterations of chaise longues were discovered in Ancient Egypt and were later frequently used in both Greece and Rome.

In the late 1700s, the first chaise longues were imported to America, and English speakers have struggled with the name ever since. (In the United States, the term is frequently spelled “chaise lounge.”) So, how do you pronounce chaise longue? It sounds like “shayz lawng,” but limiting it to shayz is perfectly acceptable in the States.

Antique Victorian chaise longues and 19th-century chaise longues bring luxury and perhaps extravagance to your living space while mid-century modern chaise longues, designed by the likes of Adrian Pearsall, Vladimir Kagan or Milo Baughman, can alter an interior with dazzling geometric contours and richly varied textures.

On 1stDibs, find many kinds of chaise longues for your home — from sculptural works by Charlotte Perriand to plush and velvety Louis XVI pieces to minimalist contemporary versions to suit your understated decor.