Gubi Olsen Grand Piano Green Velvet Sofa

Designer-couple Lisbeth and Gubi Olsen founded iconic Danish furniture and lighting manufacturer Gubi in Copenhagen in 1967. The brand is celebrated globally for its innovative chairs, lighting fixtures, mirrors, sofas and other furnishings and decor. 

The company began as a platform to manufacture the textiles and furniture designed by Lisbeth and Gubi. Soon, the business model broadened. While recent contemporary pieces manufactured by Gubi such as GamFratesi’s Beetle chair have become darlings of today’s interiors, the company is also widely known as a leader in reissuing exquisite Scandinavian and other mid-century modern furniture by a range of design legends. 

Swedish architect and interior designer Greta Magnusson Grossman — the first woman to receive a prize for furniture design from the Swedish Society of Industrial Design — emigrated to the United States and built 14 homes in Los Angeles in the postwar era that were inspired by the Case Study Houses. She furnished these homes with her own designs, and her impossibly sleek Grasshopper table lamps and floor lamps — created for Barker Bros. but today made by Gubi — were frequent fixtures in the interiors. Another Scandinavian architect and industrial designer, Louis Weisdorf designed the wildly popular Multi-Lite line of lighting fixtures, which were originally created during the early 1970s and reissued by Gubi in 2016.

Beyond lighting, Spanish designer Barbara Corsini created the distinctively geometric Pedrera coffee table during the mid-1950s that is now made by Gubi, while the Hungarian-born French master of postwar design, Mathieu Matégot, created the Tropique dining table and an elegant three-legged Nagasaki chair, both of which were reissued by the Danish brand. French furniture designer Pierre Paulin created the inviting, organically shaped Pacha lounge chair in 1975. This design yielded a loveseat and a sofa as well. All of these pieces were reissued by Gubi.

Since 2001, Gubi founders’ son, Jacob Olsen, has managed the company. He travels the world to uncover visionary current-day designers to partner with as well as those iconic decor and products of yesteryear that wholeheartedly deserve a second life.

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