When the ALBERT chair was introduced at IKEA in 1984, it was the first time a chair of frameless design had ever been in the range. So what does that mean, exactly? Most chairs have a frame around the seat. ALBERT didn’t have this frame, but was designed as a simple stool with a backrest. The protocol from the time when the chair was launched states: “Neat dimensions that are further enhanced by the frameless construction. A new, unique and very strong way to deliver a frameless chair.”
The chair was designed by Lars Norinder. During the 1980s, he often visited factories in what was then the Eastern Bloc. He got on well with the people there, and was a master at designing his furniture based on the conditions at the factories. The buyers who worked with Lars in Romania in the 1980s and ’90s nicknamed him ‘Norunder’, playing on his love of round (‘rund’) shapes.
Lars visited factories, for example, that made layer-glued and bent wood furniture for IKEA, such as the LENA and POÄNG chairs. The factories steamed round beech rods and bent them, and glued layers of veneer that were then moulded. This gave Lars Norinder the inspiration for the ALBERT chair.
During the eleven years the chair was in the IKEA catalogue, ALBERT was always one of the wooden chairs with the very lowest price.
