Knotted Chair by Marcel Wanders

Marcel Wanders
Knotted Chair, 1996

The Knotted Chair is a modern miracle of transparency and a highlight of the international design world. This design seamlessly blends handcrafted tactile elements with high-tech industrial processes. It begins with a braided cord wrapped around a carbon fibre core, which is then manipulated using traditional macramé techniques to shape the chair. The slack threads are impregnated with epoxy and suspended in a frame, allowing gravity to define its form.

Beyond its technological innovation, the Knotted Chair is also romantic, humane, and decorative—qualities that set it apart from anything the design world had seen in 1996. This groundbreaking piece has become an icon and a reference point for design in the following years.

‘I wanted to make a product that doesn’t look industrial, a design that shows that it is lovingly made especially for someone, with the same kind of aura as an old worn down wooden cupboard. Knotting is a technique with which you can achieve this artisan atmosphere’, — Marcel Wanders, Eigen Huis & Interieur, November 1996.

The Knotted chair was a result of Droog’s 1996 Dry Tech I project. Part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the V&A Museum, London and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.