A few years ago we were looking for bedside tables. We wanted something that would last, had a little bit of style, and importantly wouldn’t break the budget. Nothing seemed to quite fit the bill…
Until, we noticed a mid century modern wood and rattan chair with a striking v leg design appearing on Instagram. We were suddenly down a rabbit hole trying to find out about this design and discovered the chair dated to the 1950s and was designed by Swiss architect Pierre Jeanneret, the cousin (and frequent collaborator) of the father of modern architecture, Le Corbusier.
It turns out the Jeanneret chair, made from teak and cane, was created and produced in the thousands for Le Corbsuier’s redesign of Chandigarh, India, shortly after the country became independent. At one stage these chairs were considered worthless. Nowadays, the originals are so highly prized they are usually found in the houses of the world’s elite, often featuring in celebrities’ homes or on the pages of Architectural Digest.
Inspired by the Jeanneret's chair, Alban with a career as a chef under his belt, as well as a renovation of our first home (which we may as well call a rebuild) turned his creative energy and woodworking skills to construct his first pair of bedside tables for ourselves. He continued to perfect the design, making tables for friends and family, and soon began selling them.
Little did Alban know that over two years later he would have sold countless pairs of these modernist style bedside tables, designed and hand crafted a range of original furniture designs paying homage to modernism and established his own business as a furniture maker, Mid Century Modern Atelier.