PH Snakechair designed by Poul Henningsen

Dare to touch The Snake!

It is never recommended to touch a real snake, but the PH designed Snake Chair is not your average beast…Poul Henningsen’s Snake Chair is a glorious representation of powerful design. While the Snake Chair won’t harm you, it’s sure to have an impact on your heart: keeping one’s hands away from it’s sensuous fluid lines realised in the smoothest of chromed steel, refined timber and the softest of leather can be difficult. Devoid of harsh angles, the Snake Chair sits in harmony with the widest variety of habitats.

Poul Henningsen was a master of functional design: thinking alike his Bauhaus contemporaries, PH saw no need to over-complicate his design for the Snake Chair that he first revealed to the world in 1932. The design of the Snake Chair accomplishes something so few chairs do: it is slimline and compact and yet sturdy and strong, thanks to the spiral shape of the frame that resembles that of a coiled snake. This chair pays homage to the concepts of ‘function’ and ‘form’ in synergy, to create something structurally minimal but not at the expense of the realisation of the purpose of the object itself. Versatility is part of the charm of the Snake Chair: it will sit unobtrusively in the corner of a room or take centre stage in your interior setting as your situation requires.

Through the conservative use of materials, Poul Henningsen’s Snake Chair is a triumph of minimalist 1930s design. Graceful, functional, convivial and now manufactured in Europe to 21st Century engineering standards, the Snake Chair is set to be rediscovered as a contemporary design classic to covet. Poul Henningsen was himself frequently photographed sitting on the Snake Chair, often at the piano he also designed. The Snake Chair is a visionary and ground-breaking design which PH considered would revolutionise the very concept of how a chair should be constructed. This chair is truly egalitarian in design: it is such that it will find a place in virtually all home environments and though it is a ‘design’ piece, it is also designed to be affordable. 

With versatility a part of it’s design-DNA, the Snake Chair is available in vibrant red, eye-catching yellow, calming green or understated black, so there is a Snake Chair to suit the personality of every room. A companion to the Snake Chair, there is also available a Snake Stool. Tradition suggests that a stool is expected to have three or four legs, yet with this masterful design, PH has created a stool that is made of one simple, unbroken spiral. There is no other stool like it on the market today. 

We think that no interior ‘nest’ should be without a Snake Chair. In Copenhagen, you can find the Snake Chair and Snake Stool at Illums Bolighus at Amagertorv or at our showroom on Bredgade: come and see it for yourself. Should you dare to handle Poul Henningsen’s Snake designs, we are certain that you will want to take them home with you!

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