Long pallet Bertil Karlsson

Gustavian dining room chair of a model that was common in the 1780s and 1790s. The original chair is the work of the chairmaker Melchior Lundberg the Elder, who became a master in Stockholm in 1775 and is considered the foremost of all chairmakers.

The chair has many characteristic details. The rectangular back is a novelty of the 1780s, while the openwork baluster tray with its “keyhole” appears already in the Rococo period. The straight lower part of the tray tells us that the chair must be from the Gustavian era, which had a weakness for more straight and strict forms compared to the Rococo. Also typical are the straight sides, the fluted legs, and the smooth “socks” on the legs at the junction with the footrest. A particularly elegant detail is the slightly trumpet-shaped front legs and the extremely well-cut bunch of grapes on the crest of the back.

The Melchior Lundberg chair is, both as an original and a copy, a piece of unique Swedish craftsmanship history. We dare say that there is not a more well-made chair in Sweden at all!

The chair is completely handmade without any simplifications. No square part is straight. All parts are shaped and do not curve, bend or thin out in any direction. All turning is done by hand using the so-called cut-turn method. All planing, even on the curved and bent parts, is done entirely by hand. The hind legs are made in one piece (!), i.e. the turned part is not mortised and glued together with the square post (as is otherwise the case on so-called 18th century copies). This means that the demands on the joinery in a chair like this are extremely high, both in terms of quality and roughness. The chair is of course assembled with hand-carved wooden dowels and glued with animal glue.

Chairs of this quality were often painted marble white (about 1% green umber), or light oak yellow (about 15% yellow ochre, 30% yellow ochre natural). In our exhibition we have also painted some chairs in mahogany color (100% English red) a common color in the late 18th century. The seats were usually upholstered with black leather or black linseed oil painted linen fabric.