Willy Guhl made this garden seat by bending a prefabricated, freshly pressed sheet of still-damp asbestos-containing fibre cement and then joining the two ends of the strip to form a convex-concave endless loop. The seat became famous in 1959 when it featured in the Swiss horticultural exhibition G59, which was the first to overcome the traditional rustic style and set new trends in landscaping. Guhl’s design came to symbolize the end of the post-war period and the dawn of a more carefree age. Thanks to the slightly convex base, sitters could switch positions from leisurely to more upright and vice versa, or even rock back and forth, simply by shifting their bodyweight. The harmful effects of asbestos became known in the 1970s. Switzerland outlawed it altogether in 1990 and the European Union followed suit in 2005. As asbestos-free fibre cement does not have the same load-bearing properties, Guhl and Eternit teamed up in 1997 to develop a re-issue of the Eternit Chair, with two additional ribs moulded into the backrest and underside of the chair providing the requisite sturdiness.
Text: Claude Lichtenstein
