The Berlage Chair is designed by Richard Hutten for the Grand Café of the Gemeentemuseum The Hague.
Before commencing work on the Berlage Chair, Hutten searched the museum's entire Berlage collection for a model suitable to serve as a starting point for his design. Berlage’s chair for the Van Hengel family emerged as the best choice: not a chair with vertical legs, but one in which the line of the back extends through into the back legs. Hutten was struck by this element and impressed by the clarity of structure demonstrated by the entire design - something he also strives to achieve in his own work.
For the chair's upholstery, Hutten drew his inspiration from the webbing used to attach the upholstery to the underside of the seat in the original design. He focused on the apparently random way in which the webbing is attached to the frame and exaggerated this in his own design. So all the ingredients of Hutten's Berlage Chair are derived from the original.
