Danish brand Hay has teamed up with the famous Swiss furniture manufacturer Dietiker to pay tribute to Swiss designer Bruno Rey (1935-2019). For the occasion, the iconic “Rey” collection designed by Bruno Rey in 1971 is taking on new dimensions and a new colour palette specially selected by Hay. The first patented chair with a screwless wood-metal connection, the Rey chair has been named “the most successful piece of Swiss furniture ever” by the Swiss Museum of Design in Zurich. Sold in over a million copies, it’s a timeless work of art. Composed of a chair, stools and tables, the Rey collection retains the iconic unified silhouette and innovative screwless production process, but is updated with new dimensions and colours. As solid as the legendary original Rey, an icon of the Dietiker production house, the collection has lost none of its charm: as robust as ever with its characteristic rounded edges. Extraordinarily strong, stable and stackable, these sleek yet distinctly designed pieces fit a wide variety of domestic and public spaces. Bruno Rey (1935-2019) is a Swiss industrial designer who served his apprenticeship in cabinetmaking before attending the School of Applied Arts in Zurich. He is world famous for his Rey chair (or “model 3300”), an icon of Swiss design since 1971. The Rey chair has become one of the most popular chairs in Switzerland: over five decades, it has been sold over 1.5 million times and can be found in many residential and public spaces. In the early 70s, Bruno Rey was looking for the design of a contemporary wooden chair as a symbol of the present. He finally found his inspiration in Thonet’s chair from 1850. Bruno Rey developed entirely innovative assembly and design techniques for a new type of wooden chair. The Rey chair was the first to receive a patent for its unique screwless wood-metal connection. The legs of the chair are connected to the round seat by means of aluminium connecting pieces. The Rey chair, also called the model 3300, went into production in 1971. Over time, the collection has expanded with stools and tables. The curved lines of the Rey collection exemplify Rey’s search for organic forms in contrast to the stubborn formalism of the 1960s and 1970s. The use of the curve was a personal revolution against the dominant design doctrine of his time, an attempt to stand out from an existing generation of designers. Bruno Rey: ”In light of the angulo-formalist furniture, cubically austere and without any seating quality, which was common at the time, I suspected for the first time that new forms of round furniture could be both necessary and useful for space and people.”

In detail:

Variation : Scarlet red

Brand : Hay

Designer : Bruno Rey

Type : Stacking chair

Colour : Scarlet Red

Material : Moulded beech plywood seat and back – Solid beech legs – Ecological water-based lacquer – Connecting parts between seat and legs: aluminium

Dimensions : L 44 x Depth 49 cm x H 80 cm – Seat: H 44 cm

Weight : 13.86 lb

Characteristics : Rey chair (model 3300) originally created by Swiss designer Bruno Rey in 1971 (1935-2019) – Icon of Swiss industrial design – Stackable (x 4) – Plastic glides

Country of Manufacture : Europe