Frank Lloyd Wright’s Own Custom-Designed Chair Is Back in Production

Beloved American architect Frank Lloyd Wright was known for being meticulous, devising custom furnishings—everything from rugs to built-in bookshelves—for many interiors of the houses he built. For the living room of his own Arizona home, known as Taliesin West (now owned by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation), Wright created a sculptural armchair that he used regularly until his death in 1959.

Now the futuristic chair is back in production with a limited edition of 450 available through Italian heritage furniture brand Cassina.

The chair is made from a single piece of folded plywood. Photo: Cassina

Made out of folded plywood, the Taliesin 1 chair features straight, sharp lines designed to minimize wasted materials. The chair—created in 1949 at Wright’s home studio—highlights the architect’s shift to more sophisticated solutions, with angled components and a complex geometrical structure that ensures its stability. Previously manufactured by Cassina between 1986 and 1990, the seat is evocative of the Japanese art of origami. Now, nearly 30 years later, Cassina is reissuing the design in collaboration with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

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The chair was designed for Wright’s living room at his Scottsdale, Arizona, home. Photo: Cassina

This new version is available in a series of jewel tones, with internal upholstery done in short-hair leather tinted in the same shade as the lacquered exterior.

Wright’s armchair is one of several pieces by renowned architects that Cassina has reissued. Among them are a chaise longue devised by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and Charlotte Perriand; a sofa by Gaetano Pesce; Beugel chair by Gerrit Rietveld; a wood-and-saddle leather 905 chair by Vico Magistretti; the Zephyr sofa by Zaha Hadid; and the Canapo rocking chair by Franco Albini.

The limited-edition chair is $5,500 and available through Cassina.