KK47000 Safari Chair

Kaare Klint traced the lineage of the Safari Chair to an American cinematographer's photographs taken on an African expedition - chairs that were themselves descended from the Indian Roorkhee Chair, a tool-free, self-assembling seat used by the British military in the field. Klint studied the archetype and refined it, stripping away coincidence to reveal the chair's essential logic.

The KK47000 is built on a principle of intelligent compression: glueless joints that tighten under the weight of the sitter, a construction that grows stronger with use. The frame collapses completely without tools, a quality that speaks to Klint's conviction that good design solves a real problem with the minimum of material means.

Produced by Carl Hansen & Søn in FSC-certified ash with a white oil finish, the chair is available with canvas or saddle leather seating surfaces. Each version reads differently - canvas recalls the utilitarian origin; saddle leather arrives at something closer to ceremony. Both are correct.

Klint occupies a singular position in Danish design history. As the founder of the furniture school at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, he taught that the ideal form for any object already existed somewhere in history. The designer's task was to find it and perfect it. The Safari Chair is among the clearest expressions of that belief.