Gemla
Passing through the beech forests and the small village of Diö by the river Helgeå, you will not only find Sweden’s oldest furniture manufacturer, Gemla Fabrikers, founded in 1861. You will also encounter a curiously rich history, characterized by inventiveness as well as stubbornness, said to be typical of the region of Småland.
In the 19th century, craftsmen from Bohemia arrived in Diö, bringing the know-how and experience from Thonet’s factories with them. Thereby, they were the first in Sweden to introduce the art of shaping wood, to make Vienna furniture. These craftsmen did indeed lay the foundation of this art, which has developed ever since here at Gemla.
Throughout the years we have been through factory fires and changes of ownership, as well as several alterations in direction and production. We have tamed the wood, shaping it into beautiful chairs, cinema armchairs and even hockey sticks and tennis rackets. We have quite simply developed and refined this technique, which we are now the only ones to master in the whole of Sweden. At Gemla we've had the tradition of working with the most skilled architects and designers for a long time.
The starting point was the famous World Exhibition in Stockholm 1930, when the great architect and functionalist Uno Åhrén was assigned to create the exhibition collection for Gemla. Since then many of the well known Swedish architects, such as Axel Kandell, Peter Celsing and Yngve Ekström, have contributed in creating the Gemla classic design history.
Still today many of our most appreciated models were designed already 1940-1950's.
Today we create new design in collaboration with our time's foremost designers, which with visionary idéas creating our classics of tomorrow. Jonas Bohlin, Mia Cullin, Mathieu Gustafsson and David Ericsson are only a few of the talented designers we are happy to work with today. We consider our design collaborations as long term relations, why we invest a lot of time learning to know each other before we start creating products.