Pair of Gemla Möbler chairs made in Sweeden, in the 1980

Gemla Möbler AB is a Swedish company, the oldest furniture factory founded in the country, in 1861. Around 1903, they began to make bending furniture after Austrian models, partly direct copies of Michael Thonets with Austrian workers. After a fire in the factory, and after the furniture manufacturing began to take over, they changed your name to Gemla AB. In 1927 the toy production ceased. During a period, tennis racquets, bandy and ice hockey clubs and kickbacks were also produced. Nowadays, however, only furniture is produced. Among the designers at the company are Gunnar Asplund, Carl Malmsten, Uno Åhrén, Åke Axelsson, Ulf Bengtsson and Nils Strinning.

However, in 1892, a number of employees had returned to Gemla and there started the New Toy Factory Gemla, and later took over when Gemla completely ceased to play its toy production. Several toy factories were added later in Gemla, and in the 1950s there were around ten, most of them later abandoned.

The factory later took the name Gemla Möbler AB.

At Helge River in Diö, in the heart of the old forests of Småland, lies Sweden’s oldest furniture factory, founded in 1861. Its inner sanctum, beech and ash are tamed into time- less furniture by skilled craftsmen who know which way the wood likes to bend. Stretching and flexing, easing and teasing, until the steaming hot wood finds its form. And the wood will not be rushed. The transformation from log into chair takes days, sometimes even weeks. The technique has been used by boat and fence builders since ancient times but was refined in the mid 1800’s by Thonet into the iconic chair, worn my millions of seats in the cafés of Europe. The shape is determined by the best and the brightest of their time. Back then their names were Peter Celsing, Yngve Ekström, Sigurd Lewerentz and Carl Malmsten. Now they are Jonas Bohlin, Front, Lisa Hilland and Mats Theselius.