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2026-09-09
The Return of Sandows
Created by Anine Johnsen
Some designs never really leave us — they just wait for the right moment to come back. That's the story of Sandows, the seating collection created by French designer René Herbst in 1927, now reissued by Petite Friture in close collaboration with the Herbst family archives.
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The Man Behind the Chair
René Herbst (1891–1982) was an architect, set designer, and one of the leading voices of the French Modern Movement. Nicknamed "the man of steel," he was among the first in France to embrace tubular metal furniture, pairing it with glass, wood, and rubber for pieces that were light, ergonomic, and built to last.
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Three Pieces, One Vision
Petite Friture is reissuing three signature pieces: a chair, an armchair, and a reclining daybed, all sharing the same chrome-plated steel frame and rubber tensioners, with the armchair and daybed adding armrests in black lacquered oak veneer.
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Born in 1927
Herbst designed the first Sandows chair in a pivotal year for furniture history, as designers like Marcel Breuer and Mies van der Rohe were breaking away from ornament in favor of function. His twist: elastic cords borrowed from the worlds of sport and hygiene, giving the collection its name, its comfort, and its unmistakable graphic look.
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Still Timeless
Petite Friture is currently the only publisher holding the rights to Sandows, and every piece carries a brushed steel plate engraved with Herbst's own signature. Nearly a century on, its structural simplicity still slots effortlessly into a contemporary room.
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