ArtistNorwegian
Ingmar Relling
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Ingmar Relling was born on 12 May 1920 in Sykkylven, a small town on the western coast of Norway that would become one of the country's most productive furniture-making regions. He studied at the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry in Oslo, graduating in 1947 under the influence of architect Arne Korsmo, whose functionalist principles shaped Relling's approach to form, material, and construction. After graduating, Relling worked at the Oslo design studio Rastad & Relling Tegnekontor before establishing his own studio in Sykkylven in 1950.
Relling designed furniture through the 1950s and early 1960s with a focus on ergonomics and honest use of material, working primarily in bent wood and natural upholstery. His approach aligned with the broader post-war Scandinavian design movement: objects should be functional, well-constructed, and accessible - neither austere nor decorative for its own sake. His collaboration with the local manufacturer Westnofa gave him a production partner capable of realising his precise structural requirements.
In 1965, Relling entered a competition organised by the Norwegian Furniture and Furnishing Industry Council and won first prize with the Siesta chair, designed in collaboration with his son Knut Relling. The chair uses a frame of bent and laminated beech combined with a leather or fabric seat bucket, achieving a generous reclined position without sacrificing structural refinement. The Siesta went into production with Westnofa and proved to be a major commercial success, eventually selling over 800,000 units globally. Among its notable buyers was US President Jimmy Carter, who ordered sixteen Siesta chairs for the White House. The design entered permanent collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Cooper-Hewitt in New York, Die Neue Sammlung in Munich, and the National Museum in Oslo.
Beyond the Siesta, Relling produced other furniture designs including the Tema armchair (1973) for Vestlandske Møbelfabrikk, a steel-framed lounge piece with thick leather seating that extended the structural vocabulary of the Siesta into a more angular idiom. He continued working as a designer and architect in Sykkylven until his later years.
Relling received the Jacob Prize in 1978 and the King's Medal of Merit in 1999. The Siesta was awarded the Classic Award for Design Excellence by the Norwegian Design Council in 1992. Relling died on 25 September 2002. At auction, his work appears almost exclusively as the Siesta chair and related seating. Of 47 items recorded across the Nordic market, 44 are categorised as chairs and armchairs. Trading has been active at Stockholms Auktionsverk Hamburg, Auktionsverket Engelholm, and Palsgaard Kunstauktioner, with top results reaching 3,984 EUR and pairs typically selling in the 2,500-3,000 SEK range.