KunstenaarSwiss
Bruno Rey
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Bruno Rey was born in 1935 in Brugg, in the Swiss canton of Aargau. He trained first as a cabinetmaker, then enrolled at the Kunstgewerbeschule Zurich in 1957, graduating in 1960 from the interior design class taught by Willy Guhl. Years of journeyman travel followed, along with positions in architectural offices, before he opened his own atelier for architecture and industrial design in Baden in 1968.
His collaboration with the Swiss furniture manufacturer Dietiker in Stein am Rhein defined the arc of his career. The chair that emerged from this partnership, model 3300, went into serial production in 1971. Its defining feature was a patented screwless metal-to-wood connection: the chair legs join the seat via an aluminium console, originally sand-cast by hand and later produced through gravity die casting. The entire assembly relies on adhesion rather than hardware. Dietiker patented the construction in 1972, making it the company's first patented chair. The Swiss Museum of Design in Zurich later called it the most successful piece of Swiss furniture of all time, with over 1.5 million units sold across five decades.
Parallel to his work with Dietiker, Rey designed chairs for the German manufacturer Kusch+Co between 1970 and 1979, including a range of stackable dining and armchairs in leather and beech. Together with designer Charles Polin, he developed additional pieces for Hiller Objektmobel and Plank GmbH, among others. He also worked outside furniture: Rey designed the control room interior for the Muhleberg Nuclear Power Plant in Canton Berne, and created outdoor planter systems in fibre cement for Eternit AG.
The Rey Chair's second life came in 2022, when HAY partnered with Dietiker to reissue the full collection in expanded dimensions and a range of new colours. The collaboration introduced the chair to a generation unfamiliar with its origins, while the original production method was preserved without alteration. Rey died in 2019, three years before the relaunch.
On the Nordic auction market, Bruno Rey's work appears almost entirely through Stockholms Auktionsverk's German branches in Dusseldorf/Neuss and Cologne, which together account for the large majority of his 32 indexed lots on Auctionist. Sets of Rey Chair 33 in stained beech dominate the listings, alongside occasional Kusch+Co dining tables from the 1970s. Top recorded prices for sets of three to four chairs have reached around 10,000-12,000 SEK, placing this work squarely in the accessible mid-century design bracket rather than the collectibles market.