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Giroflex 'Pascal' office chair

About Gordon Russel:

Sir (Sydney) Gordon Russell (20 May 1892 – 7 October 1980) was an English designer, craftsman and educationist. He came under the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement from 1904 after his father had moved to Broadway in the Cotswolds to be hotelier at the Lygon Arms, through the Guild of Handicraft, the community of metalworkers, enamellers, wood carvers, furniture makers, and printers brought in 1902 by C.R. Ashbee from east London to Chipping Camden.
Following service as an officer in World War I, for which he was awarded the Military Cross in 1918, he became a furniture maker and designer. In 1925 Russell won a Gold Medal at the Paris Exhibition with a cabinet, with internal drawers lined with boxwood, ebony and laburnum, and valued in 2013 at £50,000 - £60,000.
During World War II he was instrumental in developing utility furniture as Chairman of the government's Utility Furniture Design Panel. In 1943 he became Chairman of the Utility Design Panel. In 1947 Gordon Russell became director of the Council of Industrial Design (COID) (later renamed the Design Council. He became the first chairman of the Crafts Council.
Notable designs by Russell include chairs for the re-built Coventry Cathedral. His brother Richard Drew Russel was also a designer.
He was awarded a knighthood in 1955 for services to design.

About Giroflex

In 1872 Albert Stoll I established a chair factory in Koblenz. It produced bentwood chairs for cafés, hotels and stores. Starting in 1919, his son, Albert Stoll II, concentrated on the development and production of office chairs.
In 1926 he invented the 'spring swivel', the first swivel chair with a suspension system, and had it patented worldwide. The brand name 'Giroflex' (turn and flex), introduced in 1948, can be traced back to this invention. Giroflex expanded.
In 1949 the first foreign production and distribution facility was established in Belgium. This was followed by a production site in Brazil, which over time developed to become the present industry leader in South America, and branch offices in Germany, the Netherlands and France.
The main production facility and the centre for research and development remained in Koblenz. From 1962 cooperation was established with internationally recognized ergonomists. This led to ergonomically designed chairs oriented to the needs of people who must remain seated for longer periods of time.

The chairs we sell

Our 'Pascal' chairs have lived most of their live in a school before we discovered them. They are now used in our offices as a -very- comfortable desk chair. They show patina, but no such things as cracks or bursts.