In Memoriam: Nicos Zographos (1931–2024), the designer’s designer

Zographos paid close attention to the details

In an industry becoming ever more industrialized and geared toward mass production after WWII, Zographos’ bespoke style set him apart and make his pieces valuable and extremely collectible in our eyes.

His meticulous detailing and choice of high-quality materials went above and beyond what many other designers were using in their mass-produced works, which required factories to produce at economies of scale. Chrome plating, wood molding, and metal casting were more feasible and reasonable to produce at such scales, whereas Zographos usually used solid stainless steel (sometimes solid bronze) that was then hand polished.

This is a much more time-consuming and expensive process, but it gives each Zographos piece, similar to Nakashima furniture, a one-of-a-kind personality that was expertly crafted by hand and not impersonally in a factory.

Ever the perfectionist, Zographos tirelessly and endlessly tinkered with his designs. He often took the pieces he designed for private residential and commercial commissions and kept refining them, creating many iterations and variations on 60+ original designs to eventually produce a catalog of over 100 pieces.

The details meant everything to Zographos, and he cared about every detail in every piece produced by his company, Zographos Designs Limited, between 1964 and the 2010s, when Zographos retired and closed the shop. 

Zographos was one of the last true Bauhaus disciples

Evidence of why the Bauhaus movement has been so influential in modern design, Zographos graduated from his master’s program at the University of Iowa and started professionally designing in a world dominated by Bauhaus acolytes and their philosophy.

Zographos looked up to and idolized the biggest names to come out of the Bauhaus School—especially one of its students, Marcel Breuer, and their last director, Mies Van der Rohe. He embraced their philosophy of simplicity, of form following function, of stripping down a design to its barest essence, its sleekest profile.

The Bauhaus influence is explicit in Zographos’ work, as he clearly drew inspiration for some of his most famous designs from iconic Bauhaus designs like Mies’s Barcelona Chair and Breuer’s Wassily Chair.

Though he didn’t study at the school or apprentice under one of its most prominent figures—like, for example, Mies Van der Rohe being Florence Knoll’s thesis advisor at Illinois Institute of Technology—he carried the Bauhaus philosophy forward through the rest of the 20^th century. 

Equally as important, however, was the early stint in his career at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Architects (SOM), where he studied and worked under modernist master Gordon Bunshaft.

Alpha Bucket Chair (1964)

Zographos repeated the stainless steel and leather palette from the CH28 Ribbon Chair—it is a palette he used often throughout his career—and applied it to a more heavily cushioned office chair design.

The Bucket Chair utilizes the Alpha base, with curved steel petals expanding out from a central “stem.” The Alpha base is a recurring theme in other chairs, stools, and tables.  

BE.1 Museum Bench (1965)

Zographos again used the upholstered leather and stainless-steel palette in his museum bench, which is in a way referential to Florence Knoll or Mies van der Rohe's benches and daybeds. In his bench, however, the frame is again a showcase of metal craftsmanship on full (side) display, lifting up the fine leather cushion so that it appears to float. 

The piece has a bold elevational profile with small footprint, which is appropriate given that it was designed for a place where everything is part of the overall aesthetic and experience but where the focus is on the exhibited works on display. Its subtly curved steel structure complements the space while not attracting more attention that it should. This is another example of how Zographos employed the Bauhaus philosophy of “form follows function.” 

CH66 Chair (1966)

For the CH66 Chair, which would eventually be included in MoMA’s permanent collection, Zographos again took inspiration from the biggest names from the Bauhaus movement.

The upholstered back of the chair draws inspiration from Marcel Breuer’s Wassily Lounge Chair, and the heavy gauged chrome-plated steel tube structure is reminiscent of the cantilever design that Mies Van der Rohe employed in his Tubular Brno Armchair and MR10 Cantilever Chair.

In a departure from his classic upholstered leather cushions or buckets, Zographos instead used a thick saddle leather for the seat and back, which were secured together with coils—a more pronounced detail than seen in earlier Zographos furniture pieces.