The iconic twentieth-century chair designs – the Wassily, the Barcelona, and the Eames Lounge Chair – remain in continuous production. Yet their designers – Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Ray and Charles Eames – have passed, and so if you order one today, the major manufacturers that license and mass-produce them are unlikely to register your purchase at all.
Order a CALLUM Lounge Chair, by contrast, and its creator will notice. Feted as one of the great automotive designers, Ian Callum will see precisely which color combination you’ve chosen. Each piece is hand-trimmed and assembled in small numbers – just one or two a month – in the workshop beneath his Warwick studio in England’s Midlands, alongside the bespoke and often confidential automotive projects undertaken by his team.
“I’m very aware of each chair we make,” Callum tells me. “We don't give it the hard sell because we don’t want to build one every week. They're also not inexpensive, so I feel pleased when people choose to order one. I have a good look at each one, and we photograph them all before they leave.”
Callum spent 20 years as design director of Jaguar, transforming the range with cars like the F-Pace sports car and electric I-Pace, but leaving long before that controversial pink Type 00 concept was revealed in 2024. Prior to Jaguar, he created cars like the Aston Martin DB7, which one writer described as having 'the sort of automotive beauty you see once in a generation.’ Its huge success – based mainly on its looks – saved its ailing maker. In 2019, Callum was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen's Birthday Honours list for his services to automotive design.
“When I left Jaguar, I wanted to design something which was not automotive, and a chair was one of the first things on my list,” he says. “I think every designer worth their salt should want to design a chair. It's a standard piece of product design and goes back for an eternity. I’ve always loved the Eames chair, so that was an influence. The plywood used in the original was essential, but I decided to make it simpler, and to include carbon fiber because it represented my era – this era. Once I started work, the design came instinctively.”
The release of the CALLUM chair is a gentle distraction from the other, bigger projects he and his team are working on, from rebooted versions of his greatest hits like the Aston Martin Vanquish and the stillborn Jaguar C-X75 supercar, to the Callum Skye electric off-roader and his bespoke, restomod Wood & Pickett Minis. Some chairs have been sold to car aficionados who want something different from one of the great figures of automotive design, and others to those who’ve bought one of Callum’s bespoke cars and want a chair to match the cabin.
Now, Callum has partnered with interior designer, architect, and broadcaster Daniel Hopwood, whose London-based Studio Hopwood has been transforming high-end residential properties for twenty years. Hopwood has created an edition of the CALLUM chair which he describes as ‘familiar yet elevated – true to its original form, but with a tailored twist.’ He has used oxblood hides over high-gloss maroon wood and gloss carbon fiber, and gold-plated collars around the seat base and the ottoman. The combination is subtle, sharp, and original.
Even Callum has learned something from the collaboration. “It’s opened my eyes to being a bit more flamboyant,” he says. “It’s not in my nature to be flamboyant. Being a Scot, I like things to be very matter-of-fact and precise, and the chair is quite austere. I think what Daniel saw, rightly, was an opportunity to glitz it up a bit.”
“He hasn't changed anything physically: it's a color and materials exercise. He's just made it more glamorous, and done it in a very simple, effective way. The dark red I felt comfortable with, but maybe not the metal finishers at first. But now that we’ve done it, I'm totally on board with it, and maybe I’m realizing that I've got to have more fun.”
Perhaps we’ll see that reflected in Callum’s next chair, likely to be inspired by Breuer’s Wassily design. “That’s my favorite chair,” he says. “It's a perfect example of design, style, and engineering coming together in one object. I don't want to cynically just do another chair. I want to do something which is as special as our first. And creativity isn’t about moments of inspiration. It’s about working hard at something, so I just need to find the time to do it.”
CALLUM x Daniel Hopwood lounge chair, £13,500 (approx. $18,287).
