Gerard Van Den Berg. Pair of armchairs. 1970s.

Montis is a Dutch company of design furniture manufacture created in 1974. It innovates by its avant-garde ideas and techniques by mixing leather and steel in different colors and shapes combinations. Thanks to different collaborations with many designers, the brand regularly presented new collections of design furniture which answer to quality and comfort requirements and to contemporary needs of interior decoration.

Gerard van den Berg (1947) is a Dutch designer who opened the way to the revival of Netherlands design and its promotion abroad. He made his apprenticeship in the society of his father’s furniture manufacture where he developped his technical skills by also following a formation in furniture production in the technical school of Rotterdam. In 1947, he founded Montis with his brother and created simple, practical, timeless furniture, always in a will of aesthetical research. He always used leather and tapestry to create a tension between design and the material at the base of the creation. In 1983, he invented the technique “Jacket” : consisting of assembling leather on steel mounts structure thanks to a zip. Van den Berg created his eponymous studio in 1989 where he continued the seatings design, he left the Montis company in 1990 and the following year he founded the Label company who created comfortable and casual furniture. All along his career, he received many awards as the Kho Liang prize in 1984, the Mobilia Innovation Award in 1990, , the Interior Architecture prize the follow year and the prize of the best Design of the Dutch Furniture in 1984 and 1997.

Sources :

P.KJELLBERG, Le Mobilier du XXe siècle. Dictionnaire des créateurs, Les éditions de l’amateur, p.653