Jon Goulder is an award-winning Australian designer with an established reputation for innovative furniture, particularly designs utilising the flexible qualities of laminated timbers. Goulder was the winner of the inaugural Bombay Sapphire Design Discovery Award in 2003 with his 'Fruit Bowl' and his 'Leda seat' was selected for Object Gallery's 'Sydney Style' exhibition, Sydney Opera House, 2004. 'Leda' also won the Hobart Art Prize in 2004 and the 'Leda' prototype was acquired for the collection of the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery. The seat has been in production since early 2004 and is currently retailed through Anibou, Sydney.

Goulder trained originally as an upholsterer and furniture maker and began designing furniture in 1994. In 1998 he completed a Diploma of Art, Craft & Design at the Canberra School of Art and he now complements his design work with teaching furniture design at the University of Technology, Sydney. With his grounding in the practical, craft-based aspects of furniture making, Goulder is able to use these skills to develop full-scale mock-ups in order to test and refine his designs for optimum comfort, practicality and function. More recently he has extended his knowledge about the manufacturing industry in order to be able to apply industrial technologies to the production of his designs. 'Leda seat', with its painstaking design development and industrial production capability, very elegantly reflects the success of Goulder's objective to create objects that marry a strong design aesthetic, a craft-based understanding of materials and the potential for series production through industrial techniques.

The seat is made from plywood strips cut from one sheet of birch plywood and the leg-frame is cut out of one 12 mm aluminium plate, thus simplifying the production process. The design was originally developed through a series of prototypes, and production models are now made by CNC Industries and Jon Goulder. This seat was designed by Jon Goulder in 2003 and made by Jon Goulder and CNC Industries in 2004.

Seat, 'Leda seat', plywood / aluminium, designed by Jon Goulder, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2003, made by Jon Goulder and CNC Industries, Australia, 2004

Chaise-longue like seat, the back and seat formed from 10 continuous parallel lengths of birch plywood connected by stainless steel strips, the back curving around at one end and extending into the shaped seat surface, the opposite end remaining open; the seat supported at each end by aluminium leg brackets.

Designed: Goulder, Jon; ; 2003

Made: Goulder, Jon; ; 2004

2005/182/1

2003

733 mm

960 mm