On the recommendation of Floris Van den Broecke at the Royal College of Art, Janice Blackburn commissioned Jasper to design a chair and a sofa for her and her husband. Jasper’s sofa design, initially called Sofa No. 1, was this chaise longue. It had two distinctive curvy feet on one side, and two straight on the other.
Initially Jasper took three orders for chaises: one for Janice Blackburn, one for Cutler and Gross, whose showroom he was designing, and one for a forthcoming exhibition in Cologne. He covered the first model in green canvas before finding a green linen he preferred, purchased from Bernard Thorpe. Janice Blackburn and Cutler and Gross received the green linen versions. The canvas chaise did not end up going to the exhibition in Cologne but was part of Jasper’s World Furniture Show exhibition at the Prodomo shop in Vienna in the summer of 1988. The photograph shows the chaise on show in this exhibition. It remained in Vienna after the exhibition, retained by Prodomo for thirty years.
A sketch of the chaise in 1987.
Jasper’s orders for the various sofas, recorded in his diary in October 1988.
At the same time as Jasper had made the three chaises, he also produced a version with two arms and no back, which he called Sofa No. 2. The first of these was made for his friend Paul Kasmin, who was planning a new gallery in New York. Jasper shipped it to New York at the start of 1988. Cappellini produced Sofa No. 2 from 1989, known as the Day Bed.
Jasper also developed and sold a version with two armrests and a back, Sofa No. 3. SCP began to produce this towards the end of 1988. The Day Bed and the Sofa used the same straight feet as the Chaise Longue, and not the curved feet. An armchair completed the range.