Why the Molloy Chair Is an International Icon
This chair is a rare thing: multipurpose furniture that’s both stylish and functional.
Adam Goodrum knows what you think about stacking chairs. “They’re almost a second class of sorts,” says the industrial designer, “so I wanted to design a stacking chair that wouldn’t read as a stacking chair.” The result – the Molloy – is the antithesis of the moulded plastic church-hall number.
Instead, the Sydney-based creative crafted a sleek, solid timber chair that doesn’t sacrifice style or comfort in the quest for function. “It’s a quiet chair,” says Goodrum, who made the piece as part of a range for Australian furniture company Cult in 2014. “It’s got a kind of gentle language with all the soft curves and lines.”
Composed of eight pieces glued together and hand-sanded, the chair in walnut, ash or oak is time-consuming and expensive to produce – hence the price starting at $3275 each. Because of its multiple components and timber grain directions, Perth-raised Goodrum named the chair after Molloy Island – a “magical” place in south-west Western Australia where two rivers run into one. He built an A frame holiday house there with his father three decades ago.
Made in Australia (and Japan for the international market), the awardwinning design is in the permanent collection of Sydney’s Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences. The Sydney Opera House commissioned a version with armrests for its order of 60 Molloy chairs in 2018 and 350 are headed to the Australian Embassy in Washington DC.
A graduate of the University of Technology Sydney, Goodrum made international waves in 2008 with his brightly coloured, aluminium folding Stitch chair (produced by Italian firm Cappellini) and has designed for the likes of Alessi and Veuve Clicquot. “I do some things that are more theatrical but the Molloy is more humble. I like the idea that it’s not asking for attention.” Showy it’s not but the Molloy is now shown around the world.
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