The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 13, 2025

An armchair and sideboard with rounded edges. The sideboard features two columns of light grey-green draws connected by bare shelves. Brown wood, the edges carved with lines moving down in right angles, connects the top of the drawers, each's base made of the same colored wood. The chair features a black, synthetic leather seat and rectangular back with three, parallel green-white bars curving around the sides as armrests and extending down to the legs.

Armchair and Sideboard from "The Kem Weber Group"

designed 1928–1929
designed by

Kem (Karl Emanuel Martin) Weber

(American, b. Germany, 1889–1963)
manufacturer

Grand Rapids Chair Company

(American)
America, Michigan, Grand Rapids, 20th century
painted wood with synthetic leather
The Mary Spedding Milliken Memorial Fund 2003.4
Location: Not on view

Description

This chair and sideboard by Kem Weber combine the linear impact of urban architecture with decorative detailing inspired by Maya temples, the two most influential visual references used by modernist designers in the late 1920s.
  • Coffin, Sarah D., and Stephen Harrison. The Jazz Age: American style in the 1920s. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2017. Reproduced: fig. 363, p. 296 - 297
  • The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY (April 7-August 20, 2017).
    Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY (4/7/2017 - 8/20/2017) and The Cleveland Museum of Art, OH (9/30/2017 - 1/14/2018): "The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s"
  • {{cite web|title=Armchair and Sideboard from "The Kem Weber Group"|url=false|author=Kem (Karl Emanuel Martin) Weber, Grand Rapids Chair Company|year=designed 1928–1929|access-date=13 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2003.4