Kiddicraft Brick City – Beach Chair Building Set KC1303

Kiddicraft's Beach Chair is built from 107 pieces — a traditional German Strandkorb, with one KIDDIZ figure. Age 5+.

It was invented in 1882 for a woman with rheumatism

The Strandkorb is not a deckchair and not generic beach furniture. It is a specific object with a date, a place and an inventor.

In 1882 a Rostock basket maker named Wilhelm Bartelmann was approached by Elfriede von Maltzahn, who wanted to spend time on the beach at Warnemünde but suffered from rheumatism and could not sit in the wind. He wove her a single-seat chair out of willow and rattan with a hood that enclosed her back and sides.

It worked, other people wanted one, and within a year his wife Elisabeth was renting them out on the beach. By 1883 there was a rental business; within a few decades the Strandkorb had spread along the entire German coast, where it remains the standard way to sit on a beach.

The design solves a genuine North Sea and Baltic problem. The water is cold, the wind is constant, and a windbreak raises the felt temperature enormously — a Strandkorb can be twenty degrees warmer inside than the air moving past it. Which is why a German beach in July is full of people sitting inside wooden boxes rather than lying on towels.

They are rented by the day and by the season, numbered, and assigned. Regulars book the same one year after year.

A hundred and seven pieces for one chair

That is a lot of parts for a piece of furniture, and it is what the woven texture costs — the hood and the sides are what make a Strandkorb recognisable rather than a box with a seat in it.

In the Moin range

Sets KC1301 and KC1302 are the lighthouses, KC1304 the fishing trawler.

Specifications

Pieces: 107 · Figures: 1 KIDDIZ · Series: Kiddicraft Moin · Age: 5+ · Compatible with leading brick systems