One of those small Australian designs that looks simple until you see how much it solves. Gerard and Isobel Doube started their Melbourne furniture company in 1953 and built it around exactly this kind of thinking: a sofa that folds down into a bed through a hinged twin-base frame, clever without showing off. Their sofa-beds were sold through Andersons in Prahran and an example sits in the Powerhouse collection, which tells you the design was taken seriously at the time and has held up since.

This later piece keeps that Melbourne intelligence: flexible, unfussy, and better than it first lets on. The vinyl and metal legs place it firmly in the 60s to 70s, and the maker's sticker confirms the line.