DESIGNERS
YNGVE EKSTROM (1913-1988)
Swedish furniture designer, wood carver, sculptor and architect. Yngve Ekström is often associated with the "Lamino" chair which in 1999 was named by the influential Swedish magazine "Sköna Hems" as the Swedish furniture design of the century. Ekström also co-founded the furniture producer Swedese, where he worked for over 40 years until his death in 1988.
OLE WANSCHER (1903-1985)
Born in Copenhagen, was an architect and professor of architecture with furniture designs as his specialty. He came to shape Danish furniture, both as an active designer and as a master teacher. His best known products primarily in the period between the late forties and early sixties. His furniture designs are now considered to be modern classics - sophisticated and functional with an exquisite attention to detail.
POUL HENNINGSEN (1894-1967)
One of the most famous and authoritative Danish lighting designers and one of the most influential people of Denmark's cultural life between the world wars. He also works as an architect, writer, furniture designer, journalist and architecture critic. From 1925 until his death, Poul Henningsen works with the Louis Poulsen Lighting company.
CHARLOTTE PERRIAND (1903-1999)
Maybe the most important French designer and architect. After her graduation at the École de l‘Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1925, she starts designing furniture and causes a sensation with her 'Bar sous le toit', made of nickel plated copper and anodized aluminium. In 1927 she meets Le Corbusier, and work in his studio for the next ten years. In the 1930s she starts designing rustic wooden furniture in a free form (Form Libre). This style gets enhanced by her stay in Japan from 1940, where she became design consultant for the Japanese Board of Trade.
ARNE NORELL (1917-1971)
The Swedish designer is often praised for pioneering “conceptual” furniture, because he employed traditional materials—leather, turned wood, bentwood, and metal, for example—in unexpected forms, often with lyrical results.
BARBA CORSINI (1916-2008)
Spanish leading functionalist architect who won international praise for his architecture and his design for La Pedrera. Corsini was strongly inspired by German architect, Mies van der Rohe and American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. He also had a great affinity to Finnish architecture, which he believed to be the finest in Europe on account of the powerful simplicity of the designs. 'Powerful simplicity' is perhaps an apt description of Corsini's personal design style, as represented by the Pedrera series.
POUL KJÆRHOLM (1929-1980)
Through his important work as an architect and teacher, the Danish Poul Kjærholm is regarded a central figure in international furniture design. Kjærholm combined his modern form language with an uncompromising approach to materials and quality, strongly rooted in the Danish tradition of craftsmanship. At the same time, he was deeply inspired by the German Bauhaus School and the Dutch De Stijl movement, represented by painter Piet Mondrian, among others. Designers Gerrit Rietveld, Mies van der Rohe and Charles Eames also greatly influenced Kjærholm's work.
HANS J. WEGNER (1914-2007)
Considered a pioneering furniture designer of the twentieth century, the Danish Hans J. Wegner helped change the general public's view of furniture in the 1950s and 1960s. His passion for designing chairs, more than 500 of them, is recognized worldwide and reflected in his title 'the Master of the Chair'. He is famous for integrating perfectly executed joints with exquisite shapes and combining them with a constant curiosity for materials and deep respect for wood and its natural characteristics. His designs furnish minimalism with organic and natural softness.
BØRGE MOGENSEN (1914-1972)
Like his teacher Kaare Klint, this Danish architect developed modular designs for multi-purpose use. His goal was create furniture for families meeting their needs and financial possibilities. He designed furniture for every room of the house. He constantly had new ideaswhich he scribbled onto matchboxes, napkins or crumpled envelopes. Mogensen's most important drafts was the 'Spanish Chair' - the masterful interpretation of a traditionalchair, which Mogensen got inspired to on a trip to Spain.
JONAS LINDVALL (1963)
An exponent of traditional Swedish craftsmanship, Jonas Lindvall creates new classics that reflect a spirit of modernity, whilst maintaining a profound respect for skills and techniques of the past. This is a theme that is inherent throughout his work, and comes from a tireless curiosity and a passion for history.
GIO PONTI (1891-1979)
Italian designer, architect and editor, is one of the most influential design visionaries of the 20th century. He designed a wide array of furniture and products through his career -from cabinets, lamps and chairs to ceramics and glassware- and his buildings, including Pirelli tower in Milan, were erected in 14 countries. Through Domus, the design magazine he founded in 1928, he promoted a new curiosity and open-mindedness towards new design thinking. Gio Ponti was a conceptualist who always drew lines between the architecture and the interior design.
TAPIO WIRKKALA (1915-1985)
One of the major and style defining designers of porcelain and household items, important wellbeyond Finland. Tapio Wirkkala is among the most defining personalities in Scandinavian design. He was inspired by the basic principles of natural forms and created highly aesthetic and functional commodities.
KERSTIN HÖRLIN-HOLMQUIST (1925-1997)
Swedish architect and designer, she is known for her ability to create designs for the modern home of the 1950s without being concerned about passing trends. It was important to her to remain true to her own unique humanistic version of design. She worked in collaboration with her husband Erik Holmqvist. Important for their collaboration was testing the designs in their own rooms before the respective project was finalized.
ALVAR AALTO (1898-1976)
Finish architect and urban planner, he also designs iconic furniture, textiles and glassware. Alvar Aalto refuses using metal for his furniture, he mostly works with wood. From 1925 together with Aino he experiments with distorting wood and laminated wood. In the 1930s he develops the revolutionary curved chair design. The wood forming method he invents in 1935 after founding his furniture factory Artek, is the key element of his wooden furniture.
CARLO MOLLINO (1905-1973)
Born in Turin, he studies engineering, art history and architecture, and work in the architectural studio of his father Eugenio Mollino. Carlo Mollino is one of the most exceptional designers of the 20th century. A universal talent - designer, architect, race driver, stunt pilot, photographer, fashion designer, stage designer and essayist. Mollino is a creator of organic and erotic designs influenced by Futurism and Surrealism.
JINDRICH HALABALA (1903-1976)
Most important Czech designer, he helped create a new mass-market approach to home design and furnishing in Czechoslovakia in the interwar period and after the Second World War. He believed furniture could and should be well-finished, fully functional, modular, mobile and widely affordable.
JEAN PROUVÉ (1901-1984)
French metal worker, self-taught architect and designer. He is also designated as "constructor". His main achievement was transferring manufacturing technology from industry to architecture, without losing aesthetic qualities. His design skills were not limited to one discipline. During his career Jean Prouvé was involved in architectural design, industrial design, structural design and furniture design. In 1947 Prouvé can open his own factory 'Maxéville', where 200 workers on 25,000 sq.m. produce readymade houses and schools as well as furniture.
VLADIMIR KAGAN (1927-2016)
Born in Worm, Germany, and emigrated with his parents to the US in 1938, Vladimir Kagan was a New York City-based furniture designer. His pieces of furniture are included in the world's most prestigious collections and museums. His earliest focus was on painting and sculpture but in his formative years, he became exceedingly attracted to architecture and design.
FRITZ HENNINGSEN (1889-1965)
He was known as an uncompromising designer. He viewed quality craftsmanship as the most important element of his work, making it his focus when developing new furniture. Unlike other cabinetmakers, Henningsen always created his own furniture pieces - although his greatest desire was to be recognized as a cabinetmaker and not as a furniture designer.
FLORENCE KNOLL (1917)
US-American architect and furniture designer was born as Florence Schust in Michigan. She studied architecture, with icons of 20th century such as Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe among others. Her moving to New York in 1941 helped with her breakthrough. In New York she met Hans Knoll, who had started his own design practice in 1938 and was building up his furniture factory. They married in 1946 and with Florence's design skills and Hans' business acumen the couple quickly gained international success.
FINN JUHL (1912-1989)
Danish architect, interior and industrial designer, he was one of the leading figures in the creation of "Danish design" in the 1940s and he was the designer who introduced Danish Modern to America.
JOSEF KRANK (1885-1967)
Austrian architect, designer, and theorist, he became an early advocate for modernist principles alongside contemporaries such as Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius. By the beginning of the 1920s, however, he began to question modernism’s growing programmatic streak, arguing instead that pluralism, not uniformity, most characterized life in the machine age. In 1933, he fled the Nazi regime, relocating permanently to Sweden, and work as chief designer for the Stockholm-based furnishings firm Svenskt Tenn for more than thirty years.
PERCIVAL LAFER (1936)
One of the pioneers of Brazilian Modernist movement with Joaquin Tenreiro and Sergio Rodrigues, using natural resources, tropical hardwoods, cane, and understanding the need for confort and beauty. Later was at the forefront of Ready-to-Assemble furniture.