ARTEK IN
A MERI C A
Paul
Makovsky
Celebrating its 75th anniversary,
Alvar Aalto’s furniture company returns
to its roots and prepares to conquer
the American market once again.
This page, top: Alvar Aalto, one of the founders of Artek.
Left and above: The Finnish Pavilion at the 1939 New York
World’s Fair, designed by Alvar and Aino Aalto. Frank Lloyd
Wright called it a “work of genius.” Opposite page, top left:
Artek installation at the 1939 San Francisco Golden Gate
Exposition. Top right: The 1938 Aalto exhibition at the
Museum of Modern Art, in New York. Bottom: The Artek-Pascoe showroom in New York during the early 1940s.
“Each new interior that Aalto worked on had unique needs,
and the ones that were accepted as solutions for standard
use became part of the Artek range,” says Ville Kokkonen,
Artek’s design director. “Some became modernist icons,
like the Paimio chair and the three-legged stool.”
