Decades before Harry Bertoia created his wire-frame chair
or Eero Saarinen designed the Tulip collection for Knoll,
before George Nelson and the Eameses hatched their many
classics for Herman Miller, there was Alvar Aalto. The great
Finnish architect began crafting iconic pieces as early as
the 1920s, so it’s no stretch to call him a founding father
of modern design.
Last year, the Finnish company that has produced most
of Aalto’s furniture since day one celebrated its own 75th
anniversary. Artek was founded in 1935 by Aalto; his wife,
Aino; Maire Gullichsen, an art patron; and Nils-Gustav Hahl,
an art historian. The company’s goal was to make and market
the furniture that Aalto had designed for buildings like the
Viipuri Library and the Paimio Sanatorium. What’s often
forgotten today is that it also wanted to educate Finns about
“good design” and introduce them to contemporary artists
such as Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, and Alexander Calder.
At a time when architects like Marcel Breuer, Le Corbusier,
and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe were obsessed with making
furniture out of tubular steel, Aalto experimented with
natural materials by bending wood into curves, creating
a softer, more humanist modernism. “He was obviously
one of the important architects in the development of
contemporary design in Scandinavia,” says Jens Risom,
who looked to Aalto’s creations when he designed his first
collection out of cedar and surplus webbing in 1942 for
Hans Knoll. “His furniture was one of the reasons that we
knew that webbing could be used.”
“The furniture and lighting always had a connection to
the architecture. They were part of a holistic approach,”
says Mirkku Kullberg, a former fashion executive who was
appointed managing director of Artek in 2005 by Proventus,
the Swedish investment group that bought the company in
1992. When she joined the company, she thought she knew
a little about it, having grown up in Finland surrounded
by Artek furniture. “But really, I knew nothing,” she says.
During her first year, she read up on its history and mined
the archives, looking for designs that could be brought
back into production, searching for an understanding of
what Artek was about and where it should go. “The cross-
disciplinary thinking, the philosophical dimensions, the
global connections all impressed me, but what really sur-
prised me were the company’s international ambitions,”
she says. “Early on, they were opening foreign offices,
collaborating with international architects, participating
in great projects around the world.”
