American Design Furniture

Hello and welcome to Scandinavian Design 101. Today, I want to talk a bit about American furniture produced in Scandinavia. If you look at online auctions or antique dealers in countries And that's perhaps a bit surprising. Some Scandinavian companies actually produced some of these furniture. And here's two examples. And I think we should start by talking about this chair, and it's one of my personal favorites. It's the Diamond Chair by Harry Bertolja. And Harry Bertolja is perhaps not as known today as the Eameses, for example, but he was one of the most important designers of furniture in the US in the last century. Harry Bertolja was born in Italy, but moved to the US already at a young age. He came to study at the Cranbrook Academy, where he met the legendary Ba And when Charles Eames and Eero Saranen developed their organic furniture range for the Muse And above being a designer, he was also an artist creating paintings and not least sculptures. And you can see this in the Diamond Chair. It's not just a chair, but also an adorable modern sculpture. And the Diamond Chair was designed somewhere between 1950-52, and it was originally produced by Noll International. But this chair is not produced by Noll, it's a Swedish chair, and it's produced by the Swedish department store Nordiska Kompaniiet. And I think you heard about Nordiska Kompaniiet, because they had a lot of own designers, for example Axel Einajort, using his pinewood furniture, for example. But they also bought the sign from abroad. And this is one example. I'm not really sure, I haven't compared this chair with an American chair side by side, but there aren'that many differences on the Diamond Chair. Perhaps the quality is a bit lower on the Swedish chair, I would say, because the welding has come loose on some parts. For example here, beneath the armrest. It's a weak point here, and almost all Swedish Diamond Shares I've seen are broken. And Nordiska Kompaniiet produced not just the Diamond Chair by Harbert Toya, but also other furniture by Bertoya. For example, the large Diamond Chair, and they also produced the dining chairs. And I think we're going to take a look now at an old Nordiska Kompaniiet catalogue to see the different models, and also see the prices back in the days. And Nordiska Kompaniiet didn't just produce furniture by Bertoya, but also, for example, a lot of furniture by Charles and Ray Eames. And I think also now it's time to take a look at some old magazine ads. I found them in the magazine for And these ads are from 1963, and I really Let's take a look. And what about this chair? You recognize it, it's the Eru00f6sadinen Tulips chair. And it's an original, but it's produced in Scandinavia. But this chair is not Swedish, it's actually Danish. And it's produced by the Kervi company. And I don't really know that much about Kervi, but I know one chair, and I think you've seen it. The chair designed by Ju00f6rgen Rasmussen in the late 50s. And I mean, today, that's why we've heard the name Kervi, I guess. The Kervi working chair was designed by Ju00f6rgen Rasmussen in 1958. And the innovative thing was the double wheel casters invented in 1965 by Rasmussen. And these chairs were actually also produced by Noll in the US. And they bought the right to produce them in 1970. So it's a bit interesting, because Kervi produced chairs by Noll, and Noll produced chairs by Kervi. And the tulip was designed by Eru00f6sadinen in 1957. And it was an attempt by Sadenen to produce a chair with as few legs as possible. With the tulip chair, Sadenen had created the world's first ever one-legged chair. And it's elegant, but a bit difficult to move around over the floor. And it's quite heavy also because of the metal foot. And therefore, Sadenen made it a swivel chair. And this function made it easier to use, but at the same time, a lot of advanced engineering was needed to hide the swivel function inside the thin tulip foot. And how do I know this chair is produced by Kervi? Well, it has a small label here that says Noll International and then also Kervi Denmark. And we bought a couple of these chairs on auction a couple of years ago. And they were in a terrible condition. And I think they've used them outside or something. So the cushion is not original. It didn't have any cushion then. And we also had to respray it because it looks terrible. And this was some examples of American furniture produced in Scandinavia back in the days. Thanks a lot for watching. And if you liked this episode, click th And follow us on Instagram, we are called ScandinavianDesign101. Thanks a lot for watching.