Alvar Aalto
Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) was a Finnish architect and designer. His work includes architecture, furniture, textiles and glassware. Aalto's early career runs in parallel with the rapid economic growth and industrialization of Finland during the first half of the twentieth century and many of his clients were industrialists; among these were the Ahlstrom-Gullichsen family.[1]
Sigvard Bernadotte
Sigvard Bernadotte, born prince as son of the Swedish king. He lost his title when he married his first wife. He was given the title of count by the Great-duchess of Luxembourg Josephine-Charlotte, daughter of his aunt Astrid, Queen of Belgium. He studied ornamental arts with Olle Hjortzberg but was first interested in theatre and studied stage design in Munich. He subsequently did some stage work in Berlin and designed a number of posters and stage designs and art directed three Swedish films
Hans Brattrud
Hans Brattrud was born in 1933 and studied at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, setting up his own design studio at the same time, before later becoming an architect. In 1957 he designed the chair collection Scandia. The designer has a clutch of awards to his name, and the Scandia chair continues to earn him accolades, most recently the Interior Innovation Award 2006 at the IMM Cologne fair.
Nanna Ditzel
Born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1923. Trained as a cabinetmaker before studies at the School of Arts and Crafts and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Graduated in furniture design in 1946. Established own design studio together with Jørgen Ditzel the same year and continued to work in the design sector until shortly before her death in Copenhagen in June 2005.
Egon Eiermann
Egon Eiermann (September 29, 1904, Neuendorf – July 20, 1970, Baden-Baden) was one of Germany's most prominent architects in the second half of the 20th century.
Yngve Ekström
Yngve Ekström was born 1913, in Hagafors in Småland, home to Swedan's oldest furniture factory. Ekström's career coincided in time with the best part of the postwar modern movement when colleagues like Alvar Aalto, Bruno Mathsson, Arne Jacobsen and Poul Kjaerholm made the concept "Scandinavian Modern" famous all over the world. Yngve Ekström and his brother Jerker founded the Swedish furniture company Swedese in 1945. Yngve led the company until his death in 1988.
Preben Fabricius & Jørgen Kastholm
Inspired by the pioneers of 1920s functionalism and the 1960s innovative Scandinavian language of form, Preben Fabricius & Jorgen Kastholm designed a range of minimalist furniture that in recent years has enjoyed a renaissance among collectors and enthusiasts of 20th century design.
Jørgen Gammelgaard
Jørgen Gammelgaard had a distinguished career as designer, educator, and humanitarian. Following the footsteps of Hans Wegner, he apprenticed in a furniture design workshop and worked for Arne Jacobsen, among others. As a consultant to the United Nations, he was influenced by indigenous designs he found in his travels to Ceylon, the Sudan, and Samoa and designed the celebrated Tip Top Lamp while living in the South Pacific. From 1987 until his death in 1991, he was a professor of furniture design at the Royal Danish Academy of Arts in Copenhagen, a prestigious position previously held by Jacobsen, Kaare Klint and Pjoul Kjærholm.
Jindrich Halabala
Jindrich Halabala (1903-1978, Czech Republic) 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. As chief designer of the large Brno-based furniture producer United Arts and Crafts Manufacture (UP), he significantly influenced its manufacturing program from the 1930s on - pioneering the industrial manufacture of furniture in Czechoslovakia.
Frits Henningsen
Frits Henningensen (1902-1971, Danish) was greatly respected for his very high standards of craftsmanships. One notes how his extensive use of expensive and exotic woods, such as rosewood and mahogany. Every piece with the Henningsen signature, is entirely hand-made. He is notable for designing furniture with gorgeous curves which he loved to flourish in, especially in the arms of his fantastic chairs and Sofas. For Henningsen, the graceful curves of his furniture was simply the result of the marriage of elegance and comfort.
Peter Hvidt & Orla Mølgaard-Nielsen
Peter Hvidt (1916-1986) and Orla Mølgaard-Nielsen (1907-1993) opened a furniture design office in 1944. Hvidt, who had trained as an architect and cabinetmaker at the School of Arts and Crafts in Copenhagen, designed very traditional furniture throughout the 1940s. His one success before they formed the partnership was his Portex chair, which was one of the first stacking chairs to come out of Denmark. However, in 1950,
Lisa & Hans Isbrand
Furniture designers, Lise and Hans Isbrand are known for creating functional, ergonomical, and aesthetically convincing solutions. They design both single objects and complete interior decorating projects, working with manufacturers of office furniture, school room furniture etc. Lise and Hans Isbrand have appeared several times at the SE exhibitions with exciting and experimental prototypes.
Bruno Mathsson
Bruno Mathsson (1907-1988, Swedish) was born in Varnamo in 1907 into a woodworking tradition. His father was a well known cabinetmaker producing well crafted wood furniture as had the four generations of Mathsson’s before him. He grew up learning the technical skills to make furniture, the feel and nature of wood and the tradition of excellence. Mathsson wasn’t content with building only the flat board furniture his family traditionally crafted. His furniture was designed with clean, elegant lines including some chairs with positional adjustments. Some of the chairs he worked on didn’t have springs or upholstery.
Børge Mogensen
Børge Mogensen (1914–1972) started his career as a cabinetmaker in 1934. In 1936 he went on to study at the Copenhagen School of Arts and Crafts under Professor Kaare Klint before entering the Royal Academy of Fine Arts from where he graduated as an architect in 1942.
Gunnar Nylund
Ceramist Gunnar Nylund (1904-1997) was equally active in Sweden and in Denmark but is best known for his work at Rörstrand. He was trained as an architect in Copenhagen in the 1920’s, but his greatest influences in the early years were his parents, his mother a Danish ceramist and his father a Finnish painter and sculptor.
Jens H. Quistgaard
Jens H. Quistgaard, was a celebrated Danish industrial designer whose clean-lined and immensely popular pieces for the Dansk brand of tableware helped define the Scandinavian Modern style for postwar Americans. His work, which won many international awards, is in the permanent collections of major museums, among them the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and the Louvre.
Rud Thygesen & Johnny Sørensen
When the Danish King Frederik IX shook hands with Thygesen and Sørensen in 1970 in thanks for their 70th birthday gift, it launched a new era in the lives of the two young furniture designers. Until then, they had only just managed to eke out a living from their design studio, a lifelong dream, but following the royal handshake and photos in illustrated weeklies, their exclusive furniture collections attracted everyone’s attention, and the fairytale about the “King’s Furniture” unfolded.
Paul Tuttle
Paul Tuttle (1918-2002, American) studied architecture. In the early 60`s, Tuttle decided to work in metal, and challenge it to the ultimate. The idea to utilizing plated steel in a cantilever from the base to form a “Z” , for this Tuttle received wide recognition at that time for its beauty and originality .
Jørn Utzon
Jørn Oberg Utzon (1918-2008), was a Danish architect, most notable for designing the Sydney Opera House in Australia. When it was declared a World Heritage Site on 28 June 2007, Utzon became only the second person to have received such recognition for one of his works during his lifetime.[2] Other outstanding works include Bagsværd Church near Copenhagen and the National Assembly Building in Kuwait. He also made important contributions to housing design, especially with his Kingo Houses near Helsingør.
Arne Vodder
Danish architect and designer Arne Vodder should be counted among the most influential Scandinavian mid-century designers. A student of world renown furniture designer Finn Juhl, Mr Vodder started designing furniture for Fritz Hansen, France & Son and Sibast, the latter for which he designed a wide range of furniture which received worldwide recognition and success. His beautiful designs were elegantly detailed but modest in their expression.
Poul M. Volther
Poul Volther (1923-2001, Danish) was a cabinetmaker and later studied at the Danish Design School. Volther was against fads and aesthetic smartness, and loved the simple manufacture of fine materials. As a teacher at the Danish Design School, he influenced hundreds of young furniture designers’ sense of craftsmanship and quality. His friend and colleague Hans J. Wegner introduced him to FDB Mobelfabrik where he was employed in 1949 in their furniture design studio which was led, at the time, by another design great – Borge Mogensen.
Ole Wanscher
Words like delicate, elegant and orderly come to mind when describing his designs. Ole Wanscher (1903-1985, Danish) was a student of Kaare Klint, and later followed in his footsteps as Professor at the Furniture School at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen. Like Klint, he was inspired by classical furniture, and he possessed a great interest in and knowledge about, not only English 18th century furniture, but also early Egyptian furniture. This influence is evident in “the Egyptian Stool” from 1960, a slight, delicate piece where luxurious materials and excellent craftsmanship is combined.
Hans J. Wegner
With his love of natural materials and his deep understanding of the need for furniture to be functional as well as beautiful, Hans Jørgen Wegner (April 2, 1914 - January 26, 2007) made mid-century Danish design popular on an international scale. He began his career as a cabinetmaker in 1931 and subsequently entered the Copenhagen School of Arts & Crafts. After receiving his architectural degree in 1938, he worked as a designer in Arne Jacobsen and Erik Møller’s architectural office before establishing his own office in 1943.