Scandinavian Furniture and Design
Furniture, glass and household design from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, known for pale woods, practical forms and humane modernism.
No works indexed yet · 10 related artists
No open-access works for Scandinavian Furniture and Design are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
Nordic design rests on a social idea: beautiful, well-made things belong in every home. The Swedish writer Ellen Key argued it in Beauty for All (1899), and Gregor Paulsson's More Beautiful Everyday Things (1919) urged industry to take it up. By the 1930s the region had its own modernism, gentler than the Bauhaus. Alvar Aalto bent laminated birch into the Paimio armchair (1932) and set up Artek in 1935, and Bruno Mathsson shaped bentwood and webbing lounge chairs to the curve of a seated body.
After the war the touring exhibition Design in Scandinavia (1954–57) introduced North Americans to Danish teak, Finnish glass and Swedish ceramics. Tapio Wirkkala's glass for Iittala recalled melting ice and chanterelles, Ilmari Tapiovaara's stacking Domus chair (1946) furnished Helsinki student housing, and Norway's Peter Opsvik later designed the Tripp Trapp child's chair (1972). Look for pale timber, bent laminates and natural textiles.
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