Model Haga Nightstands by Carl Malmsten for Nordiska Kompaniet, 1930s, Set of 2

Going against the grain of his contemporaries, Swedish architect-designer Carl Malmsten (1888-1972) was a strong critic of functionalism and a proponent of traditional Swedish craftsmanship. Malmsten was also a devoted educator who sought alternative approaches and methods to developing hand-produced products.

Malmsten was born in 1888 in Stockholm, going on to study at the University of Stockholm, graduating in 1908. He then gained practical experience through a carpentry internship at the Nordic Museum and at Skansen (1909-1910). From 1911 until 1916, he worked in various architectural firms.

In 1916, at the age of 28, Malmsten established his studio in Stockholm, working as a freelancer in furniture design. That same year, he won a furniture competition for Stockholm’s new City Hall. With the exposure of his furniture designs, he soon became a highly sought after designer, and in 1917 exhibited alongside esteemed Swedish architect-designers by the like of Gunnar Asplund and Uno Åhrén at The Home Exhibition. Malmsten’s lifetime goal was to create practical furniture that would developed the user’s well-being and create total harmony within the space the furniture occupied.  With a fine eye for detailing, he was meticulous in his construction, often focusing on the direction of fibers, as well as refining and preserving the structure of each piece.

Sometime between 1904 and 1973, he designed for the world-famous NK Department Store in Stockholm. During in the 1920s, Malmsten was commissioned to create furnishings for a number of highly important clients, including the prince of Sweden, Gustaf VI Adolf in the Ulriksdal Palace (1923), Stockholm’s Concert Hall (1928), The Swedish Match Company (1928), Waldorf-Astoria in New York (1930), and the House of the League of Nations in Geneva (1934). Most of his furniture was named after the towns or clients who commissioned them.  

In 1930, Malmsten founded the Carl Malmsten Furniture Studies in Stockholm, which later became its own department at the Linköpings University in 2000, offering educational courses in furniture design, cabinetmaking, furniture conservation, and furniture upholstery. In 1957, Malmsten established his second school, Capellagården, on the island of Öland in Vickleby. Today, the school offers courses in textile craft and design, cabinet making, furniture design, interior carpentry, ceramics, and organic horticulture.  

Over the course of his illustrious career, Malmsten was awarded with several prestigious awards including the Prince Eugen Medal for design in 1945. Notably, he was a member of Svenska Slojdforeningen (Swedish Society of Industrial Design). He advocated the traditional role of the home as a place for gathering and leisure, believing that the rationalization of the home according to functionalist principles was a perversion of these import roles.

Malmsten passed away in 1972 on the island of Öland in Sweden. Malmsten continued to work, designing and teaching until his death.  It is believed that the designer left behind more than 20,000 sketches and detailed drawings of his designs, which today are considered an exclusive cultural heritage and are part of the Siv and Carl Malmsten Memorial Foundation. Malmsten’s contribution to Swedish handicrafts and education is still remembered today, as he wished for future generations to have the opportunity to nurture their innate creative desires.  His dedication and passion to Swedish design has afforded him, alongside Bruno Mathsson and Yngve Ekström, the title of one of Sweden's best known furniture designers.

Stirred by the eye-catching grandeur and service possibilities of early-century Parisian and Londoner high-end shopping, Swedish businessmen Josef Sachs (1872-1949) and Karl M. Lundberg established Nordiska Kompaniet in 1902, laying the foundation for what would become Scandinavia’s first and, in time, most influential entry into the realm of luxury retail.

In 1915—after a twelve-year jaunt in a repurposed space at Stureplan Plaza and following Lundberg’s departure from the company—Sachs began construction of an entirely new and substantially more opulent store on Stockholm’s major Hamngatan corridor. The building was designed by one of the country’s leading architects at the time, Ferdinand Boberg (1860-1946), of Stockholm’s Rosenbad and Central Post Office fame. Nordiska Kompaniet emerged as Stockholm’s premier department store: modern and multi-tiered, centrally located, offering a lavish smorgasbord of services and Nordic-inspired merchandise capable of enticing the region’s most elite clientele. 

Beyond jewelry, fashion, cosmetics, food, Sweden’s first escalator, and endless panoramas of mahogany (which, noteworthy upon its opening, lined most of its interior), Nordiska Kompaniet Hamngatan offered shoppers its own line of custom-made furnishings crafted in workshops in Nyköping (est. 1904). The design aesthetic reflected the general ethos of the company: high quality production, pared-down lines with touches of genteel elegance, and, above all, an air of exclusivity.

As the century progressed, the in-house design and production wing of the Nordiska Kompaniet operation attracted some of Scandinavia’s most salient design innovators. Swedish architect-designer Axel Einar Hjorth headed up Nordiska Kompaniet’s furniture and interiors department between 1927 and 1938, a clout-expanding time for the company on the international stage. He directed Nordiska Kompaniet’s showcases at a number of important industry exhibitions, such as the 1929 World Fair in Barcelona, the 1930 Stockholm Exhibition, and the 1933 World Fair in Chicago. Along the way, Hjorth garnered acclaim for his often pine-crafted interiors designed for a range of prestigious public and private clients, including Stockholm’s Gunnar Asplund-designed city library and a train carriage for the Shah of Persia. During Hjorth’s tenure, Nordiska Kompaniet commissioned iconic work from Asplund—namely, his tubular steel Karmstol Side Chair and GA-2 Armchair (both 1931)—as well as esteemed Swedish architect-designer Carl Malmsten, who created furnishings for Stockholm’s Concert Hall (1928), the House of the League of Nations in Geneva (1934), and more.

While bespoke interior design in public spaces remained Nordiska Kompaniet’s main focus in the midcentury—especially in 1950s, when Nordiska Kompaniet furniture filled Swedish banks, hotels, embassies, steamers, and restaurants—this era also saw the rise of the company’s furniture designs for serial production. Of particular note is the Trivaserie (alternatively, Triva-Bygg), designed by Elias Svedberg and launched in Malmö in 1944, which featured standard furniture items distributed in flat packages to be constructed by consumers themselves at home (one of the first instances of the knock-down furniture later made famous by fellow Swedish heavyweight Ikea).

Under designer Lena Larsson’s direction from 1947-1965, the Trivaserie line was subsumed into Nordiska Kompaniet’s experimental NK-bo (NK “Living”) label. During these years, the Triva series moved beyond knock-down furniture and expanded to include designs like Kerstin Hörlin-Holmquist Paradiset Sofa (ca. 1958) and Yngvar Sandström’s Tokyo Bench (ca. 1964). Other notable midcentury Nordiska Kompaniet designs include the Annette Dressing Table (1943) and Trienna Chair (1957) by prominent architect, interior and industrial designer Carl-Axel Acking. 

Aided by the consumer influence of the department store, which gave the space and context to present single products not just exclusively, but also within full room settings, Nordiska Kompaniet enjoyed decades of manufacturing success before declining profitability forced the closure of their Nyköping workshop in 1973 and turned their focus to trade. Today, the company is still renowned as a high-brow supplier of goods and services, operating from two outlets: the original NK on Hamngatan, and another in Gothenburg (est. 1971).