Vintage Swedish Teak Spindle Back Dining Chairs by Ilmari Tapiovaara for Pastoe, 1960s, Set of 2

Modernist designer Ilmari Tapiovaara was born in Hämeenlinna, Finland in 1914. He studied interior design and industrial design at the Institute of Industrial Arts in Helsinki, graduating in 1937. While still a student, he worked for Alvar Aalto in Artek’s London Office (1935-36). After school, Tapiovaara worked as an assistant for six months at modernist architect Le Corbusier's office in Paris. The following year, he became artistic director of Asko Oy, the largest furniture manufacturer in Finland at the time; he remained there for three years. From 1941-1951, he was artistic and commercial director for the cabinetwork factory at Keravan Puuteollisuus. Around that period, he and his wife, Annikki, began taking on interior design projects for clients such as the Domus Academy (1946-47) and the Tech Student Village (1951).

The pair opened their Helsinki office around 1950, focusing on furniture and industrial design commissions for numerous companies. While Tapiovaara is best known for interiors and furniture, he also designed lighting, glass, textiles (often in collaboration with his wife), cutlery, and radio and stereo components through the mid 1970s.

Tapiovaara was a great admirer of Finnish architect-designer Alvar Aalto, and his work was decidedly function-driven. He also had a strong sense of social responsibility; set against the backdrop of Finland’s postwar era, Tapiovaara took a democratic approach to design, believing everyone should have access to affordable, good design. For example, the stackable, birch plywood Domus chair (1946)—originally designed for the Domus Academy and arguably Tapiovaara’s most famous piece—was designed such that several chairs easily fit into small crates for efficient export (by the millions) to the United States. Additionally, he designed multiple “knock-down” pieces, which could be taken apart for more effective, lower cost shipping. During the late 1950s, he traveled to Paraguay to design furniture on behalf of the UN development program; he did a similar project in Mauritius during the mid-1970s. Tapiovaara also taught: He was employed as a teacher at the design school of the Illinois Institute of Technology from 1952-53, and he taught interior and industrial design at the Institute of Industrial Art in the 1950s and later from the 1970s to the mid-1980s.

Tapiovaara exhibited extensively, and earned several honors, including: gold medals for his chairs at the Milan Triennials in 1951, 1954, 1957, and 1960; a Good Design award in Chicago in 1950; the Finnish State Design award in 1971; a prize form the Finnish Culture Foundation in 1986; and the Furniture Prize of the SIO Interior Architects’ Association of Finland in 1990.

He passed away in 1999. Notably, in 2014, the Designmuseo in Helsinki hosted a retrospective of his work, including furniture and drawings, on the centennial of his birth.

Pastoe’s story began in 1913 in Utrecht, when German-Dutch businessman Frits Loeb (1889-1959) decided to produce chairs in a traditional cabinetmaking workshop to sell in his own shop. His atelier—named Utrechtsche Machinale Stoel-en Meubelfabrik (UMS) at the time—quickly grew and in 1917 moved into a large factory facility, manufacturing furniture for a range of retail outlets. In 1918, the factory was moved again to the Rotsoord area in Utrecht, where it is still located today. While the early furniture lines produced by UMS were intended for a general audience, the company—under the direction of designer-manager D. L. Braakman (1885-1966)—was one of the first in the Netherlands to adopt a more austere, minimalist aesthetic expressed in then-novel materials like tubular steel and bent plywood. The Dutch market was slow to respond to these designs, so it was all the more audacious when UMS, in 1947, became dedicated to producing only modernist furniture. To reflect the new mission, the company’s name was changed to Pastoe.

In 1848, Cees Braakman (1917-1995), D. L.’s son, took the helm as designer and director and furthered the company’s modernist aims, advocating for low-cost, modular designs inspired by the likes of Charles & Ray Eames and Alvar Aalto—the latter of which created the first series of Pastoe geometric cabinets at the end of the 1940s. During the 1950s, the company focused on developing flexible cabinet systems that could be assembled by the consumer, which led to the highly customizable, highly successful Made-to-Measure storage system (1955). In 1957, Made-to-Measure furniture was awarded a silver medal at the 11th Trienniale in Milan and crowned with the Le Signe d’Or in Belgium.

Today Pastoe continues to manufacture formally simple, high-quality furniture, including cabinet systems, storage pieces, chairs, and more. Many of Pastoe’s designs have attained an iconic status, such as Cees Braakman’s SMO5 Chair (1958), one of the first stools to be entirely fabricated in steel wire, and Studio Pastoe’s L-Series Cabinet (1979).  Recent collaborations include projects with the late, great Belgian designer Maarten Van Severen, German designer Konstantin Grcic, and rising-star Dutch studio Scholten & Baijings.

Pastoe’s objects have been exhibited in galleries and museums broadly, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Museum of Modern Art in New York, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, and the  in Amsterdam.

* All images courtesy of Pastoe