ARTEK-PASCOE, INC.
Alvar Aalto

8.5 x 5.5 saddle-stitched booklet with 40 pages of beautifully-staged and photographed b/w photographs of the complete line of furnishings offered by Artek-Pascoe before World War II. All pieces are identified by name, designer, dimensions and finishes. I suspect this information could be useful to some people out there.

As you might expect, this catalogue is designed and produced to the highest standards of the day, with imaginative art direction for the product photography, to contemporary layouts and sensitive typography. A magnificent snapshot of the way the modern movement was blossoming in the final days before the start of World War II.

Includes the furniture designs of Alvar Aalto, Ewald Holtkamp, Bruno Mathsson, Clifford Pascoe, Stewart Ross James, Willo Von Moltke, Kenneth Evertsen, Bonet, Kurchan and Ferrari Hardoy, and Arthur Mack.

For historical reference, here is an article from the July 15, 1940 issue of TIME magazine titled "Furniture by Assembly Line" (that very well might have inspired the art direction for the cover of this catalogue):

"In 1925 modern tubular furniture was born. Its birthplace was the Bauhaus, famed German school of architecture and design which Nazis later turned into a domestic science school for girls. It had a bony infancy. Fad-hungry interior decorators pounced on its chromium steel chairs and glass-topped tables. But many a buyer found it short on fun, however long on function. Trouble was‹and still is‹that metal furniture was cold in surface and line, clammy or hot according to the weather.

Meanwhile, in Finland, a brilliant young architect named Alvar Aalto and his architect wife, Aino, really got somewhere with modern furniture. Influenced by the Bauhaus and Le Corbusier (real name: Charles-Edouard Jeanneret), but experimenting in plywood instead of steel, they smoothed out geometric kinks, turned out chairs which combined the functional with good sense and charm. The Aaltos were the first to make chairs with pliant one-piece backs and resilient seats. They pioneered also in welding together layers of plywood with synthetic cement, cold-pressing them for six weeks into posture-pleasing shapes.

Exhibited on the Continent, in London, at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art (in 1938), their light, satiny furniture brought the Aaltos international renown, put them in the front rank of modern furniture designers. (Also well acknowledged by then was stocky, bush-browed Alvar Aalto's high rank among living architects.)

Last week Alvar and Aino Aalto opened their own furniture store (Artek-Pascoe, Inc.) in Manhattan. The Aaltos' plywood sandwiches of maple and birch are shaped in Wisconsin, shipped East for assembly. Colors of the finished pieces of furniture‹many of them Aalto-patented‹ranged from natural finish through cellulosed red and blue to black. On display also went Aalto-designed screens and glassware.

The excellence of the Aalto furniture may help to discourage manufacture of some furniture that now passes for modern. The Aalto purpose is to use U. S. mass production to get their designs into ordinary U. S. homes. Though their simple, substantial furniture is well fitted for mass production, the Aalto assembly line has not yet cut prices to the ordinary buyer's range. In full operation, it will retail an armchair now priced at $29.50 for $19, a $47 chest of drawers for $24, a $15 side table for $9. The Aaltos have already attained space-saving by designing stools that nest into each other, side chairs and even armchairs that can be stacked 20 high to save space."

The Finnish architect Alvar Aalto began designing furnishings as a natural and important extension of his architectural thinking and success. He created his first furniture in 1931-32 for the tuberculosis sanatorium at Paimio -- his international breakthrough. Artek was founded in December 1935 by Alvar Aalto, Marie Gullichsen an the Art historian Nils-Gustav Hahl. Artek was set up to market Aalto's furniture, lamps and textiles, particularly on international markets where Artek focused its operations from the initial stages.

The name Artek is a contraction of art and technology. Aalto's declared proposal was to "create rational furniture for rational life." In 1936 the first Artek shop opens its doors at 31 Fabianinkatu Street in Helsinki, with the name written in Bauhaus type stylised letters. Nils-Gustav Hahl and Aino Marsio Aalto (Alvar's wife) managed the business together, until Hahl died in the war and Aino Alto took charge of the company until her death in 1949. The American Artek-Pascoe opened a shop in New York, where they distributed Alvar's objects and furniture to the rest of the US.

Artek was more than a commercial enterprise; it also aimed at developing the expression of its founders' modernistic spirit. It was an industrial arts center where the art and design trends of the time converged. The company's original values -- long-term durability and high quality combined with a clean-lined form language -- are still the company's driving forces.

Price: $200.00
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