This coolly harmonious apartment in the Vesterbro district of Carlsberg City in Copenhagen is a masterclass in mid-century modern design ideals.
It’s been fifteen years since Mad Men arrived on our screens, with its hyper-stylish period sets featuring a wealth of mid-century furniture, including a Florence Knoll sofa, Eero Saarinen’s Tulip Table, and Poul M Volther’s Corona Lounge Chair. Along with changing the way men dressed (suit sales doubled in the US between 2008 and 2014) the series had a significant impact on how we decorate, sending the western world wild for mid-century design. Witness Made.com, which launched in 2010 with a distinctly mid-century aesthetic – as well as an aim of disrupting the traditional business model by collaborating with independent designers to make and sell furniture online, minus the markup (i.e. comparatively cheaply). We embraced their output, which seemed grown-up, sleek, and an affordable means of making even a starter home feel considered. But Made.com went into administration in November, and with it went the tapered leg stools with brass accents, statement sofas in muted velvets, distressed oak ‘media units’ with mid-century curved corners, and Arco-like floor lamps with block-coloured details. Is it because our love of the vaguely Scandinavian mid-century look has waned?
In the kitchen of this tranquil 17th-century London house designed by Rose Uniacke sits this 20th-century Swedish cupboard.
Certainly, seeing that same look (and sofa, lamp and media unit) in all our friends’ houses had slightly lost its appeal, as had, for too many of us, the legs falling off the sofa. And yet, it takes only a lingering glance at a scheme by decorators Rose Uniacke, Beata Heuman, Ben Pentreath or Sigmar to reignite the Scandinavia-desirous spark, and realise that, maybe, Made.com was a false god. Original mid-century designs do have individuality – and indeed come with a philosophy of intent that is well worth exploring. Fortunately, thanks to some exciting new store arrivals in London, there’s ample opportunity to do so.
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Vintage furniture from Aelfred.
At the end of last year, Aelfred opened its doors in Hackney Wick; the 300 square meter space is the latest project by Nina Hertig, co-founder of Sigmar, and is London’s biggest showroom of Scandinavian mid-century furniture and home accessories. And, new to the Pimlico design district is the London outpost of Stockholm-based Nordic design gallery Modernity, which specialises in rare and high-quality furniture by the most renowned Nordic designers of the 20th century; Rose and Beata are regular clients. Within the stock and styling of both Aelfred and Modernity (do schedule real life visits) are ideas for decorating and “creating an ambience that is clean, warm, and effortlessly elegant in its simplicity and beauty,” describes Sebastien Holt, director of Modernity. And isn’t that what we all want?
In the living room of this expansive London apartment, Beata Heuman used vintage mid-century modern furniture which gives an updated, refined flair to the space.
First, the terminology: ‘mid-century modern’ is a loose definition of anything designed between 1930ish and 1960ish. The geographical marker ‘Scandinavian’ or ‘Nordic’ (Nordic includes Finland and Iceland with Denmark, Norway and Sweden) matters because mid-century modern did not look the same everywhere. “Design was less globalised then,” points out Nina.For example, while in France Charlotte Perriand, Pierre Jeanneret and Le Corbusier were designing ‘interior equipment’ by way of their radical steel tubular chairs, which were a total departure from the heavy, wooden furniture that had preceded them, in Denmark, Kaare Klint was updating a mid-18th century Chippendale chair, creating the Red Chair. “And Hans Wegner’s China Chair was influenced by 17th and 18th century Chinese design,” says Sebastien. Meanwhile in Sweden, Josef Frank combined elements of Viennese elegance with Swedish functionalism. “The influences were traditional, but the look was modern – so modern and innovative in fact, that what they made still looks contemporary, and won’t ever really date,” continues Sebastien. (Re American mid-century modern – which, incidentally, differed from East Coast to West Coast - there was an element of cross-over from both France and Scandinavia. This was partly due to the collaborative approach to building the United Nations Headquarters, completed in 1952, which saw architects from ten different countries work together, and partly because the designers did know each other; Saarinen, for instance was close friends with Knoll and Charles Eames – and, as demonstrated by Mad Men, European design was popular in the US.)
The methods in the Nordic countries were also different - being traditional.While elsewhere in Europe, countries were recovering from the Second World War and heading into factory production (modernising industry was a key part of the Marshall Plan, an American initiative enacted in 1948 to provide foreign aid to Western Europe) in much of Scandinavia “high quality cabinet making could continue alongside batch production,” explains Nina. “There was no large-scale industrial production of furniture, and there was a home market that was very discerning of quality.” “There was a lot of focus on process and materials, whether the material was wood or leather,” continues Sebastien. “And a lot was made to order; you’d go to Svenkst Tenn, and say you’d like the Flora Cabinet by Josef Frank, and perhaps commission an alteration that would make it completely unique but more suitable for you, and they’d make it.” (Modernity currently has one such cabinet in stock, dating from 1937.)
This bespoke approach brings provenance – the original Flora Cabinet, recounts Sebastien, was made for associate professor Sten Selandaer of Uppsala University, to house his collection of butterflies and beetles, “only afterwards was it realised that the cabinet had commercial possibility.” A rug designed by Greta Skogster-Lehtinen was made especially for the office of the Prime Minister of the Finnish Parliament. Due to their age these items are still classed as ‘vintage’, but they are essentially bona-fide antiques (technically, an antique is defined as anything over 100 years old), comparable to Aubusson rugs once owned and walked on by Marie-Antoinette, or the William Kent-designed bed for Britain’s first Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole’s Houghton Hall (now owned by the V&A, and on loan to Houghton.)
In the dining room of this Georgian house in London, designer Ben Pentreath surrounded Saarinen's famous tulip table with antique Regency-style dining chairs, creating a fascinating combination of modernity and tradition.
And, as antiques, they can be used as such, i.e. they can be integrated into an interior alongside furniture from other periods – which is how Rose, Beata, Ben et al tend to employ them; Ben placed a Saarinen table in the dining room of a Georgian house, and surrounded it with Regency chairs. Aelfred, it should be noted, stocks Scandinavian 18th- and 19th-century folk furniture alongside the mid-century examples. All of which isn’t to say that you can’t stick to one period, if you prefer; “we do have clients who have seen our stand at a fair, and bought the entire room set that we’ve put together, in order to put it in their own house in exactly the same way” recalls Sebastien. “Though most don’t do that! Not least because it’s expensive.”
