Page 36 - Issue 29 - VE Magazine

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furniture of Thonet). But Aalto made the shapes his own by translating them into bentwood birch veneers, glued together and moulded to achieve his desired look. The piece retained its shape once the adhesive had cured and the result, while strong, was often lightly springy. He patented techniques to bend wood and got rights to the majority of the patents in many countries for this new form of laminated bent plywood furniture.
Soft curves in chairs and tables became Aalto’s hallmark and came to inspire a whole new generation of designers worldwide. His reputation really took off with the New York World’s Fair, which opened in April 1939 and closed on a very different world in October 1940 with Britain at war. Aalto designed the Finnish Pavilion, which was described as a “work of genius” by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Britain was itself was more than a little preoccu- pied by then and Aalto moved to America in 1941 for the duration of the war. But Finmar Ltd, the wholesale company founded in the mid-thirties to market Aalto’s plywood furniture to the UK, started operations again after the war, although the company was sold to a
Above: Artek furniture
in the Finnish pavilion
at the Paris World’s Fair, 1937, from the Alvar Aalto Museum. Photographed by Henry Sarian. Left: Artek store on Fabianinkatu, Helsinki, 1939, from the Artek collection, Alvar Aalto Museum
36 / August-September 2016 / ve
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