Scandinavian furniture in Britain: Finmar and the UK market, 1949-1952

Journal of Design History

Volumn 10, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 39-52

  Davies, Kevin ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33845290391     PISSN: 09524649     EISSN: 17417279     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/jdh/10.1.39     Document Type: Review

References (58)

1. P. Sparke, Twentieth Century Furniture Design, Bell & Hyman, 1986.
2. This is based on information derived from a study of trade journals. See L. Jackson, 'A positive influence: the impact of Scandinavian design in Britain during the 1950s', Scandinavian Journal of Design History, vol. 4, 1994, p. 41.
3. Finmar went into receivership in 1965 along with the majority of other firms that imported Scandinavian furniture.
4. The certificate of incorporation has been lost - the exact date may now be difficult to establish, but would appear to be around 1 January 1934. The company operated from 44 Ranelagh Road, Victoria, its directors were (in 1936) G. Boumphrey, R. W. Potter, P. M. Shand, and J. J. Faulkner.
5. By volume this was largely furniture, but ceramics, glass, and textiles were also imported by Finmar.
6. Finmar had long-established competition as importers of Scandinavian ceramics and glass. Wuidart, who were the exclusive agents for Orrefors, had been in existence since 1869. Royal Copenhagen also had a shop on Bond Street. Finmar was never as successful with ceramics and glass as it was with furniture.
7. The image of Christine Keeler, a model involved in the notorious Profumo affair, photographed by Lewis Morley in 1963 sitting naked in an Arne Jacobsen chair, has since become famous. Finmar introduced the chair to this country, but Keeler's involvement, according to Stemann, did nothing for his sales. Joe Orton was also photographed by Lewis Morley in the same position in 1965.
8. After the war he became more widely known as a broadcaster and contributor to the Shell guides to Britain.
9. Finmar did import Aalto's furniture from Artek after the war, but only in much reduced quantities.
10. Geoffrey Dunn made this comment to the author when interviewed in November 1994, adding that the company appeared to operate on a shoestring.
11. The unlikely choice of Fortnum and Mason for the venue of the inaugural exhibition and John Betjeman's involvement with its organization would seem to support this. Stemann later met Boumphrey and described him as 'a perfect English gentleman' and Shand, as an old Etonian and epicurean certainly, cultivated that image. Shand and Boumphrey are the directors that Dunn would have met.
12. These included Dunn's of Bromley; John Barnes, Finchley Road; Bowman Bros., Camden Town; Druce and Co., Baker Street; Heal and Sons; John Lewis; Peter Jones; Gordon Russell Ltd.; Waring and Gillow; and W. Whiteley Ltd. Source: letter from Finmar Ltd., 1936, Victoria and Albert Museum, National Art Library.
13. The BoT seem to have offered encouragement. Some bureaucratic flexibility must have allowed the company to change the source of its imported goods on the licence from Finland to Denmark.
14. I do not think he was aware of this at the time.
15. See, for example, A. Carruthers, Edward Barnsley, White Cockade, 1992.
16. For a personal account see D. Joel, The Adventure of British Furniture, Ernest Benn, 1953.
17. Heal's archive, Archive of Art and Design, Victoria and Albert Museum.
18. The potential for sources other than Denmark to fulfil British demand also has to be addressed. A small number of Italian pieces were available at Heal's, but in the late 1940s and early 1950s the Italian furniture industry, which consisted of small workshops with little overall organization, was poorly equipped to start an export drive and suffered from raw material shortages. The Italian 'economic miracle' was a feature of the late 1950s (see P. Sparke, 'A home for everybody? Design, ideology and the culture of the home in Italy, 1945-1972', in P. Greenhalgh (ed.), Modernism in Design, Reaktion Books, 1990).
19. Transport costs meant that American furniture was too expensive for the UK market, but more importantly American goods had to be paid for in dollars which were scarce and were more effectively spent on raw materials (Stemann said in a later interview with Wyndham Gooden, Design, vol. 68, 1954, p. 11, that he would have imported American furniture but it was too expensive). Such reasons were academic, however, because import licences were unavailable to import furniture from Italy or the USA (I am assuming this because annual trade statistics show no furniture imports from either Italy or the USA in the pre-war period so that no firms could have been eligible for import licences, even if the pieces did pass the Utility regulations).
20. See Berlingske Tidende, 23 July 1950, and Design, October 1951.
21. This meant that some furniture (typically expensive products of the Copenhagen Cabinetmakers' Guild) that frequently now appears in museum collections representing Danish post-war design was probably never widely sold in Britain, e.g. Hans Wegner's 'Peacock' chair and Finn Juhl's 'Chieftain' chair.
22. See, for example, Berlingske Tidende, 31 October 1949;
23. unattributed and undated article, Aftenbladet, October (?) 1949;
24. Denmark, October 1949;
25. Berlingske Tidende, 23 July 1950.
26. When talking about the possibility of exporting furniture to America, Soeren Hansen said that all Americans wanted was 'fridges, radios and televisions' rather than furniture. He went on to say that 'people will never import much furniture', Dansk Arbejde, November 1951.
27. This was always a committed part of his business method.
28. P. E. v. Stemann, 'Danish design is social', Denmark, 1951. This is a record of a talk given by Stemann at a lunchtime meeting of the DIA.
29. Perhaps these could be best categorized as readers of the Listener.
30. Gordon Russell, The Things We See: Furniture, Penguin, 1947. The front cover illustration is Swedish, and it includes the two Danish chairs Finmar started with, as well as some Swedish pieces later imported by Stemann.
31. Through its promotion of 'the contemporary style' even the Festival of Britain benefited Finmar because British goods in that idiom were relatively hard to find, whereas it was a category to which Finmar goods were frequently seen to belong.
32. Finmar furniture was probably sold by the Russell shop in Wigmore Street before the arrival of Pevsner, but he was certainly responsible for broadening the outlook of the shop. After the war Pevsner became a close friend of Stemann.
33. R. Allwood & K. Laurie, R. D. Russell, Marian Pepler, ILEA, 1983.
34. Stemann, 'Danish design is social', op. cit.
35. The designs by Boerge Mogensen had been exhibited by the CoID at the 1946 Danish Domestic Design exhibition - before Stemann got Finmar off the ground.
36. Furnishings, November 1950, p. 323.
37. The CoID also deliberately included Finmar pieces in their countrywide exhibitions associated with the Festival, for instance at Rowntree's in Scarborough.
38. See, for instance, Architectural Review, August 1951.
39. Denmark, December 1951, p. 7 also reproduced in the Cabinet Maker and Complete House Furnisher, 27 October 1951, p. 341.
40. It is not clear that the retailers to whom the piece passed treated it in such a homogeneous way when selling on to the public.
41. 'Spisebordet har for tynde ben', Berlingske Tidende, 29 November 1950.
42. Architect's Journal, 18 October 1951, p. 466.
43. House and Garden, November 1951, p. 49.
44. See the Sunday Times, 15 October 1950. The furniture was designed by Hans Wegner.
45. See H. McG. Dunnett, 'Packaged furniture', Architectural Review, September 1952, p. 241.
46. House and Garden, January 1952.
47. He was one of the first importers to do this.
48. Gunnar Bratvold, Mobilia, July 1960, p. 21.
49. Characteristically a British writer claimed that the construction technique was a British invention. See Furnishing, June 1951, p. 457;
50. Design, October 1951.
51. House and Garden, January 1953, p. 53.
52. Design, August 1952.
53. Dunnett, op. cit.
54. These were: Hopewell's of Nottingham, Kendal Milne & Co. of Manchester, Brown's of Chester, Rowntree's of Scarborough, Hemming's of Northampton, and Elder's of Glasgow.
55. Heal's archive, AGM Wednesday 18 June 1952, Archive of Art and Design, Victoria and Albert Museum.
56. Peter Fuller, 'Should products be decorated?', Design, August 1983.
57. Jackson, op. cit.
58. Annual Statement of the Trade of The United Kingdom, HMSO, London, 1955.