Stool by Yngve Ekström for Pastoe

Yngve Ekström (1913-1988) was an architect, woodworker, and furniture designer from Hagafors, Småland, in Southern Sweden. At the age of thirteen, following the death of his father, Ekström began working in the country’s oldest furniture factory, Hagafors Chair Factory. Between the carpentry aptitude inherited from his family and the new skills acquired at the factory, Ekström emerged from his formative years already with a wealth of artisanal expertise.

At the age of eighteen, he began to pursue a career as a designer, first enrolling in drawing, painting, and sculpture courses, and then visiting the Röhsska Museum for decorative and applied arts in Gothenburg. In 1945, Ekström, together with his older brother Jerker (1911-2006) and friend Bertil Sjöqvist, founded ESE Furniture in their hometown. After a rough start, the company made its big break with Thema (1952), a chair made out of laminated veneer—a specialty of theirs—that could be flat-packed for efficient shipping and easily self-assembled by customers.  Fifteen years later, after Sjöqvist left, the company became known as Swedese. The company sold in 1974, but Ekström continued to be an active contributor to the company until his death in 1988.

Ekström—along with other designers like Alvar Aalto (1898-1976), Arne Jacobsen (1902-1971), and Poul Kjærholm (1929-1980)—played a key role in the development of the midcentury style known as “Scandinavian modern.” The Lamino Chair for Swedese (1956) is among Ekström’s best-known works, and it remains in production today. This undulating, minimalist armchair comprises a simple, wooden frame of layered bentwood supported by bent tubular steel legs. In 1999, Swedish magazine Sköna Hems named the chair the “20th-Century’s Best Swedish Furniture Design.” It also received the 2003 Design Innovation Award from IMM Cologne.

Other well-known designs in Ekström’s portfolio include the Ruster seating collection for Pastoe (1950s)—which features low-back and high-back models sofas and chairs made from solid teak with signature triangle armrests—as well as the spindle-back Arka Chair for Stolfabrik (1955), the modular Fakta shelving system for Swedese (1958), and a series of teak tea trolleys (1959, 1962). Ekström’s designs can be found in many permanent collections, including the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, and the Stedelijkmuseum in Amsterdam. 

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