Carl Malmsten
The craftsman of Swedish furniture.
Carl Malmsten designed furniture for Stockholm City Hall and the Stockholm Concert Hall and founded schools of craft. He championed Swedish tradition and vernacular form.
Carl Malmsten was born in Stockholm in 1888, the son of a doctor. He first studied economics but wanted to work with his hands and was apprenticed to a cabinetmaker. He also studied furniture design on his own and was influenced by Swedish peasant tradition, the Gustavian style and the Arts and Crafts movement.
His breakthrough came in 1916, when he won the competition for the furniture of Stockholm City Hall. The new City Hall was inaugurated in 1923, and Malmsten's furniture still defines its rooms today. He also designed furniture for the Stockholm Concert Hall. His furniture is made of solid wood, often in simple forms with fine marquetry or painted decoration, and combines vernacular models with sound craftsmanship.
Malmsten was an ardent polemicist. At the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930, when functionalism made its breakthrough in Sweden, he was one of its foremost critics. He argued that the new style was cold and impersonal and that Swedish design should be founded on tradition, nature and craft. Among his best-known chairs is Lilla Åland from the 1940s, inspired by a chair he saw in a church on Åland.
He was passionate about education and founded several schools. Malmstens, his school for cabinetmakers and interior designers in Stockholm, now part of Linköping University, and Capellagården on Öland, a school for crafts and horticulture, are still in operation. He wanted children to be able to create with their hands and was involved in school reform.
Carl Malmsten died in 1972. The family firm Malmstens continues to sell his furniture. He is seen as a symbol of traditional Swedish furniture-making and as a counterweight to functionalism.