Des Mullen, one of the founders of Brenner Associates, designed the chair pictured here, in the firm’s shop beside a length of fabric by the German-born weaver Ilse von Randow, who settled in New Zealand in 1952. Crichton is perhaps best known for his ceramic designs, such as this 1950s dish with ceramic tiles on a spun-copper base. Founded by Danish immigrants Kaj and Bente Vinter in 1962, Danske Møbler produced furniture in the Scandinavian modern idiom, including this mahogany daybed.
WHO’S WHO
Here is a sampling of the designers to know, with comments, unless otherwise noted, from Douglas Lloyd Jenkins, At Home: A Century of New Zealand Design. An asterisk (*) indicates a major figure.
— by Jorge S. Arango, from Spring 2014
Airest Industries and Ces Renwick
Ces Renwick established Airest in 1948 and by the 1960s it was the country’s largest commercial furniture maker. The Scandinavian influence was less apparent in its designs, which boasted a more futuristic Jetsons-style profile.
Brenner Associates
A shop started by architects Stephen Jelicich, *Des Mullen, and Ron Grant, and graphic artist/painter Milan Mrkusich. The standout here was Mullen, known for “angular low-tech furniture using sparse wooden frames and stretched canvas webbing.” Later, Vladimir Cacala joined the firm and “works with a European sensibility” were added to Brenner’s furniture range.
*Garth Chester
Had “a lifelong obsession” with plywood and invented the Curvesse, the first cantilevered plywood chair. “Throughout the 1940s Chester continued to produce ranges of molded plywood chairs, benches and occasional furniture.” In the 1950s he produced “lightweight steel-rod and bent-plywood furniture,” the most famous of which was the Bikini chair, which “was rejected as ‘filthy-minded’ by one housewife whose husband had purchased a set for their home.”
*John Crichton
A hugely influential designer in the 1950s, Crichton made a variety of furniture and “relit the New Zealand interior…[u]sing local aluminum spinners and wood turners” to create “wall and table lamps…lampstands, fire screens and frameworks for steel-rod furniture…distinctive [wooden] lamp bases and salad bowls.” In the 1960s, “Spun-copper dishes initially designed for light fittings were adapted as the basis of handcrafted mosaic bowls…followed by mosaic tables…[and then] works in fused glass and painted ceramic tile.”
Danske Møbler
During the 1960s, “the country’s leading retailer of moderately priced but aesthetically advanced furniture” designed in-house by Danish-born owner Ken Winter (Kaj Vinter). The firm’s designs “were mass produced in a familiar Scandinavian aesthetic geared toward commercial success rather than the more imaginative pieces of earlier Kiwi designs.”
Tibor Donner
“Donner used laminated timber, common in boat building, which gave his work a robust sculptural appearance similar in ambition, though not in appearance, to that of his contemporary Garth Chester.” In 1949, when he debuted furniture he’d designed for the Auckland Town Hall, one critic scathingly wrote, “the chairs looked like something that might be produced by a member of an African tribe,” and pronounced the accompanying desk “a monstrosity.”
Michael Payne
Architect and designer of the luxurious Expo ’70 chair, made of “molded plywood faced with tawa veneer, with a deep-buttoned leather-covered seat and back, supported on a base of satin chrome.” Sometimes confused as a Charles Eames design, it became “a period classic that was used in smart homes throughout the 1970s.”
*Ernst Plischke
An architect, furniture designer, and influential writer who created both built-in and freestanding furniture for the houses he designed, mostly “deep-seated wooden-framed armchairs, webbed-back dining chairs, round occasional tables and square nesting tables.” Today, notes James Parkinson, “You need to have good provenance with Plischke” in order to ensure value. Best if a piece can be traced to a particular Plischke project.
*Edzer (Bob) Roukema and Jon Jansen
Roukema was “a Dutch-trained furniture designer” on the design team of modern furniture retailer Jon Jansen (started in 1951 by businessman Lincoln Laidlaw). He went from “simple wooden dining room tables, chairs and occasional tables” to a best-selling “high-backed lounge chair with an air travel-inspired tilt to its profile” that is highly coveted today.
Michael Smythe
In the 1970s Smythe created the Bentube line of furniture, which “seemed to represent new bentwood” reinterpreted in tubular steel. It also had something of Marcel Breuer in it, but “turned around the traditional cantilever form so that the bottom bar faced forward.”
Clockwise from top left: Architect Michael Payne designed the restaurant in the New Zealand pavilion of the Expo ’70 world’s fair in Osaka, including this chair design, which was also made for domestic use.
Edzer “Bob” Roukema’s Contour chair for Jon Jansen, 1950s, has a molded plywood base and oak legs.
Michael Smythe turned to classic bentwood furniture for inspiration for his Bentube chair, 1975–1976, part of a line for Furnware Products that could be had in polished chrome or enameled in colors.
Austrian architect Ernst Plishke immigrated to New Zealand in the 1930s and played a pivotal role in introducing the emerging International style to New Zealand. He also designed furniture, such as this deep seated armchair of 1948, the frame of which is indigenous rimu wood.