About this Event
Between the 1933 exhibition of Aino and Alvar Aalto’s furniture at Fortnum & Mason and 1939, 70% of all Aalto furniture production was sold in London, primarily through the Finmar company set up by Philip Morton-Shand. Finmar supplied clients as diverse as Heal’s and Kells Colliery, and became the model for the Aaltos when they later set up Artek in Helsinki.
The lecture explores the unique qualities that made Aalto furniture so appealing to the London public and architects alike, and how together with Isokon, Finmar nurtured an appetite for plywood furniture, and promoted and marketed it through specialist and mass media. A story involving, among others, Hubert de Cronin Hastings, Laszló Moholy-Nagy, Jack and Molly Pritchard, Herbert Read, as well as Shand. The lecture concludes that furniture and Finmar became the basis for the enduring connection between Finnish and British architecture.
Dr Harry Charrington is Professor of Architecture at the University of Westminster. He has combined academia and practice in the UK and Finland, including working for Elissa Aalto at the Aalto atelier in Helsinki. His oral history of the Aalto atelier ‘Alvar Aalto: the Mark of the Hand’ (2011) won the RIBA President’s Award for Research.
Event venue & nearby stays
Isokon Gallery, Lawn Road, London, United Kingdom
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