Pierre Paulin, Tongue chairs (1967). Like many of Paulin’s designs, the chair is constructed of a steel frame and a foam-covered mesh shell and upholstered with a stretch wool-polyester blend fabric. The chair is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Artifort: The Little Company that Could
By Andrea Truppin

In the late 1950s, Harry Wagemans, the enlightened managing director of the Dutch furniture company Artifort, and Kho Liang Ie, a young, inventive designer, came together in the small city of Maastricht, in the south of Holland. Liang Ie was eager to try new things and Wagemans gave him the opportunity to do so. Liang Ie soon brought in a new discovery, French designer Pierre Paulin, and a few years later, English designer Geoffrey Harcourt. The result was a new kind of European furniture — sleek, sculptural and technologically advanced, yet admirably adapted to the comfort of the human form. Many of the products these four developed over the next 20 years are still in production today and have lost none of their appeal. “The ‘60s and ‘70s were an amazing time,” recalls Harcourt. “There was a constant need by Artifort for new, innovative and original products, and coming up with ideas which were enthusiastically received was a wonderful experience. They had no design policy, as such, except to make new things. It was a period of huge creativity and a whole lot of fun. No other company before or since has ever been remotely like the Artifort of that time.”

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