Yngve Ekström

In 1999 the Swedish magazine Sköna Hem asked its readers to name the piece of furniture of the twentieth century. They chose the Lamino easy chair, ahead of everything Bruno Mathsson, Carl Malmsten and Josef Frank had made. Its designer had said, decades earlier and without any evident irony, that to have made one good chair was perhaps not a bad life’s work.

Yngve Ekström (1913–1988) made rather more than one. He was self-taught, worked in factories from the age of thirteen, founded the company that became Swedese, designed furniture for it for forty years, and did it all within a few miles of the Småland village he was born in.

Hagafors

Ekström was born in 1913 in Hagafors, in the forested part of Småland where Sweden’s furniture industry had settled because the raw material was outside the door. His father died early. At thirteen he went to work in the carpentry factories in Vaggeryd, and that was his education: no design school, no academy, no drawing office. He taught himself joinery, and later stonemasonry as well.

It left him with an understanding of production that few of his contemporaries had. Ekström did not design a chair and then ask a workshop whether it could be built. He knew what a machine could do before he drew the line.

ESE-möbler, 1945

In 1945 he founded ESE-möbler in Vaggeryd with his brother Jerker Ekström and Bertil Sjöqvist. The first products were plain: the Per armchair in beech with a webbed seat, followed by Anders, the same chair with a taller back.

The company began experimenting with laminated wood in the early fifties, which produced the Kurva armchair and, more consequentially, the technique that would carry everything after it. For the American market they developed a knockdown construction that shipped flat and assembled with four screws — a decade before anyone in Sweden had heard the phrase flat pack used commercially.

The breakthrough came in 1953, when the architect Lena Larsson invited Ekström to show at NK-Bo in Stockholm. A factory owner from Vaggeryd with no formal training was suddenly being taken seriously by the capital.

Lamino, 1956

The Lamino is a laminated bentwood frame, a sheepskin seat and back, and a detachable footstool. There is nothing else to it. The armrests and the rear legs are one continuous bent element, which is why the chair looks as if it has been drawn in a single stroke, and why it weighs almost nothing for its size.

It reclines further than it appears to. The sheepskin is not upholstery in any conventional sense but a hide laid over a shaped shell, which is what makes the chair warm in a cold house and forgiving after an hour. And it ships flat: the whole thing goes together with an Allen key.

Seventy years later it is still in production, still made in Småland, and still Swedese’s principal product. Its status has been tested in court as well as in magazines — Swedese took a Lamino copy to the Swedish Supreme Court and won.

Beyond Swedese

Ekström drew for other manufacturers throughout the fifties. Gracell, Sibbo and Arka, all from 1955, were made by Gemla and Stolab. He worked with Carl Malmsten on Caryngo — an unlikely pairing, the academy’s most eloquent defender of craft and a self-taught factory man from the woods, and the chair is the better for it.

ESE-möbler took the name Swedese in 1961, when it began exporting seriously. Through the sixties and seventies Ekström turned to pine, which Swedish taste had written off as cheap, and made the Furubo series out of it. The Rondino swivel chair of 1964 was aimed at younger buyers. The Palett table, the Fakta shelf, the Nova sofa and the Thema chair all remain in the catalogue or have been brought back to it.

The Småland method

Ekström belongs to a particular Swedish tradition that has no exact equivalent in Denmark or Finland: the designer who is also the manufacturer, working inside a regional industry rather than for it. Bruno Mathsson did the same thing twenty-five miles away in Värnamo at the same time, and for the same reason — the workshop was the family’s, so the furniture could be argued with until it was right.

The consequence is furniture that was never expensive to make and never needed to be explained. Ekström was not writing manifestos. He was filling a factory, and the discipline of that is visible in every piece.

Recognition

His work was shown at the Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg in 1963, at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1970, and at the Museum of Modern Art in Toyama in 1987. The V&A holds Lamino in its permanent collection.

Ekström died in 1988, aged 75, having spent his working life in the same part of Småland where he started at thirteen. Swedese is still in Vaggeryd. Lamino is still made there.

Yngve Ekström: “To Have Designed One Good Chair Might Not Be a Bad Life’s Work”

Hagafors

ESE-möbler, 1945

Lamino, 1956

Beyond Swedese

The Småland method

Recognition

More design by Yngve Ekström

Lamino 70 years – Loved for Generations Since 1956

Småland Bistro chair & sofa by Yngve Ekström – Stolab

Lamino Limited Edition by Yngve Ekström – Swedese

Palett side table new colours by Yngve Ekström – Swedese

Lamino Duality by Gert & Rasmus Wingårdh for Swedese

Gert and Rasmus Wingårdh Blend Architecture and Fashion in Swedese Collection

Homage to the city – Lamino Edition 2022 – Swedese

Stolab Graphic Original™ 2019 – matt black solid oak

Caryngo collaboration between Carl Malmsten & Yngve Ekström

Swedese is relaunching three classic chairs by Yngve Ekström

Lamino celebrates its 60th birthday

Swedese won in the Supreme Court – the imposition of a penalty on Lamino copy

Lamino by Nudie Jeans – easy chair by Yngve Ekström – Swedese

Nova 3 seater sofa both loyal and royal – Swedese

Fakta bookshelf by Yngve Ekström for Swedese

Swedese at the Stockholm Furniture Fair 2015

Sitt skönt! frimärken med svensk stoldesign

Palett design by Yngve Ekström – Swedese

Cheers for Yngve Ekström – 100 years old!

News from Swedese @ Stockholm Furniture Fair 2013

News from Swedese @ Stockholm Furniture Fair 2011

Lamino easy chair and foot stool with a new range of sheepskin colours – Swedese

Desirée design by Yngve Ekström – Swedese

News from Swedese @ Stockholm & Copenhagen Furniture Fair 2007

News from Swedese @ Stockholm Furniture Fair 2006

Lamino 50-years! Designs of Yngve Ekström – Swedese

News from Swedese @ Stockholm Furniture Fair 2005

News from Swedese @ Stockholm Furniture Fair 2004

News from Swedese @ Stockholm Furniture Fair 2003

News from Swedese @ Stockholm Furniture Fair 2002