SNAKE LORE 004: Yjro Kukkapuro
SNAKE LORE 004: Yjro Kukkapuro
Prices, values and deep information on an under-appreciated and ignored Finnish furniture designer
Snake is a design intelligence newsletter…
Today, the fourth installment of LORE: a focus on one designer (or movement) including important pieces, rough market values, where to get newer repros, second-tier items, knock-offs, etc. Included will be price values—deal, steal, or otherwise—and an overall look at the body of work.
Housekeeping:
Quick Hits—short highlights of current auction listings—are at the bottom of this newsletter. Only a couple.
Are people interested in nutrition, strength training, etc. dispatches in this newsletter? I have bonafides—I went to the banya last week and was going to war with this chad in the cold tub. I waxed his ass and tied him 1-1. I also write and report about these topics from time to time. Anyways, holler if so. Happy to throw the Snake hammer down on another slice of life.
Not a very acceptable weekend from Ferrari, who has to get it together.
Anyone going to Varathron on Sunday? Come say hi. I’ll be in a black T-shirt.
LORE 004
Yrjo Kukkapuro is a Finnish designer born in 1933 (younger than Clint Eastwood) with a fat body of work, mostly chairs. Many of his items are still in production, many are vintage, obv., and many can be found on the used market. Most are in Europe. Little is written about designers in general besides the odd news-pegged story; even less is little written about Kukkapuro. There are archival stories, Finnish news profiles and a piece here or there (there’s a good feature in an old Apartmento, from 2012…). The result is that Kukkapuro, who is is of course is well known in deep furniture circles, is a bit unknown outside of these climes.
Kukkapuro grew up in Finland, studied there (Academy of Arts and Crafts degree in 1958 for “interior architecture”) and has worked there… early pieces are mid-modern. They were in line with what was happening all over the place—the Ateljee sofa, which is still in production, may be the best example. He broke out in the mid 1960s with the Karuselli chairs, then others. Kukkapuro’s said in interviews that ergonomics was an influence on him and his work—how furniture shakes out on a physiological basis. (Maybe this is the connection with my fitness crap. Who knows. I should fax him.) This makes sense when you look at his work—nice golden ratio angle and lots of round shapes or perfect squares.
The key thing about Kukkapuro, to me, is a couple of things. One is there are a lot of chairs. Two, his work sits between the French, Nordic and Italian design movements of the 1960s and ‘70s. French—luxe materials, flat, almost somber angles, but with some curve; Nordic—some wood, very staid angles, real minimalism; Italian—accents, leather, flirting with camp. Of those three influences—and I’m not sure the designer would say these are his influences; but it’s what I see after looking at his work in the context of all the other work in the world—the Nordic influence is the smallest. I remember being surprised to learn Kukkapuro was from Finland. I was eating an orange and looking dolefully out the window… His work sticks out from the rest of the stuff being produced north of the 62nd parallel. It’s much more fun. Look, I get it. I grew up in a very cold city, and people are serious up there. So there’s something special about YK here. Overall I’d say his work sits in line with the sort of… borderless blend of modern styles that came out in the 60s and 70s. Toshiyuki Kita, Joe Colombo…
There’s a lot to like. Obviously so much of what Kukkapuro made is beautiful, enlivens a room, enriches a life and so on. That much is evident. Putting one of the items below in your place is just… well, it levels it up to a higher-tier home. But there is of course lots of great furniture in the world. What’s really neat about Kukkapuro, though, is that his work is both rare and accessible. Rare in the sense that, frankly, much of it is just stuck in Europe. But it’s accessible in a handful of ways. Lots of items he designed exist without fanfare. They’re just out there. (Look at this body of work here, pieces of his still in production by Avarte.) Many don’t get recognized, and consequently, when they do sell, they go for respectable figures. They are cheaper than they should be. Pricing and furniture and trends and so on is another newsletter in itself, and there are lots of reasons behind how things shake out. I’ll be writing this kind of stuff in granular detail in forthcoming newsletters, as essays. But mostly, at the base of everything, is lack of knowledge. Nobody knows anything about furniture. It’s like baseball front offices in the 1980s.) So some knowledge and keeping an eye open will allow you to get this stuff for yourself, the few times a year it pops up. Another thing is the subtleties in Kukkapuro’s work allow these pieces (chairs mostly) to go with a few different styles. Nordic, Italian, French, of course, are easy fits—you can slide a Karuselli chair in with, say, a nice French room laid out by Michael Bargo:
I think, anyways. (Bargo is cool, he watches Green Acres.) Perhaps a YK piece might be more downmarket… but that’s a good thing. All of Kukkapuro’s work has a point of view. You can sober up an Italian room with Kukkapuro’s Casino chair; you can enliven Nordic or mid-modern surroundings with an Experiment (writeups on both below). Kukkapuro’s work also lends itself to 201-level maneuvers, like slotting a Fysio (writeup below) into a room full of Deco.
So there it is. Versatile, unique, fairly affordable, not super available, but available here and there and almost completely (for most people’s purposes) unknown. And this is without discussing the simple beauty of these pieces, much of which speaks for itself. Much of which is evident on first look. But, you know, somebody’s got to make the donuts. Below I break down major pieces and others.
Key Items:
Karuselli chair—this is the one… developed in 1964 for Haimi, very, very perfect, super loud what with all the curves but contained in a minimal way. Chair won a number of awards and superlatives—some Nordic design awards and Tony Conran, the designer, famously said it was his favorite chair—and is reportedly in the collection of the MoMA (but it’s not on the website), and is in the V&A. Haimi, from Finland, was founded in 1943, and licensed Scarpa and Breuer, and kept YK on as lead designer, and made lots of spacey, mid-modern items. After an employee purchase (nice) it became Avarte in 1980; YK reportedly stayed on. The chair, new, is made by Artek now, a major house…And rightly. This is a major shape, updating the Egg chair (not a good chair… in fact one of the worst) to something much stronger and more direct. It’s all structure and purpose—YK wrapped himself in chicken wire during the production process to get the ergonomics down right. It’s no shocker it syncs up, angle-wise, with the Eames lopunger. Both are strong. Unlike many space age items it doesn’t look campy or dated. For several reasons, ergonomic chairs produced since this one don’t look as good.
About buying: At retail (new) through Artek for about $13,000; on 1stDibs older models (all years) run between a few and under $10,000, though many have gummed-up dates, attributing Avarte to 1970s models and later ones to Haimi. Be careful; as well, 1stDibs prices aren’t real, so send in very insulting offers (DM me for advice). A handful on Pamono as well, but they’re all in the 4 large range. On LA Karusellis show up every other month, and sell anywhere between $1,200 and $3,000. Cheap, huh? Live Auctioneers is a gold rush. It’s a gold rush. Buy buy buy! Steal under $1,300, deal under 2, fair price under $3,100, buy for yourself above that.
Fysio chair—One of the best office chairs ever designed—a bold claim, sure, but think hard about the category. How many classics are there? Seven? Old ones are impractical, new ones are ugly. The Fysio, designed in 1976 for Avarte, rides the middle—same erg principles as the Karuselli, so some poor SOB can sit down all day for a couple of decades…. looks very purposeful too. The invisibility here though is because the chair is pretty tough to get domestically. You just don’t really run across them. Here are a couple from around the same time as the Fysio that are easier to find:
Both very good, but a bit cold in comparison. Attainability has nothing to do with design, though. And things change.
About buying: difficult to find stateside used; none on 1stDibs, rarely on auction. New, though, they’re available through YK’s website for south of 1,000€. Not sure what shipping costs, but it’s a fair price if you can find one in the $6-700 range. Bonus: the chair on the right in the top photo, the Sirkus, designed by Kukkapuro in the ‘80s, is also for sale on his site for about 500€.
Experiment sofa/chair—Made for Avarte, in 1982—one of the better “best of both world” pieces out there—successfully melding two opposing aesthetics without enmeshing the two. The two aesthetics: very straight/up the middle black and white normal furniture—van der Rohe maybe? or even an update of YK’s quiet Ateljee sofa from 1964—and a Memphis/Superstudio what with the squiggles. Are these aesthetics that opposed? Well, yes. But they’re united because both are responses to work. Office work, specificially. The sober pieces recognize the dullness and what it’s for (raising kids, buying stuff) and push us to embrace this neutrality, boredom or worse (also what Pale King was about)… the fun crap recognizes we need to overcorrect to become sane again from having to sit in a chair in exchange for money and call another man “boss.” My 2 cents, anyways… Chair works better than the sofa because of a more compact geometry (and louder set of ideas). But the sofa’s subtler play works well, too. Here is what I think is the best execution of it:
Some of which have the noodle arms, some of which don’t. They bring to my mind the great Eames Sofa:
Which I wrote about in an earlier Lore:
Nice company to be in.
About buying: Avarte, like Beherit, is from Finland; unlike Beherit their work is hard to find in America. I only count 15 auctions on LA in the past decade, and a handful on 1stDibs; a couple on Pamono. Lots of Kukkapuro’s output can be bought new at retail, either through his site, through Avarte, through Artek, etc., but not this one. That said, you still shouldn’t spend full stop even on something impossibly rare. I’d say it’s a deal for a chair under $2,500, and a fair price in the 5K range, and your call above let’s say $6,200. Add about $1,300 to those prices for sofas. It’s a huge swing from deal to fair, but that’s because the item never goes on sale, you know what I mean? Still, now and then one goes on auction and nobody notices.
Odds and Ends:
a500 chair—a rocker from the mid 1980s, just like some people I know… same geometrics as the Experiment, but less material and calls back to the 1930s. (Like an old German teapot…) Yrjo is really a chair guy. Throughout I have wondered what other pieces of furniture with round shapes have the sort of square base—there’s the Boeri sofa that Geoff Snack pointed out in his Q&A a few months ago:
as well the 620 Vitsoe chair (designed by Dieter Rams). And the Saturnus below. Starkly different looking piece working off the same theory as the Saturnus, the Karuselli. To be sure, this is what a good designer does in their career. But it’s nice to see stark. With the extra hardware it calls to mind Rietveld; these actually pop up on LA now and then and never break $1,000. Deal if under $750, and let it fly to double that.
Saturn chair/Saturnas table—BKA the B-175-18 (catchy), may be YK’s most representative piece, between the Karuselli and the a500, but slightly more chill. There’s a table, too, about which there is scant information. Both were pumped out for Haimi in 1966, both tend to stay overseas and sell there; they ran in the low hundreds on LA five years ago, and now demand $7,000 each or so on 1stDibs.
Casino chair—almost boring, but not boring. Appropriate; designed around 1960, a year in which the whole plastic thing was just bubbling up. Still, it’s alive, and different. Super lean, left of center, held back, sharp. Runs a few hundred bucks when it sells, but it never sells.
Dining chair—60s, not far off from the Saturn chair—but even louder and wilder since these are meant for the dining table. Very gaudy with the white plastic legs. They take over the whole aesthetic! But… nothing wrong with that. Sells in lots, mostly, sometimes with a table (plain), but they almost never go for real money. Mega deal alert in my opinion to get these things at the $300 range. Double that is a lot but won’t seem that bad in a couple of years.
Skaala chair—1980s design here, same square enclosure as the a500 and some Fysio models. Simple and plain and among YK’s more French designs. Really just a perfect chair. They run in the $1,200 range used, but they rarely list. There are a few on sale now in that neighborhood on various ecom sites. Worth a splurge or a bookmark.
These stools—produced for Haimi, guessing 1960s. Tall ones and short ones (without the footrest), both of which run only a few hundred. Really good; most stools aren’t.
Auditorium Front Desk—this fool makes ONE desk and it’s the harshest one of the past 30 years. You wonder what the difference is between art and design—it’s this. No idea how to get this.
That’s it baby.
Quick Hits—auctions ending this weekend:
Knoll coffee table (white), $275, near NY — never see this color
Barbaglia desk lamp for PAF, $50cad, Montreal — nice deal here
Six Cardin for Roche Bobois dining chairs, $600, NOLA — very 1991
Magistretti Mezzachimera for Artemide lamp, $600, NOLA — nice VM lamp
Bellini Char-A-Blanc sofa for Cassina, $1,500, Pa. — massive modular piece
Paul McCobb metal-edged credenza, $500, Miami, IHS — quiet and great
Gehry power play chair for Knoll, $600, Pa. — very loud, nice price
Paolo Piva Alanda sofa for B&B Italia, $500, PA (pictured; perfect)
Thanks for reading.
Snake
Yes would love to hear more about nutrition and strength training!
More banya dialogue!