KunsthalPastoe furniture in the Kunsthal
NOS Nieuws•donderdag, 10:23
“Pastoe has continually reinvented itself, and I of course hope that this will be the case again.” Design expert Anne van der Zwaag does not expect that bankruptcy after 110 years will really mean the end of the iconic furniture company. The company collapsed yesterday under the burden of debt, but hopes for a restart.
In 2013, Van der Zwaag contributed to an anniversary exhibition in the Kunsthal in Rotterdam in honor of the centenary. “I’m glad we celebrated it so big, because that put it back on the map. It was really a hype on Marktplaats. There are many people in the design world who care about Pastoe, so I’m actually very optimistic. “
Pastoe was founded in 1913 as the Utrecht Machinale Chair and Furniture Factory. After the Second World War it competed with the heavy Dutch interior full of solid oak, floral curtains and a smyrna cloth on the table. It introduced American and Swedish lightness with modern materials.
“Designer Cees Braakman was influenced at that time by the American Eames and the Finnish Aalto, who were very contemporary, modest with a clear line. By introducing materials such as plywood and birch veneer, he determined the image of the Dutch interior with Pastoe,” says Van der Zwaag.
Reconstruction
The style fitted in seamlessly with the smaller homes of the reconstruction. Simple, flexible. No furniture that stayed in the same place for a lifetime, but simple and flexible pieces that changed with the consumer’s taste and phase of life. For example, Pastoe had the minimalist wire chair or a modular cabinet system that the user could put together themselves.
In the years that followed, Pastoe remained the epitome of sleekness Dutch design. For example, a generation later the A’dammer by Aldo van den Nieuwelaar, a roller shutter cabinet that vintage enthusiasts will pay hundreds of euros for. The products were tastefully marketed with the work of photographers and designers such as Ed van der Elsken, Cas Oorthuys and Dick Bruna.
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The curator says against RTV Utrecht that the brand is still popular, but during the corona crisis production costs increased and materials were poorly available. People bought cabinets, but the company then had to disappoint them. A tax debt in particular would now cause Pastoe to worry.
Van der Zwaag thinks that the lack of innovation has also been fatal to the brand. “There has been enormous competition in the past 10 to 20 years. This means that you have to keep innovating: new designers, new products, new techniques. Innovation is what has always kept Pastoe going, but that enormous drive to innovate was no longer there .”
Van der Zaag also calls the lack of marketing disastrous. “The communication strategy was always of a high standard. Great photography, fantastic design, textually in perfect order. Pastoe was really at the forefront. That has been forgotten in recent years. But in this period full of visual stimuli and online marketing you cannot do that leave.”
Restart?
According to the curator, several parties are interested in the brand. There is therefore a chance of a restart. Van der Zwaag says she has already spoken to interested parties and hopes that her enthusiasm can contribute to this.
“I just really hope it isn’t cherrypicking it is ensured that only the runners or the most famous designers are retained. What Pastoe stands for must be preserved, that special thing that has made the brand what it is.”