Elsa Arokallio, armchair, 1920s
Elsa Arokallio (1892–1982) completed her architecture degree at Helsinki University of Technology in 1919. She established a firm with her husband and continued managing the business after his premature death, while also working at the Ministry of Defence, for which she designed several buildings. In the usual manner for the time, she also designed interiors and furnishings for her own buildings and those of other architects.
In the late 1920s Arokallio secured the distinction of designing furnishings for the new Finnish Parliament Building alongside other leading designers of the day, including Arttu Brummer, Werner West and Rafael Blomstedt. Arokallio and West were strong supporters of the new functionalism, and this stylistic trend was especially evident in areas of the building associated with recreation and femininity, such as the cafeteria, the dining room, the smoking rooms and the ladies’ withdrawing rooms. Here the austerity of modernism holds sway in an otherwise predominantly classical realm, particularly in the details of interior décor and cafeteria furnishings. Arokallio’s furnishings in the ladies’ withdrawing rooms were not especially light or ornate, but heavily and massively delineated. These furnishings included sofa and writing table suites, and the furniture designed by Arokallio was clear and linear in accordance with the ideals of modernism, even as a hint of classicism still remains visible in the details, for example in the decoration of armchair legs.
The same influences of modernism and ongoing effect of classicism can also be seen in the armchair that is now offered for sale. The chair design won first prize in a 1927 competition arranged by the furniture company Oy Huonekalukeskus-Möbelcentralen Ab in which Arttu Brummer was first runner up. The armchair also displays the solid, linear form familiar from the Parliament Building furnishings, with the stepwise profiling of the legs alluding to the style of a more ornate period.
