Armchair Paimio 41
Artek
May 10, 2026
A legacy that lives on
When Nordiska Galleriet (NOGA) was founded in 1912, it emerged in the middle of an era of extraordinary making. Swedish architecture and design were finding their own language — shaped by light, proportion and materiality rather than decorative excess. It was a time of restrained elegance and craft with ambition. A time when Carl Milles was casting light in bronze.
We invited Bruno Ehrs — one of Sweden’s most acclaimed photographers of architecture, art and design — to return to that period. Not to document it, but to revisit its ideas. To place a curated selection of design objects alongside sculptures from different eras and let them speak to one another — as equals, rooted in the same cultural conversation.
Among the works are Solglitter by Carl Milles, from 1917, and Soldier with Bird by Johannes Bjerg from 1918. Objects made at a time when the boundary between art, architecture and design did not yet need to be defined.
For us, curation has never been about form alone. It is about understanding what an object meant when it was made — and why it still feels relevant today. Some objects carry more than function or aesthetics. They carry time.
Bruno Ehrs’ images remind us of exactly that. And it feels right to present them now — as NOGA steps into a new chapter, with a new identity grounded in our heritage.
