DYSTHE DESIGN

Overview

This publication offers a comprehensive review spanning 60 years of the Norwegian design icon Sven Ivar Dysthe’s production. His most prominent designs and innovations in industrial design are now being presented for the first time, including his furniture for use in private houses as well as in public buildings, hotels and companies in the UK, Germany, Norway and the USA.

Ever since the 1960s Sven Ivar Dysthe (b. 1931) has been one of the leading proponents of Scandinavian design. The 1960s feature prominently in his creative work, a time when he founded Pop design in Norway and produced most of his emergent iconic designs.

Dysthe’s career got off to a glamorous start: in 1953 this student of the Royal College of Art in London was commissioned with the creation of the school’s coronation gift, a wooden casket, for Queen Elizabeth II. Since then one cannot think of the international design scene without thinking of him. His chair and furniture designs 1001, Popcorn, Prisma, Planet and Laminette are huge successes in the export market. The latter is one of Norway’s most popular chairs, on which virtually every Norwegian has sat at least once due to its use in countless public buildings, likewise travellers all over Oslo’s Gardermoen airport with his chair Gardist. In the 1970s Sven Ivar Dysthe also significantly contributed to the development of ski equipment – and to the then success of the Norwegian athletes – by developing a revolutionary ski binding out of plastic.

Award-winning designer Sven Ivar Dysthe’s furniture designs are as popular today as the time they were designed and have secured him an exceptional place in Scandinavian design history.