No. 302 Armchair by Willem Hendrik Gispen for Kembo, 1950s

Want to Know More About W.H. Gispen?

W.H. Gispen was a Dutch industrial designer best known for his Giso lamps and functionalist steel-tube furniture. Born in 1890 in Amsterdam, he studied design at the Academy of Visual Arts and Technical Science in Rotterdam as part of the architectural department. In 1915, after only two years, Gispen left school early, partly due to the outbreak of World War One. In 1916 he set up a small smithy, which would eventually develop into the famous Gispen Factory for Metalwork. In 1949, Gispen left the company because of tensions between him and the co-director of the firm W. van Osselen. He began to lecture at the Royal Academy at The Hague, co-founded the Kembo factory and, at the age of seventy-five, began to take etching lessons.

The Many Styles of W.H. Gispen

Gispen’s pieces took inspiration from numerous sources, drawing on De Stijl, Bauhaus, and Constructivism, to name a few. In the early years, Gispen’s designs were reminiscent of the expressionism of the Amsterdamse School and of Art Nouveau. Alongside ornamental wrought-iron work, he began producing items like firesides,Table Lamps , wooden furniture, and Clocks . From 1923 onwards, Gispen was introduced to, and subsequently inspired by, the Bauhaus movement in The Netherlands. At the international exhibition of Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris, he received an award for his ornamental iron-work and became aware of Le Corbusier, Constructivism and other French modernists. These influences inspired him to create the Giso lamp and the armchair no. 412. Made with “Scientific Lighting” aesthetic and demands in mind, these lamps are still celebrated today.

W.H. Gispen and His Legacy

In 1916 Gispen purchased his own kiln at the Coolschestraat in Rotterdam, where he started his own workshop in September of that year. It was here where he produced some of his most memorable pieces. His success was in part due to the fact that he was responsible for his own marketing and advertising, as well as opening showrooms in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Brussels and later in London, Paris, and other cities abroad. During the Second World War, metalwork was prohibited outside the war industry, so the factory began to produce parts for aircrafts. In 1920 W.H. Gispen co-founded the architects' circle Opbouw, which created the foundations for Dutch Functionalism. The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam organised the first exposition ever dedicated to Gispen in 1981, which focused on his lamp designs from 1916 to 1949. That same year, Gispen died on May 10.

Dutch furniture manufacturer Kembo was established in the 1950s by the well-known designer W.H. Gispen (1890-1981). The name is a shortened version of the Dutch slogan,  'Kom Eerst Maar Bij Ons' meaning ‘Come see us first’. Upon resigning from his immensely successful eponymous furniture manufactory, Gispen , he co-founded the design manufacturing company Kembo in the early-1950s with Ru Meijer.

In the beginning, Kembo's products were designed by Gispen himself, but were produced by companies elsewhere. Commercial success, however, soon led to expansion and the construction of a factory in Veenendaal for the production of their office furniture. Characterized by a balance between shape and function, Gispen’s designs for Kembo included ergonomic steel framed pieces. One of the first pieces Gispen designed for Kembo was the Model 302 Armchair (1954), which won an award at Milan’s Triennale that same year. Other designers for Kembo included J.B. Meyer and Gerrit Veenendaal.

Sometime around 1960, Gispen left Kembo in order to pursue his interests in architecture, and at the age of seventy-nine he began drawing lessons at the Royal Academy in The Hague. Not long after Gispen's departure, Meijer left the firm as well, leaving Kembo to his three sons Sjoerd, Gelder, and Just Meijer who continued to run the company, introducing office furniture in the 1990s. Kembo was one of the first producers to offer laminated seating and injection molded plastic furniture in an office setting. Designs from this time included the Thema Conference Chair (1995), and the office program Plato (1998) both designed by NPK Industrial Design; the office program Lost Boys, (2003, Dutch Design Prize) by Khodi Feiz, which was accepted into the permanent collection of the Het Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 2004. Other contemporary designers include Wolfgang Deisig, Daniël Figuroa, Gerard Geytenbeek, and Erik Munnikhof.

In 2014, Amsterdam-based furniture label Lensvelt (est. 1962) acquired Kembo and included seven Gispen classics, including chairs 101, 103, 201, 202, 205, and the 301 Easy Chair (all 1950s), in the collection entitled WH Gispen from Kembo by Lensvelt ... with love.