Cees Braakman Biography
Dutch designer Cees Braakman was born in Utrecht in 1917. At the age of 17 he began working at Pastoe, a furniture company based in Utrecht, where he learned the trade. His father, D. L. Braakman (1885-1966), was the company's chief designer and manager. In 1948, after the Second World War (during which the company was demolished) Braakman followed in his father's footsteps, becoming manager and designer of Pastoe, where he remained until 1978. In 1947 Braakman was sent to the United States to observe other designs and producer studios. He is particularly inspired by the Herman Miller company and Charles and Ray Eames. After his return to the Netherlands, he began to experiment with curved plywood and created Pastoe's first modern furniture line. He continues to develop several popular furniture lines, characterized by clean, elegant lines, and a sense of proportion suitable for smaller rooms. During the 1950s and 1960s, Braakman began to place great emphasis on modular furniture, and in 1955, Pastoe launched the Made-to-Measure series, which allowed customers to choose from a wide variety of woods and configurations, thus giving them the possibility of reassembling the products as they wish. In 1957, the teak version of Made-to-Measure won a silver medal at the Milan Triennale. In 1958, Braakman introduced the U+N series, more formal, but with the same clean lines (this collection, however, was not intended to be assembled directly by the customer). The Mobilo trolley (Model PE03) from 1953 is in the Stedelijk museum in Amsterdam. Braakman died in Utrecht in 1995.
