Willem Hendrik Gispen

1890-1981

The Dutch avant-garde industrial designer and architect Gispen became famous for his mass-produced functionalist furniture made of bent steel tubes and especially for his timeless lamps, which he began to produce and sell under the brand name GISO. He designed these together with his first wife in many models, sizes and materials from 1926 onwards.

Although Gispen varied the luminaires and lamps in many different ways, they all had a common characteristic - a simple but aesthetically impressive and highly efficient design. Gispen prided itself on the precise artistic and technical quality of its products. He knew how best to combine the economic and aesthetic aspects of his products, as well as how to use excellent marketing and promotional strategies to achieve successful sales of his products. As a result, the small blacksmith's workshop he opened in Rotterdam in 1916 became an internationally recognised phenomenon over time, helped in no small part by his success at the international trade fair 'Die Wohnung' in Stuttgart in 1927. Gispen's reputation also spread thanks to his active margeting. He designed the covers of product catalogues himself, using the highly effective and up-to-date communication principles of the new typography. He gradually opened company stores all over the world, not only in the main European cities, but also in Cape Town and Willemstad. Many of his mass-produced design pieces are rightly among the highlights of Dutch design, still produced and sold today. Barbora Kovářová